Our Board

(left to right) Ryan Milley (prior board member), Robert Davis, Hugh MacPherson, Elisabet Stener-Victorin (prior board member), Jiang-Ti Kong, Vitaly Napadow, Peter Wayne, Rosa Schnyer, Richard Harris, Claudia Witt, Richard Hammerschlag (Advisory Board member)  Not pictured: Remy Coeytaux

(left to right) Helene Langevin (prior board member), Hugh MacPherson, Robert Davis, Remy Coeytaux, Richard Hammerschlag (Advisory Board Member), Jiang-Ti Kong, Rosa Schnyer, Vitaly Napadow  Not pictured: Richard Harris, Peter Wayne, Claudia Witt

The SAR Board

SAR’s Board is comprised of both clinicians and research scientists – each well-respected experts in their field of practice.  These dedicated leaders devote their time and resources to keep a pulse on what’s happening in the field of acupuncture research, with an over-arching goal of identifying gaps between research and practice, opening dialogue about issues that affect the global Oriental medicine community, and hosting public conferences, Think Tanks, and symposia that foster communication between all of the different stakeholders to Oriental medicine research.

Jun J. Mao, MD, MSCE - Co-President

Richard Harris, PhD - Co-President

Robert Davis, MS, LAc - Treasurer

Remy Coeytaux, MD, PhD

Lee Hullender Rubin, DAOM, MS, LAc

Jiang-Ti Kong, MD

Ari More, MD, MSc

Hugh MacPherson, PhD, LAc

Vitaly Napadow, PhD

Rosa Schnyer, DAOM, LAc

Peter Wayne, PhD

Claudia M. Witt, MD, MBA

SAR Advisory Board

Lixing Lao, PhD, LAc

Richard Hammerschlag, PhD

Dr. Mao is the chief of the Integrative Medicine Service and the Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He is a board-certified family physician with added qualifications in hospice and palliative care. He is also an experienced and licensed acupuncturist who combines western and eastern approaches to manage pain and symptoms in cancer patients. Dr. Mao’s program of research focuses on investigating the effects, mechanisms, and integration of Complementary and Integrative Medicine (CIM) for symptom management in cancer. He has advanced research training in clinical epidemiology and extensive experience conducting acupuncture, pain, and symptom science clinical trials, as well as health services research among cancer patients. Dr. Mao has received research support from the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and the American Cancer Society. He has published over 140 peer-reviewed research manuscripts. He is the immediate past president of the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO) and president-elect of the Society for Acupuncture Research. His research findings have been included in American Society of Clinical Oncology, National Comprehensive Cancer Network, and SIO clinical guidelines for developing evidence-informed integrative oncology practices for standard cancer care.

   Richard Harris, PhD - Co-President
      Associate Professor
      Department of Anesthesiology
      Department of Internal Medicine Division of Rheumatology
      University of Michigan♦Ann Arbor, MI

Richard Harris is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan. His background is in basic science and clinical research in alternative medicine.  He received his B.S. degree in Genetics from Purdue University in 1992 and his Ph. D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from UC Berkeley in 1997. Following his graduate work, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at NIH studying the rhythmic properties of neural cultures. He is a graduate of the Maryland Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine and has received an MS degree in Clinical Research Design and Statistical Analysis at the University of Michigan. Dr. Harris is currently investigating mechanisms of acupuncture and acupressure in the treatment of chronic pain and fatigue conditions. His recent investigations have focused on the role of brain neurotransmitters in acupuncture analgesia and chronic pain. He is a member of the American Pain Society and a past co-President for the Society for Acupuncture Research. He serves as Associate Editor of and Scientific Advisor for the Journal of Acupuncture and Meridian Studies, and is an ad hoc reviewer for several other scientific publications.

    Robert Davis, MS, LAc - Treasurer
       Clinician, Acupuncture Vermont Oriental Medical Clinic, PLC

Robert Davis received an MS in acupuncture and oriental medicine from Southwest Acupuncture College, Santa Fe in 1999. He is board certified in acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine and maintains a clinical practice in South Burlington, Vermont. He served as the President of the Vermont Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine from 2001 – 2006. He was previously the CEO of Stromatec, Inc., a medical device R&D company developing quantitative tools and “know how” to researchers and clinicians in the areas of acupuncture needling techniques and connective tissue physiology and pathology. He has served as the Principle Investigator for six National Institute of Health SBIR grants.

