Episode 8 - Dr. Joe Kardouni and Dr. Bryan Riemann

On this episode of the Roots of Research, we are joined by Dr. Joe Kardouni and Dr. Bryan Riemann from the Waters College of Health Professions. 

During the conversation, Kardouni and Riemann discuss everything from how they got started in military research to their recent $5.5 million grant from the Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium to establish the Tactical and Occupational Performance Institute on Georgia Southern's Armstrong Campus. 

Additionally, they talk about how the Institute can improve deployability among service members and why Savannah is uniquely suited to be the Institute's home.

It's a fascinating conversation exploring the intersection between research, community, and the individuals who serve it!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to the Roots of Research, where we go behind the publications and dig deeper with the movers, shakers, and rainmakers that make Georgia Southern University so very special. I'm your host, Dr. David Weindorf, and today I'm thrilled to be joined by two of our faculty from the Waters College of Health Professions, Dr. Joe Cardoni and Dr. Brian Riemann. Dr. Carduni is an associate professor in the Department of Clinical Sciences, as well as the Executive Director of the Tactical and Occupational Performance Institute, or TOP. He holds a PhD in rehabilitation and movement science from Virginia Commonwealth University, a Doctor of Physical Therapy from Baylor, a Master of Physical Therapy from the Army Baylor Program, and a degree in biology from Old Miss. He's board certified as both an orthopedic and a sports clinical specialist. Before joining Georgia Southern in 2023, Joe spent more than 20 years as a physical therapist in the U.S. Army, retiring as a lieutenant colonel, with assignments that ranged from Army Forces Command and Airborne Service to the Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine and the Third Special Forces Group, including multiple tours in supportive combat operations. Dr. Riemann is a professor in the Department of Health Sciences and Kinesiology and the director of our Biodynamics and Human Performance Center. He's been a part of this institution since 2006 when he joined what was then Armstrong Atlantic State University, which later merged with Georgia Southern. Brian's path runs from a bachelor's in athletic training at Westchester University to a Master's in Sports Medicine at the University of North Carolina to a PhD in the same field at the University of Pittsburgh. He's a certified athletic trainer and currently holds a research fellowship with the Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine. Together, they have played important roles in building the institute, grounded in the idea that soldiers, firefighters, and first responders that we count on are athletes in their own right, whose training and recovery deserve the same science that we give our elite competitors. Gentlemen, thank you so much for being with me this morning and welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you. Absolutely. So, Joe, let me start with you. The term tactical athlete refers to military and first responder populations who need unique physical training strategies to optimize their performance in the field. Can you unpack that a little bit for our listeners? How is a soldier or a first responder like an athlete?

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Yeah, well, well, thanks, David. And that question was one that we got a lot back in like the mid-20 teens, and actually in 2015, we published an article from Euserium, the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, kind of describing what it meant to be a tactical athlete. So what we broke it down to was simplistically is it's someone who requires a baseline level of physical and mental preparedness in order to do their job upon which they build their technical and tactical skill. So in that sense, um a tactical athlete is like a traditional athlete. Um of course there are multiple levels of athletic or athleticism or athletic competition. It's the same thing for tactical athletes. And and we would get pushback sometimes um from various folks in as we would publish papers um kind of saying that service members may not be elite athletes, and and we said, well, we never said that. Right? So but very similarly, um, because service members, um, whether they be first responders or whether they be in the military, um, represent a cross-section of American society. And just like we have multiple types of athletes in American society, whether it be recreational, professional, right, amateur, whatever the case may be, they have a different level, but but the same um tenets apply. They still want to be physically and mentally prepared and they want to develop um skill for whatever it is that they compete in.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Absolutely, that makes a lot of sense. And we actually see that on display all the time through the service academies, where they actually have athletes that are out there, they're kind of combining both of those skills that they're learning. So that's really great stuff. Well, listen, you both took different roads to get here, right? Joe through a full Army career, uh, Brian through athletic training, sports medicine, and biomechanics. For each of y'all, how did that path shape the questions that you're chasing now in terms of research?

