Doris Ida Miller

Doris Ida Miller (born 1939) is a Canadian biomechanist and Professor Emeritus at Western University, who is known for her research in sports biomechanics, most specifically diving. She was the first female council member of the International Society of Biomechanics, a founding member and President of the American Society of Biomechanics (1983-1984), a founding member of the Canadian Society for Biomechanics, a Fellow of the National Academy of Kinesiology, and a Fellow of the International Society of Biomechanics in Sports.

Her PhD thesis, titled A computer simulation of the airborne phase of diving, was conducted under the supervision of Richard Nelson. Her computational model was accompanied by computer graphics that required more than 3,000 punch cards when implemented as a computer mainframe program.

Separate from her studies in biomechanics, Miller also earned a Master's in Divinity from the University of Victoria in 1990. sprinting and amputee running. As a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, and alongside the biomechanist Micheline Gagnon, Miller manually digitized 16-mm high-speed film recordings of sprinters for her thesis work, and pioneered early computer graphics for animating motion capture data using punch cards. and the 1996 Olympic Games, which included embedding force platforms into 10-meter diving towers. As a result of these efforts, data from the 1996 Olympic Games led to a Diving Video Database analysis program that was a forerunner to later commercial software such as Dartfish.

During a project with Sport Canada from 1988 up to the 1992 Olympic Games, Miller helped develop analytical programs by collecting a database of national and international-level dives, which she used to create instructional modules for competitive diving coaches.

Honors and awards The National Academy of Kinesiology, formerly the American Academy of Physical Education and the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education, inducted Miller as Fellow #288 in 1982 while she was on faculty at the University of Washington. Her status within the Academy changed to Corresponding Fellow upon her return to Canada in 1984.

The International Society of Biomechanics in Sports named Miller the Geoffrey Dyson Lecturer, the society's most prestigious award, in 1992 and elected her a Fellow in 2002.

The International Society of Biomechanics awarded her Honorary Membership in 2009 and she remains one of two women to have received this honour to date.

Also in 2009, the American Society of Biomechanics awarded her the Jim Hay Memorial Award which recognizes "originality, quality, and depth of biomechanics research" relevant to sport and exercise.

Selected publications