As a researcher, Dr. Bookspan has carried gear up and down the mountains and deserts of India, Nepal, Asia, and Northern Africa, and swam to work in an underwater laboratory and with the Ama of Japan. Advisor to The Discovery Channel and police and military training departments, science officer for the Vidocq international forensic society, and professor of anatomy at a college in the mountains of Mexico where the entrance exam was getting up there without a nosebleed. Left paralyzed after breaking her back, neck, and most of everything else in an accident, she rehabbed using sports medicine techniques she developed. Harvard clinicians have called her "The St. Jude of the Joints" in her private practice in sports medicine.

Photo by Robert Troia, talented photographer who lost use of one arm. Docs told him he would have to give up photography. I fixed his arm. To thank me he offered to take my picture. He said he'd capture the real me. I thought, "Who could do that?" I was working some interesting lung function equations and looked up to see him on a ladder adjusting camera dials and doing cool photographer brainwork. I was delighted at watching such talent, and he said, "Click!"

My formal education?
Undergraduate double science major. Graduated with high honors in three years. Put myself through school working full time.
Master's - Exercise Physiology. GPA 4.0 (out of 4.0 top).
Double Doctorate - Environmental Physiology and Sports Medicine, combined work at Temple University Medical School and the Biokinetics Research Lab, with additional concentration in research, GPA 4.0 (out of 4.0 top). How much does that mean? As the Wizard of Oz said, "I can't give you brains, but I can give you a diploma."
Doctoral Comprehensive exams "Passed With Distinction."
Then more stuff.
Fellowship - Cold immersion physiology.
Internship - Hyperbaric, hypoxic, and hypercapnic response to rest and exercise.
Briefly studied mathematics to help me understand human heat transfer better, and because without geometry, life is pointless.
Post Doctoral - U Pennsylvania School of Medicine - Altitude decompression at the Institute For Environmental Medicine.
Fellow of the Academy of Wilderness Medicine.
Advanced course and degree work - Orthopedic disorders, exercise in injury management, nutrition, wound management, more
Over three dozen accredited certifications in fitness, life support, health, and exercise management of injury.
Researcher for the US Navy and Army aerospace, warfare, and medical divisions. Hoo rah.
University professor and instructor of anatomy and physiology, environmental physiology, exercise physiology, statistics, physical training and health, orthopedic and pain rehabilitation in the US and abroad.
Director of seven national and international scuba and medicine conferences.
Competed in swimming as a national class distance freestyler, two Olympic bids.
4th degree black belt. Competed undefeated in full-contact martial arts. Worked to Muay Thai instructor ranking of Kru Muay and Martial Arts instructor level of Master.
Then more stuff, blah, blah.Then I got a life. Then relapsed back to work. I don't know why.

 

"Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it." -Albert Einstein

 

 

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