Expert Panel Members

Annually, GSSI invites subject matter experts to serve on an Expert Panel. The members below represent the 2020 Expert Panel.

Lawrence Spriet PhD - GSSI XP Chair

University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Bio

Dr. Lawrence Spriet is a professor at the University of Guelph in Canada. His research examines how skeletal muscle generates the large amounts of energy needed to exercise and perform in work and sport situations.
Lawrence is recognized as one of the leaders in the field of exercise metabolism and has published extensively on this topic. In addition to his fundamental research, his applied research examines whether compounds that are purported to be “ergogenic” or “work enhancing” agents actually augment muscle metabolism and/or improve human performance. He also conducts hydration/sweat testing and research aimed at counteracting the effects of dehydration in athletes engaging in stop-and-go sports like ice hockey, basketball and soccer. Dr. Spriet has had a long history with GSSI, first coming on board in 1990, helping establish the Canadian GSSI Branch in 2005 and acting as Chair of XP since 2012.

XP Panel role

GSSI XP chair and SSE Editor-in-Chief

Kathryn Ackerman MD, MPH, FACSM

Harvard University, Massachusetts, USA

Bio

Dr. Kathryn (Kate) Ackerman, MD, MPH, FACSM is the founder and Medical Director of the Female Athlete Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, the Associate Director of the Sports Endocrine Research Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She earned her BA from Cornell University in government and biology, her MD from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, her MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health with concentrations in quantitative methods and women’s health and completed her residency in internal medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her sports medicine fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital, endocrinology fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and research fellowship in neuroendocrinology at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is triple boarded in internal medicine,
sports medicine and endocrinology. She was named the top sports medicine doctor in Boston by Boston magazine in 2019 and 2020, a woman changing the world by Shape magazine in 2019 and was the 2020 honoree for the Grace, Grit and Glory annual event of Women’s Rowing.
Her research focuses on the Female Athlete Triad and the various aspects of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S). She has authored/co-authored over 100 articles and book chapters related to sports medicine, endocrinology, rowing, bone health, bone imaging techniques, hormonal treatments for bone in oligo-amenorrheic athletes and other topics pertaining to female athletes, including position statements with the IOC and the Endocrine Society.

XP Panel Topic

Recommendations and Nutrition Considerations for female athletes

Jamie Burr PhD

University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Bio

Dr. Jamie Burr is an Associate Professor in Human Health and Nutritional Science and the director of the Human Performance and Health Research lab at the University of Guelph. His work considers integrated systems level exercise physiology, with a focus on understanding how exercise can be used to alter physiological responses and systems level adaptations. This includes novel techniques and training practices to optimize performance, with applications to both human performance and human health. His laboratory works with elite athletes across a range of sport who compete at the national, international and professional level.

XP panel topic

Cannabinoids and Athletes, with a focus on: potential mechanisms of action, benefits, risks and the research necessary to understand the potential

George Chiampas DO, CAQSM, FACEP

Northwestern University and Northerwestern Memorial Hospital, Illinois USA

Bio

Dr. Chiampas is an Assistant Professor and Attending Physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine and the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He serves as Associate Director of EMS and Medical Director for Community and Sports Event Preparedness and Management at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and EMS Director for the Chicago Police Department. Dr Chiampas additionally serves as the Chief Medical Officer for U.S. Soccer and the Bank of America Chicago Marathon and team physician for the Chicago Blackhawks.
As a member of several medical societies, he has supported multiple scientific journals in his role as editor. In addition, Dr Chiampas serves on several advisory boards specific to public and youth sports safety. His professional goal is to enhance sports and public safety for individual and team sports through mass event emergency preparedness, policy and process implementation utilizing best practices.

XP Panel Topic

A Sports Practitioners Perspective on Return to Play during Covid19

Graeme Close BSC. (HONS), PGCERT (LTHE), ASCC, RSEN, PhD, FBASES, FECSS

Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, England

Bio

A former professional Rugby League player, Graeme is now Professor of Human Physiology at Liverpool John Moores University. His research is focused on basic and applied sport nutrition where he has published ~150 papers and review articles. Graeme’s current research areas are the effects of Vitamin D on skeletal muscle function, the effects of weight-making on health and performance, the metabolic and nutritional demands of elite rugby and nutritional strategies to promote muscle repair including a recent series of studies on cannabidiol. Graeme is accredited with UKSCA, BASES and SENr. He is the deputy chair of SENr and a fellow of BASES and ECSS. From an applied perspective, Graeme is the expert nutrition consultant to England Rugby and Aston Villa FC, and the Head of Performance Nutrition for European Tour Golf.

