Committee

Guido Fumagalli is director of the Research Center on Child Motor Development at the University of Verona and full professor of Pharmacology at the Medical School of the University of Verona.
He has been Dean of the Faculty of Sport Science, Provost for research of the University of Verona and is now director of the Research Center on Child Motor Development.
His group studies motor development in preschool children as well as the role of meningeal neural stem cells in brain development and repair in diseases.

Research Center on Child Motor Development,
Department of Diagnostics and Public Health,
University of Verona,
Verona, Italy

Arja Sääkslahti is a senior departmental researcher at the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences in the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She has multidisciplinary expertise in research on physical activity and motor skills in young children and designing family- and childcare – based physical activity and motor skill interventions for young children. She cooperates actively with society supporting actions toward physically active friendly environment for children. She is part of the team established by the Ministry of Education and Culture of Finland to write the recommendations for physical activity in early childhood. She was head of CIAPSE 2 congress in 2017.

Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences,
University of Jyväskylä,
Jyväskylä, Finland

DFS research examines the impact of motor development on various aspects of physical, psychological and social-emotional health across the lifespan. His current work emphasizes the need to address and understand mechanisms and casual pathways that promote positive or negative developmental trajectories of physical and psychological health-related variables across the lifespan.

DFS currently collaborates with multiple research groups in the U.S. and around the world to expand and promote research in motor development. He is ad interin director of the Yvonne and Schuyler Moore Child Development Research Center. His work has been funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and SHAPE America.

Department of Physical Education

Blatt P.E. Center, Office 218-K
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
United States of America

Patrizia Tortella is MS of Pedagogy and of Sport Sciences and PhD in Cognitive Sciences and Education.

Teacher for disabled children, qualified trainer for several sport specialties, and organizer of physical activities for 0-6 y old children, she is now postdoc at the Research Center on Child Motor Development (RCCMD) of the University of Verona.
Research interests include interactions between executive functions and basic motor skills and educational strategies to promote physical activities in Italian pre-schoolers.

Graduate in Physical Education, master of Psychology and PhD in Philosophy.
Associate professor at the Rome University “Foro Italico”.

Teaching in physical activity during development and aging, research foci on exercise and cognition, motor coordination, enhanced physical education.
Over 100 international and national peer-reviewed articles, over 1400 citations, authorship of international and national authored or edited books.
On the editorial board of JSEP and associate editor of JAPA

Boris Jidovtseff is Full-time Associate professor at the University of Liege, Belgium.
Since 2010, he is the academic manager of the CEREKI, a research Centre that focus on preschool children motor development.

In 2014 he organised in Liège the first edition of the international congress on children physical activity and sport (CIAPSE 2014).
His main research topics concern the assessment of children motor and water competences and the implementation of child-friendly activities.

Training and assessment of physical fitness
Research Unit on Childhood

Department of Sport and Rehabilitation Sciences
Liège University
Liège, Belgium

Erin Gerlach,

Department of Sport and Health Science,
University of Potsdam,
Potsdam, Germany

Lisa M. Barnett is member of the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition Research at Deakin University, a leading institution in the word for Sport Science.

Research Focus: her research interests are in the development, implementation, evaluation and long term follow-up of physical activity interventions in youth including the role of actual and perceived fundamental movement skill ability.
Her work focuses on such data from multiple countries in order to identify policies and educational strategies that help or hinder motor development.

Jacqueline D. Goodway is faculty member in the area of motor development and elementary physical education of the Department of Human Sciences at The Ohio State University.
Her research agenda focuses on issues associated with the evaluation and promotion of motor skill development and physical activity in young children who are economically disadvantaged.

Member of numerous scientific societies, she has co-authored one of the leading textbooks in motor development in the USA and globally.
JDG has provided significant national leadership serving on NASPE’s Professional Preparation & Research Steering committee and chaired the writing of the “Active Start” national physical activity guidelines for the 0-5 year old age group.
She actively works to promote motor development and physical activity for young children in underserved communities across the world

Professor of Kinesiology
Director, SKIP Early Childhood Motor Development Lab
The Ohio State University Department of Human Sciences

A244 PAES Building
305 Annie & John Glenn Ave
Columbus, OH. 43026
United States of America

Leah E. Robinson is Associate Professor in Movement Science at the School of Kinesiology University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
She is director of the Child Movement, Activity, & Developmental Health Laboratory.
Her research takes a developmental approach to three areas: motor skill acquisition, physical activity, & developmental health.

She seeks to understand the developmental process of motor skills along with the underlying factors that influence children’s motor competence.
Dr. Robinson also implements evidence-based interventions in school settings to promote motor skills, physical activity, and physical health & development in pediatric populations while exploring how these interventions contribute to children’s developmental trajectories.
The National Institutes of Health currently fund her work.