    Remy Coeytaux, MD, PhD
       Associate Professor, Community and Family Medicine
       Interim Vice Chief of Research, Doctor of Physical Therapy Program
       Duke University School of Medicine♦Durham, NC
       Link: www.chapelhilldoctors.com

Remy Coeytaux is a family physician, epidemiologist, and medical acupuncturist.  He is a former Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and a current Bravewell Collaborative Fellow in Integrative Medicine.  He conducts comparative effectiveness research as a faculty member of the Duke Evidence-based Practice Center and has conducted randomized clinical trials of acupuncture for chronic daily headache, prevention of post-dates pregnancy, and menopausal hot flashes.  Remy is very interested in the business and clinical practice of integrative medicine.  He co-founded Chapel Hill Doctors Integrative Health Center and serves as President of Chapel Hill Primary Care, a private medical practice that serves as the professional home to two licensed acupuncturists. Remy joined the SAR Board in September, 2012.

Lee Hullender Rubin is a Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, clinical researcher and international academic lecturer. She is a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist specializing in fertility, vulvovaginal diseases, and oncology support at the University of California San Francisco, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. Dr. Hullender Rubin graduated with her master’s degree from Bastyr University (2001) and completed training in residence at the Shanghai Traditional Chinese Medicine University (2001). She received her clinical doctorate (2009) and completed a post-doctoral research fellowship (2012) from the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine (OCOM). She also completed post-doctoral clinical research certificate from the Human Investigations Program, Oregon Health and Science University (2013). Her primary research interests are informed by her clinical work and look at acupuncture and Chinese medicine’s impact on in vitro fertilization birth outcomes and acupuncture’s effect to reduce vulvodynia-related symptoms, a female sexual pain condition.

   Jiang-Ti Kong, MD
      Department of Anesthesiology Pain and Perioperative Medicine,
      Stanford University Hospital and Clinics♦Stanford, CA
      Links:  http://med.stanford.edu/profiles/Jiang-Ti_Kong/;
      http://snapl.stanford.edu/personnel/kong.html

Jiang-Ti Kong is trained in anesthesiology, pain management and acupuncture. Her acupuncture training includes styles from both traditional Chinese medicine and French energetics (by Joseph Helms). She splits her time between acupuncture practice, conventional pain management, and clinical research in acupuncture and pain mechanisms. Currently, her research focuses on central mechanisms of electroacupuncture in patients with chronic low back pain.

   Hugh MacPherson, PhD
      Professor of Acupuncture Research, Department of Health Sciences,
      University of York♦UK
      Links: www.hughmacpherson.com; www.stricta.info

Hugh MacPherson trained in acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine in the early 1980’s and continues to practice these modalities in York, UK. He subsequently founded the Northern College of Acupuncture, based in York, and steered the College towards the first acupuncture degree course in the UK. He also set up the Foundation for Research into Traditional Chinese Medicine and then joined the Department of Health Sciences, University of York. His research interests are varied, and include evaluating the safety, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of acupuncture, as well as neuroimaging to explore the underlying mechanisms of acupuncture’s action. He is co-ordinator of the STRICTA initiative, which involves an international group of experts with the aim of improving standards of reporting of clinical trials of acupuncture. He is lead editor of the book, “Acupuncture research: strategies for establishing an evidence base” and, with Volker Scheid, a co-editor of, “The integration of East Asian medicine into contemporary healthcare,” both published by Elsevier.

   Vitaly Napadow, PhD
      Massachusetts General Hospital, Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging♦Boston, MA

Vitaly Napadow is an Associate Professor at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, where he is also the Director of the Center for Integrative Pain Neuroimaging (CiPNI).  Vitaly also holds a secondary appointment at Logan University and the Pain Management Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he practices acupuncture. He received his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program and a Masters degree from the New England School of Acupuncture (NESA). Dr. Napadow’s laboratory has pioneered the application of non-invasive neuroimaging techniques to better understand the brain circuitry underlying aversive perceptual states, and to better understand how therapies such as acupuncture ameliorate these states. Dr. Napadow is also the co-President of the Society for Acupuncture Research and has more than 100 publications in leading peer-reviewed journals, many of them contributing to acupuncture neuroimaging research.

   Rosa Schnyer, DAOM, LAc

   Peter Wayne, PhD
      Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
      Director of Research, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine
      Division of Preventive Medicine
      Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School♦Boston, MA
      Link:  www.nesa.edu/research/index.html

 
Dr. Wayne is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is the Research Director for the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. Prior to this appointment, Dr. Wayne served as the Director of Tai Chi and Mind-Body Research Programs at the Osher Research Center, and as the founding Research Director at the New England School of Acupuncture.