SPEAKER_03 4:16

Aaron Powell Well, I mean, for the early part of my career, I definitely was chasing athletes and looking at neuromuscular control of joint stability after various athletic injuries, the biomechanics of rehabilitation, uh, injury prevention. I sort of grew tired of it after a while. And I started looking at more about physical activity across the lifespan, got into some fall risk uh kinds of activities. And uh I guess it was probably about eight years ago when Eusterium first contacted me about collaborating, and that was my first entry into this tactical athlete space. And uh immediately I loved it. Uh it was it was taking the same research skill set that I had had and just applying it to a different group. Yeah. Um and you know, that was going great. And then with uh with Joe joining the faculty, it was perfect timing. And so uh hence that's how I wound up here.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Absolutely. Dream dream combination, getting you two guys together. Joe, what about for you?

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Well, I was a clinician uh initially in the Army, um, and I was really um enjoying applying my craft. I was with a special forces group, um, which gave me just a phenomenal perspective on what it meant to be part of a high performing organization. Um and I would see our guys come in with with various injuries that were due to the rigors of of the job that they've been doing for multiple years because special operations soldiers, particularly special forces, um, are usually a little bit older, they're a little bit more seasoned. So the wear and tear has crept up on them. Yeah. Um and so um I I would look at them with the skill set I had and think, wow, I think we can do better. Um so I decided to to go back to to work on my PhD. The Army has scholarship programs for that, so I did that. Then I went to Usarium, got some great um research and development experience there, um, and then was fortunate to move on um to larger scale uh human performance program development with both the Army's 18th Airborne Corps and then with U.S. Army Forces Command, which is the largest operational command in the Army. Um so that kind of um I got the industry experience and and always um you know loved academia and and thought that um this opportunity here at Georgia Southern just really gave us the opportunity to to bring both of those fields together, at least for myself, and then you know, work with folks like Brian all the time. And yeah, it's been a wonderful experience.

SPEAKER_03 6:30

Because from the beginning that we sort of met, we started talking and immediately we talked the same time. The first thing was like, all right, I'm gonna be able to work with this guy um because we use both the same software platform. Right. Um you know, Motion Monitor. And so immediately it was like, okay, this is gonna work.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

Yeah, absolutely. Oh, that is fantastic stuff. Well, building off of that, the top institute, by the way, that's the best name of an institute on campus, the top institute, it brings together a lot of different professionals from across the waters College of Health professions. You've got clinicians, you've got scientists, strength and conditioning experts, many, many more. How do all of these different approaches come together and how does such a wide range of expertise help to achieve what the institute is chasing after?

SPEAKER_03 7:12

You know, I think under the umbrella of human performance enhancement, injury prevention, you to be successful, you need an interdisciplinary all these different expertise. And it the same translates over to a research space. Yeah. Um and so it's a natural fit here. You know, because the College of Health Professions has so many different folks with clinical backgrounds that can feed into it. Yep. Um in addition, you know, we've got some seasoned researchers, and and so all of that makes for a successful uh mission.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

And I know you have things like uh bone density scanners and motion tracking equipment. Just talk a little bit about the kinds of equipment you all are using over there.

SPEAKER_03 7:51

Yeah, definitely a lot of motion capture, a lot of force measurement, um certainly body composition, bone density, but also on the physiology side of things, looking at things like uh heart rate, uh arterial stiffness, baryoreceptor sensitivity, all those kind of metrics also feed into it. Um you know, in the past we've done collaborations with uh the med tech folks looking at blood draws, they're able to process a lot of uh blood markers, you know, and so it is a natural fit.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Joe, any thoughts on that as well?

