Rate My Professor Mark Carpenter

Mark Carpenter is a Professor and Co-Director in the School of Kinesiology at the University of British Columbia. He earned a BSc Honours in Kinesiology (1996), an MSc in Kinesiology (1998), and a PhD in Kinesiology (2001), all from the University of Waterloo. He completed postdoctoral research at the University of Basel (2001), the University of Waterloo (2002), and as an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden (2002–2004).

Carpenter joined the University of British Columbia as a Tier II Canada Research Chair in 2005 and was promoted to Professor in 2015. His research examines the neural, musculoskeletal, and psychological factors contributing to balance deficits and falls in aging, Parkinson’s disease, vestibular loss, and spinal cord injury, with the goal of developing targeted exercise and treatment strategies. He directs the Neural Control of Posture and Movement Laboratory, which employs electromyography, motion analysis, force measurement, and virtual reality to study postural control under threat and in clinical populations. Carpenter serves as President of the International Society of Posture and Gait Research and holds memberships in the Society for Neuroscience, the American Physiological Society, and other professional organizations. He has supervised numerous graduate students and postdoctoral researchers whose work has advanced understanding of balance and falls prevention.