"Advancing the credibility and uniqueness of acupuncture through research"
SAR Board
Lixing Lao, PhD, MD(China), LAc - TreasurerProfessorCenter for Integrative Medicine University of Maryland School of Medicine Baltimore, MDLixing Lao is a Professor of the Center for Integrative Medicine (CIM), University of Maryland Baltimore, School of Medicine. He has been serving as a board member of SAR since 1998. As a principal investigator or co-investigator, Dr. Lao's main research interest is in acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine and he has been conducting clinical trials and basic science studies on acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, and the Advisory Board on the Journal of Alternative Therapies.
Email: llao@acupunctureresearch.org
Link: www.compmed.umm.edu
Rosa Schnyer, LAc - Co-PresidentOsher InstituteHarvard Medical SchoolBoston, MARosa N. Schnyer is an acupuncturist / Chinese herbalist and a Research Associate at the Osher Institute at Harvard Medical School and at The New England School of Acupuncture. In addition, she serves as a consultant to the Department of Psychiatry at Stanford University and the Department of Psychology and the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Arizona. She is Co-Investigator of several National Institute of Health funded research projects investigating acupuncture. Ms. Schnyer is the author of Acupuncture in the Treatment of Depression: A Manual for Research and Clinical Practice, Curing Depression with Chinese Medicine, several book chapters and articles on acupuncture research methodology. 
Misha Cohen, OMD, LAc - SecretaryResearch and Education Chair,Quan Yin Healing Arts Center, SanFrancisco, CAVisiting Researcher, University of California, Institute for Health andAging, San Francisco, CAClinic Director, Chicken Soup Chinese Medicine, San Francisco, CAMisha Cohen is recognized internationally as a practitioner, lecturer and leader in the field of traditional Chinese Medicine. She has practiced Asian medicine in New York and California for 27 years. She is the author of "The Chinese Way to Healing: Many Paths to Wholeness" (perigee 1996), "The HIV Wellness Sourcebook" (Holt 1998) and "The Hepatitis C Help Book" (St. Martin's Press 2000, 2001). She also has co-authored the book "Hepatitis C: Choices". In 1997, POZ Magazine named her one of the "Top 50 AIDS Researchers in the Country".
Ryan Milley, MAcOM, LAcInformatics Director; Research Associate Oregon College of Oriental MedicinePortland ORRyan Milley is the informatics director and a research associate at the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine. Integrating the benefits of both Eastern & Western approaches, he maintains a prvate practice in Traditional East Asian Medicine with a focus on Sports Medicine.
Link: www.ocom.edu
Richard Hammerschlag, PhDDean of Research Oregon College of Oriental MedicinePortland ORRichard Hammerschlag is dean of research at the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine, where he is coordinating collaborative clinical trials of acupuncture and Chinese herbs for TMD, MS-specific fatigue and endometriosis-related pelvic pain, and a study of bioelectrical properties of acupuncture points. He co-edited Clinical Acupuncture: Scientific Basis, Springer, Berlin, 2001, serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, and was co-president of SAR from 1997 - 2000.Link: www.ocom.edu
Peter Wayne, PhDNew England School of Acupuncture Department of Research Watertown, MAPeter Wayne is the Director of Research at the New England School of Acupuncture and Adjunct Faculty Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professionals. He is currently the PI for the NESA-Harvard Acupuncture Research Collaborative, a NIH-funded Developmental Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Peter has more than 25 years of training and teaching experience in the oriental arts of Tai Chi and Qigong, has designed and participated in a number of Tai Chi trials, and is the Director of the Tree of Life Tai Chi Center. 
Richard Harris, PhD - Co-PresidentUniversity of Michigan, Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research CenterAnn Arbor, MI Richard Harris is a Research Investigator in the Chronic Pain andFatigue Research Center 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 Cellular 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 is currently investigating mechanisms of acupuncture in the treatment of chronic pain conditions.
Jongbae Park, MD (Korea), PhD Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School Boston, MAJongbae Park, as a Korean Medicine Doctor, is a medical scientist focusing on clinical research of acupuncture. He is keen to question fundamental issues in acupuncture research including the mechanism of acupuncture, the nature of qi, and how the effects of acupuncture can be properly tested. His outstanding researches so far include introducing a sham acupuncture device, a fMRI study reporting correlation between acupuncture on BL67 and visual cortices, and a RCT of acupuncture for stroke rehabilitation. He currently serves as an Associate Editor of Complementary Therapies in Medicine, and as a member of the Editorial Board of the American Journal of Chinese Medicine & the Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies.
Vitaly Napadow, PhD, LAc Massachusetts General Hospital, Martinos Center for Biomedical ImagingBoston, MA Vitaly Napadow is currently an instructor at Harvard Medical School and the Department of Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Vitaly is also adjunct faculty at Logan College of Chiropractic in Chesterfield, MS. He received his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001. Vitaly graduated from the New England School of Acupuncture (NESA) with a MS degree in Acupuncture in 2002 and practices acupuncture at Brigham & Women's Hospital Pain Management Center in Boston, MA. His research interests focus on the processing of acupuncture by the brain, employing neuroimaging methods such as functional MRI and M/EEG. Select publications can be found at: www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/~vitaly/
- Rosa Schnyer, LAc - Co-President
- Richard Harris, PhD - Co-President
- Misha Cohen, OMD, LAc - Secretary
- Lixing Lao, PhD, MD (China), LAc -Treasurer
- Richard Hammerschlag, PhD
- Helene Langevin, MD, LAc
- Hugh MacPherson, PhD, LAc
- Ryan Milley, MAcOM, LAc
- Vitaly Napadow, PhD, LAc
- Jongbae Park, MD (Korea)
- Peter Wayne, PhD
Helene Langevin, MD, LAc Department of NeurologyUniversity of VermontBurlington, VT Helene Langevin is trained in internal medicine, endocrinology and acupuncture. She currently is a faculty member of the Department of Neurology at the University of Vermont. Her research focuses on connective tissue signal transduction and its relevance to the mechanism of action of acupuncture.The Chinese characters depicted in the Society for Acupuncture Research logo represent the concepts of "Research"
and "Clinical Practice".
Hugh MacPherson, PhDSenior Research FellowDepartment of Health SciencesUniversity of York, UKHugh 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. His interest in research led to him setting up the Foundation for Traditional Chinese Medicine and the Acupuncture Research Resources Centre in the 1990s. More recently his research interests have led him to join the Department of Health Sciences, University of York as a Senior Research Fellow, with an award from the UK Department of Health. His research interests are varied, and include evaluating the safety and effectiveness of acupuncture, as well as neuroimaging to explore the underlying mechanisms of acupuncture’s action. He also 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.