XP Panel Topic

Cannabidiol and Athletes, with a focus on: potential mechanisms of action, benefits, risks and the research necessary to understand the potential

Ben Desbrow PhD

Griffith University, Queensland, Australia

Bio

Dr. Ben Desbrow is an Advanced Sports Dietitian and Associate Professor at Griffith University on the Gold Coast. Ben worked as a hospital-based clinical dietitian for a decade before being awarded a Fellowship in Sports Nutrition at the Australian Institute in Sport. Subsequently, he completed a PhD in sports nutrition in 2008. Ben’s current research program spans topics in both sports and clinical nutrition. Ben has been lead author for two significant position statements on nutrition advice to young athletes; the Sports Dietitians Australia Position Statement on Nutrition for Adolescent Athletes and the IAAF Statement on Nutrition for special populations: young, female, and Masters athletes. Ben also developed and presents the child and adolescent sports nutrition module for the IOC Diploma in Sports Nutrition.

XP Panel Topic

Youth Athlete Development and Nutrition, With a Focus on Teen and ‘Tween’ Athletes

Chris McGlory PhD

Queens University, Ontario, Canada

Bio

Dr. Chris McGlory is an Assistant Professor at Queen’s University, Canada having completed Postdoctoral Fellowships at McMaster University, Canada. Chris specializes in the use of stable isotopic tracers to track skeletal muscle protein turnover during periods of fasting, feeding, training and immobilization. His work employs a range of methodologies such as deuterium labeling of proteins and magnetic resonance imaging, as well as a variety of molecular biology techniques for measurement of enzyme activity, protein expression, and post-translational modification. Currently, his lab is focused on exploring how omega-3 fatty acid intake modulates the adaptive response of skeletal muscle to exercise and periods of muscle-disuse in women. Chris has published over 50 scientific papers and has delivered numerous invited national and international presentations at many prestigious scientific meetings.

XP Panel Topic

Recommendations for Master Athletes: Nutrition Implications for Healthy Aging, with a Focus Beyond (and Excluding) Protein

Daniel Moore PhD

University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Bio

Dr. Dan Moore is an associate professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education and a member of the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology and American Society for Nutrition. He has authored 85 peer-reviewed papers and was the recipient of a Canada Foundation for Innovation grant to build a high-performance muscle metabolism research lab in the Goldring Centre for High Performance Sport at University of Toronto. His excellence in protein metabolism research was recognized by the American Society for Nutrition as the 2012 recipient of the Peter J. Reeds Young Investigator Award. Before joining the University of Toronto, Dan was an Associate R&D Specialist at the Nestle Research Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland. His research uses contemporary stable isotope and molecular biology techniques to measure whole body and muscle protein metabolism in active and inactive populations across the life span (children to older adults). Questions related to the impact of protein amount, type and timing on muscle repair/remodeling/adaptation are fundamental to his research. Emerging research streams also aim to understand potential synergies between muscle protein synthesis and muscle stem cell activation during exercise-induced muscle protein remodeling and the utility of in vitro models to recapitulate in vivo skeletal muscle physiology.

XP Panel Topic

Recommendations for Master Athletes – nutrition implications for healthy aging, with a focus on Protein

Luc Van Loon PhD

Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands

Bio

Prof. Luc van Loon is a Professor of Physiology of Exercise at the Department of Human Biology at Maastricht University Medical Centre. Luc has an international research standing in the area of skeletal muscle metabolism. Current research in his laboratory focuses on the skeletal muscle adaptive response to exercise and the impact of nutritional and pharmacological interventions to modulate muscle metabolism in health and disease. The main research interests of his laboratory include muscle metabolism, sports nutrition, clinical nutrition, adaptation to endurance and resistance type exercise and the use of physical activity and/or nutritional interventions to improve health in chronic metabolic disease and aging. The latter are investigated on a whole-body, tissue and cellular level, with skeletal muscle as the main tissue of interest.

XP Panel Topic

Plant-based Sports Nutrition - the Game-Changer for Athletes?