Amy Jo Vassallo is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Sydney. Dancing from a young age is what sparked Amy’s interest in human biology, and she completed a Bachelor of Medical Science, Masters of Community and Health Development and Postgraduate Diploma in Nutritional Science, before working as a health policy advisor and health science researcher.
In 2015, she enrolled in a PhD under the supervision of Dr Claire Hiller, A/Prof Evangelos Pappas and A/Prof Emmanuel Stamatakis investigating injury epidemiology in recreational and professional dance.
In addition to her Safe Dance work Amy has published dance injury, dance participation and dance for health studies in academic journals and has presented her research widely at both national and international conferences. She is a contributing member of the Dance Research Collaborative (based at the University of Sydney), the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science and the Australasian Injury Prevention Network and is the Chair of Higher Degree by Research Student Executive Group at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney.
Amy is also passionate about the promotion of women in science and improving public health through dance participation. You can connect with Amy via Twitter - @amyjvassallo