Patty Freedson is a Professor and former Chair in the Kinesiology Department in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. She has been a faculty member at UMass Amherst for 34 years. She has taught courses in Human Physiology, Exercise Physiology, Pediatric Exercise Physiology, Physical Activity and Health, Physical Activity and Women’s Health and Exercise in Health and Disease.
Dr. Freedson has published over 170 papers and has lectured in the United States and abroad. Her NIH funded research focuses on developing and validating novel machine learning accelerometer data processing methods to characterize physical activity and sedentary behavior. The goal of her physical activity measurement research is to improve our understanding of physical activity dose for surveillance, intervention and determinants studies. Her original activity monitor calibration was published in 1998 and remains a primary tool used by researchers around the world to estimate physical activity using objective accelerometer sensors. Her work has been used for the NHANES accelerometer data analysis framework to examine population-based relationships between physical activity and health outcomes. She also works with industry partners from the activity tracker market to improve the accuracy and precision of these popular consumer wearable devices.
She is co-chair of the organizing committee of the new Center for Personalized Health Monitoring which is part of the $95 million UMass Amherst Institute of Applied Life Sciences. This center, located in new state of the art lab facilities at UMass, brings together researchers in kinesiology, psychology, engineering, nursing, mathematics and statistics, computer science and polymer science to develop and test the next generation of wearable sensors to assess health related behaviors and health related biomarkers.
She delivered an ACSM President’s Lecture in 2001, the ACSM Cureton Lecture in 2003 and the ACSM Dill Lecture in 2011. In 2007 she received a University of Massachusetts Outstanding Accomplishments in Research and Creative Activity Award and in 2009 she received an ACSM Citation Award. She is a past- president of the National Academy of Kinesiology, a former president of the New England Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine and former vice-president of American College of Sports Medicine. She is a fellow of the Research Consortium, the American College of Sports Medicine, and the National Academy of Kinesiology.
Links:
- UMass Faculty Profile: https://www.umass.edu/sphhs/person/faculty/patty-freedson