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Um Yeah, well I think um Brian hit on a lot of the stuff that we work with, and then um if you think about the fields of health health or healthcare and human performance, and think about all the people who have a stake in that, whether it be from the mental side, the physical side, um, you know, nutrition, everyone that you might see um to help you optimize your health um or your performance, well, all those people come from different backgrounds, um, and we have a lot of the hard sciences and also the clinical sciences, both within the Waters College and all around uh Georgia Southern, um, of folks who have experience in these various areas um that can positively impact health and human and performance of other human beings. So I think it's just a natural um gelling of lots of folks together.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

It's a good fit. Do you all see um other areas of the country sort of replicating what you all are doing in the Pacific Northwest or the desert southwest or you know, other areas trying to kind of copy what y'all are are working on?

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Oh yeah, yeah. Really, the more the merrier. Yeah. Because there's just so much to do that everyone can can impact positively. Yeah. Um and we've got folks at various universities, um, some of them have been in the in the military research space for a lot longer than than we have, um, but but haven't necessarily taken quite the angle that we're taking. But I think what you've seen is a lot of uh universities have specific research labs um that may that may do similar things. Um I think where we're trying to take that a step or a few steps further is that we've brought people together across multiple colleges. So it's not just one department with a lab that addresses these issues. It's the it's that we're trying to pull people um together from a lot of different disciplines, a lot of different colleges.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Excellent. Excellent. Well, uh big news on campus was that you recently received around a five and a half million dollar uh medical technology enterprise consortium award to stand up the institute. So, in plain terms for our listeners, what does that money actually do and what are the enduring benefits that it will establish through the institute?

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Well, the big thing, um we've we've upgraded infrastructure within the university to the tune of about a million dollars. Um that's very helpful. I mean, we've updated some of our body composition analysis equipment, brought in new state-of-the-art motion capture equipment, some different capabilities, um, some that Brian has already had in his lab, and then some others that we that we layered in upon uh upon things of similar capabilities that we're building in a new lab. Um so I think number one, that's that's a big that's a big um bonus. Um and then we've really helped to um really bring together that education piece multidisciplinarily from from lots of different areas of the college where we've been able to uh essentially pay the salaries of different team members to contribute their expertise um to this effort. So um yeah, I think that's those are the big things that people will notice. And I think uh I'll let Brian add.

SPEAKER_03 11:05

Yeah, I think from an enduring perspective, I think um, you know, we now have uh a state-of-the-art facility. Um we've been able to hire um some Oaks um coordinators, technicians, we're gonna be hiring a research scientist. Uh I think once we stand up this facility, uh it's gonna augment what we've already had in biodynamics in a in in so many different ways, and I think we're gonna have a real strong track record within the next two to three years to begin to leverage. I think the advantage to it being here is Savannah. Uh Savannah is, you know, uh a growing area. It's where people want to come visit. Um, you know, we're close to military installations at Hunter, at Fort Stewart. We've got huge uh populations of first responders. Um, so it's a natural fit uh in this area of Georgia.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Long lasting benefits. I love that. That sounds great. Well, Joe, let me turn to you for a second about these musculoskeletal injuries and why these are such a big deal in the military. I remember you telling me a story one time about, you know, a person wearing a big pack of equipment on their back, jumping off of a Humvee, and that pack might weigh 75 pounds or something, right? Talk a little bit about why uh this is is really important for us to study more thoroughly as and uh as compared to people just training harder, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

Um yeah, the the bottom line is that musculoskeletal injuries are the number one factor that prevent um service members from from being deployable, from being able to do their the job that that our nation would call upon them to do. So if that's the number one threat, then we need to figure out a way to mitigate it. Um and certainly there are times where we need to train hard um and we need to um do things that test our mettle because um when we're called upon uh to to carry out that mission that it will be tested. Um but at the same time we need to learn how to be smarter in our training, right? Right. Everything doesn't have to be a test of how hard you can do things. Right. Um we need to be smarter, we need to make sure that we are the most fit for the jobs that we can do, we need to mitigate unnecessary risks, um, but and also learn how to um we used to have a saying, uh I haven't seen it in the commercials in a long time, but like uh own the edge, right? Um you you need to live on the edge sometimes, but you need to stay on the uh the better side of that edge so that you don't fall off. Yeah. Um and so I think uh just mitigating that threat. That that's the number one thing. And and I remember sitting down um with our um the four-star general who's the commander of forces command, and when we were still when we were building the holistic health and fitness um program for the army, which is the uh essentially the largest human reforms program in the world. Um we were building it to the tune of a budget of a mil a billion and a half dollars. Wow. Um so um it was a big undertaking. Uh and he looked at me and he just said, Well, the number one way I'm gonna judge this program is my deployability rates. He needs to have people to do the mission. So um, I mean that just brings it home for him.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