The primary focus of Dr. Wayne’s research is evaluating how mind-body and related complementary and alternative medicine practices clinically impact chronic health conditions, and understanding the physiological and psychological mechanisms underlying observed therapeutic effects. He has served as a principal or co-investigator on more than 20 NIH-funded studies. He has been involved in the design, conduct, analysis, and interpretation of clinical trials evaluating the safety and efficacy of Tai Chi exercise for balance disorders, heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, osteoporosis, and depression, and trials evaluating acupuncture for stroke-related paralysis, hypertension, endometriosis, and chemoradiation-related immune and swallowing side effects in cancer patients. He currently serves as Principal Investigator (with Dr. Buring) of an NCCAM-funded grant on the Use and Effectiveness of a Model Integrative Care Clinic in an Academic Hospital, to characterize referral and practice patterns and aspects of communication and decision-making in the use of conventional and CAM therapies at the Osher Clinical Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, as well as to evaluate the effectiveness of an integrative care team in the treatment of chronic low back pain.

Dr. Wayne is actively involved in the teaching and training of students and fellows in integrative medicine research. He served as Principal Investigator of an NCCAM-funded Developmental Center Grant at the New England School of Acupuncture for which the Harvard Medical School Osher Research Center served as primary academic advisor; the center supported a cross-institutional training program for acupuncture research. He currently serves as Faculty for the NIH T32 research training grant in Complementary and Integrative Medicine, funded by NCCAM, and is a mentor for multiple NCCAM career award recipients, including Dr. Weidong Lu, who is the first recipient of the NCCAM/Bernard Osher Foundation CAM Practitioner Research Career Development Award. Dr. Wayne is the author of the Harvard Medical School Guide to Tai Chi, published in 2013 by Harvard Health Publications and Shambala Press.

  Claudia Witt, MD, MBA
     Professor and Director, Institute for Complementary and Integrative Medicine;
     University Hospital Zurich and University Zurich
     Link:  www.claudia-witt.org

Claudia Witt is a medical doctor, epidemiologist and research methodologist. She holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) with a focus on health care management. Her MBA thesis emphasized health economic evaluations. From May 2011 to April 2013 she served as the President of the International Society for Complementary Medicine Research (ISCMR). From the outset, Dr. Witt’s career has been dedicated to patient-centered approaches to health care. Her research research has made substantial contributions to the evidence on efficacy, effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and safety of acupuncture. She is committed to the training of future generations of integrative medicine physicians and researchers and developed the first postgraduate international summer school on clinical research methods in this field. Over the last 15 years, she has conducted a number of large trials with a total of over 50,000 patients. Her current research focus is on Comparative Effectiveness Research.

    Lixing Lao, PhD, LAc

Professor Lao Li-xing, Advisory Board member of the Society for Acupuncture Research (SAR), also served as a board member of SAR and Co-president of SAR for five years (2003-2007). He is currently a Vivian Taaam Wong Endowed Professorship in Integrative Medicine, Director of the School of Chinese Medicine, The University of Hong Kong. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Family Medicine and the Director of Traditional Chinese Medicine Research Program in the Center for Integrative Medicine of the School of Medicine, University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), USA. Prof Lao graduated from the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in 1983 and completed his PhD in physiology at UMB in 1992. As a licensed acupuncturist, Prof Lao has practiced acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicines for over 30 years and served as a Board member for five years on the Maryland State Board of Acupuncture. He is principal investigator and co-investigator of over 20 clinical trials and pre-clinical studies in acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicines funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Department of Defense, USA. He is particularly interested in conducting translational research that bridges basic science, clinical trials, and "real world" acupuncture/Chinese medicine clinical practice. He established the laboratory of TCM research in UMB in 1999 to conduct basic science studies on acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicines. Widely recognized for his unique contributions to acupuncture/TCM research methodology, he publishes and lectures extensively in this field. He has actively published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers and over 10 book chapters. He has also given over 300 presentations at national and international conferences/ symposia. He serves on editorial boards in a number of journals including associate editor in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine and the Journal of Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, co-Editor in Chief in the Journal of Integrative Medicine. He is currently an elected vice president of the World Federation of Acupuncture and Moxibustion Societies (WFAS) and an appointed Secretary General of the Consortium for Globalization of Chinese Medicine (CGCM). He was recently awarded as Qi-Huang International Award by China Association of Chinese Medicine in December, 2015.

    Richard Hammerschlag, PhD

Dr. Hammerschlag began his academic career conducting research in neurobiology at the Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope in Duarte, California, where he served as associate chair of the Division of Neurosciences. Twenty-five years later, a growing interest in acupuncture led him to change careers and become founding director of research at Oregon College of Oriental Medicine in Portland, Oregon. There he engaged in collaborative research projects in acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine with Oregon Health & Science University, Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, and the University of Arizona, funded by the NIH National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM).

A co-editor of the book Acupuncture Research: Strategies for Establishing an Evidence Base, Dr. Hammerschlag currently serves as an executive editor for The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.