- Additional Titles:Professor, Department of Physical Therapy
Professor (Affiliated) Department of Biomedical Engineering
Professor (Affiliated) Department of Environmental Health - Education:BS (Mechanical Engineering, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York (1986)
SM (Mechanical Engineering), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1989)
PhD (Mechanical Engineering), University of California, Berkeley (1996) - Email:jax@bu.edu
- Phone:617-353-2705
Scholarly, Research, and/or Practice Interests
Dr. Dennerlein has spent nearly three decades as an internationally respected scholar, researcher, and innovator in the field of occupational safety and health – primarily in ergonomics, where his federally-funded research investigates interventions to improve worker safety, health, and well-being. These interventions include how the design of human computer interaction devices affects posture and muscle efforts related to injury risk factors and through worksite programs how changing the conditions of work (physical, psychosocial, and organizational factors) improve the safety climate and health of construction, healthcare, and transportation workers. His research has also focused on the development and use of wearable sensor technology to measure injury risk factors.
Dr. Dennerlein has been an active leader and contributor in the development of NIOSH’s Total Worker Health® Program, which NIOSH defines as policies, programs, and practices that integrate safety protection and health promotion efforts to create safe and healthy workplace environments that advance worker well-being. He is a Senior Advisor to the Center for Work, Health, and Well-being at the Harvard Chan School, one of the ten Centers of Excellence for Total Worker Health® funded by NIOSH since 2007.
Supported by ongoing grants from the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH) and the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario, his recent research applies implementation science approaches to translate findings from these interventions into practice. In addition, he is contributing to the development of research priorities examining the impact of artificial intelligence in the workplace on worker safety, health, and well-being.
He is a Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, a member of the International Commission of Occupational Health, and a founding member of the Society for Total Worker Health™. He has published more than 200 books, book chapters, and journal articles on occupational safety and ergonomics, is on the editorial boards of top field publications including Human Movement Science, Applied Ergonomics, and Safety Science, served on committees of the National Academies, and is on the scientific advisory boards for industry groups and government agencies devoted to occupational safety and health.
Dr. Dennerlein comes to BU from Northeastern University’s Bouvé College of Health Sciences, where he has been a professor of physical therapy, movement, and rehabilitation sciences since 2012, most recently serving as his department’s interim chair and as program director of its PhD program in human movement and rehabilitation sciences. Prior to joining Northeastern in 2012, Dr. Dennerlein spent 13 years as a faculty member in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he led the Occupational Injury Prevention Research Training Program. He completed postdoctoral training at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
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