Peer review at its finest

By Don McSwiney

It was a huge accomplishment for Dr. Walter Herzog to be the first Canadian to win the Borelli Award—the American Society of Biomechanics’ most prestigious honour—but it meant even more to him that he was nominated by a peer who has sharply different views.

Herzog, of the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Kinesiology, was nominated by fellow biomechanist Dr. Richard Hughes from the University of Michigan, who, as Herzog puts it, has been on the “opposite side of the fence” on many issues.

“I thought it was super-great to be nominated by somebody who really has not viewed the world the same way that I have viewed it, but who still really respects what I have done,” says Herzog. “Usually friends nominate friends for these awards, and to me, this was the greatest aspect.”

Herzog is the first Canadian to receive the Borelli Award and the first person ever to win the Borelli and the Canadian Society of Biomechanics career award in the same year.

The Borelli Award is named after the father of modern biomechanics, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, and is awarded annually to an investigator who has conducted exemplary research in any area of biomechanics.

Herzog has spent his career researching “basic science”—building a foundation of knowledge that some day might lead to a “breakthrough.”

“For me it’s absolutely clear—I’m doing it because I’ve always asked the question ‘why’,” says Herzog.
Herzog’s latest work is focussing on issues with profound implications for society. Building on his research over the last few decades, he and his grad students are studying cardio myopathy—a disease in which the walls of the heart thicken then collapse—and the relationship between muscle weakness and osteoarthritis.

“I always tell people that the only place I could work is the university setting where they like to have geeks like me who love to ask the question ‘why?’ If someone told me I couldn’t come to the lab anymore and do my work, there would be a big hole in my life,” he says.

Herzog is originally from Switzerland. He did his undergraduate degree at the Federal Technical Institute in Zurich, moving to the University of Iowa for his doctoral research in biomechanics before coming to Calgary with a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience.