Global Symposium on Racing Speaker: Dr. Thilo Pfau
Thilo Pfau is a Professor of Animal Locomotor Biomechanics with a joint appointment between the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and the Faculty of Kinesiology. Thilo’s research group – currently one postdoctoral researcher, three PhD students and a varying number of undergraduate students – studies animal movement with a focus on quadrupedal animals, specifically horses and dogs.
Thilo’s background is in electrical engineering and information technology from the Technical University in Munich (TUM) in Germany where he undertook his undergraduate studies followed by a PhD in speech recognition. He then joined the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) in Berkeley, California for postdoctoral work in the field of speech processing. His early work in the field of computer science in Germany and California has provided him with a thorough background in signal processing and pattern recognition that he is now increasingly applying to the field of animal locomotor biomechanics.
In 2002, Thilo joined the Structure and Motion Lab (SMLAB) at the Royal Veterinary College, London, United Kingdom, a leading research group in animal movement science under the lead of Professor Alan Wilson. He conducted postdoctoral work in animal locomotor biomechanics with projects around horses, camels, cows, dogs and ostriches (and more). Following on from his postdoctoral work, he was offered a Lectureship in the Clinical Department at the Royal Veterinary College where he then concentrated on studying associations between lameness and movement symmetry in horses and supporting the equine hospital with inertial sensor-based quantification of gait in the context of lameness and poor performance examinations. This work has resulted in a significant number of publications laying some of the ground work for the widespread use movement symmetry analysis in clinical lameness examinations.
In 2021, Thilo joined the University of Calgary continuing his work in quantification of movement in quadrupedal animals. In addition to continued work on movement symmetry, the focus of his research group has widened. Examples of current work of members of his team include multi-dimensional movement of the equine thoraco-lumbo-sacral area, head and neck movement and related complications in horses, quantification of in-race and in-training stride parameters across racing disciplines such as Thoroughbred, Quarter Horse, Standardbred and Chuckwagon racing. More recently, members of his team have also started investigating camera-based assessment of dairy cow lameness and different aspects of canine locomotion, such as associations between limb and back movement or differences in movement characteristics as a function of posture, conformation and body mass in dogs.