You can't have them in the field if they're sitting on the sidelines, uh they're they're not uh you know uh accomplishing the mission, so to speak. So well, Brian, let me switch over to you for a second. Much of your work is about preventing injuries and keep all keeping people moving well over a lifetime. And I'm telling you, I've got my tracker on, I try to get my 10,000 steps in every day. Um, how much of staying steady is the long game of prevention versus fixing things once they break?

SPEAKER_03 14:20

Yeah, I mean, certainly injury prevention's been uh foremost in my mind from the beginning. As an athletic trainer, one of the pillars of being an athletic trainer is injury prevention. Um, there are things that we can prevent, and there's things that we can't prevent. Um we certainly want to take a look at what we can prevent. Um and not just the injury incidence itself, I think is important, is also the long-term consequences of that injury. Um, you know, to put it in a you know, in a military context, a lot of service members leave with osteoarthritis, a lot of chronic overuse injuries that impact them for a lifetime, and it leads to uh a lot of quality of life challenges. Um so it while movement's certainly important, we really have to target uh movements to be have a purpose to try to correct, try to mitigate um some of the stresses that uh service members sustain.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Yeah, and I can tell you, uh, you know, from personal experience, as you get to midlife, it's a different recovery profile than when you were 25, right? I mean, the recovery is longer, you have to be more deliberate about it, and those kinds of things. So that prevention is really key, making sure you train appropriately. So well, listen, one thing that I was really impressed with, y'all recently hosted a conference. I stopped by this about a week or so ago, and this conference, I believe, was a confluence of two previous events, the Peer Fitness Leader Summit and the Human Performance Optimization Conference. So we kind of bundled those together. Talk a little bit about this most recent conference and give us a deep brief on how it went.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Bottom line is it went really well. Great. We were very happy. We got a lot of positive feedback. Um, folks loved being in the area, um, actually got more applications for the research scientist position from folks that came down. Um it must have been a positive experience to some degree or another. Um, and and we built upon the success that folks have had at Georgia Southern for for the past several years, um, and combined efforts from both the Armstrong campus and the the Statesboro campus. Um so I think we brought together uh folks who had kind of gone to the conferences for maybe a little bit different reasons, but now we brought it under one umbrella. And I think it's great uh to bring folks together like that when you bring together the we'll call them operators, whatever, the first responders, the military, the folks who actually do the job, um the folks who care for them on the health and human performance side, and then bring in the researchers too. I think it's important to have all those folks in the same room because then they get to understand the perspective of one another. Right. Um otherwise, if we're all working independently, we we think we get it. But I think once you get people there, they start to talk more. You see people speaking with one another who perhaps wouldn't have otherwise. So I think that it's great. I think we're gonna build from it. Yeah. It went really well. Uh the hotel and in downtown Savannah was a great place, um, and people were able to relax and get away from whatever it may have been, um the the office, the the patrol, whatever the case may be.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Right, right. Well, and I I will say on the day that I went to stop by the conference, I noticed a couple of things. There were people there literally from all over the country. I talked to one gentleman from Grand Rapids, Michigan. And so, I mean, I know there was uh you know participation from across the country, and there was also a lot of muscle in that room. I mean, as you look around, we've got local firefighters, EMS, I'm like, oh my gosh, these people are really fit and working out, which is fantastic. And that really leads me into my next question. I mean, you all mentioned we have uh Hunter Army Airfield, we have Fort Stewart right here in our backyard. Um, we also have, you know, uh police, fire, EMS, all these different agencies. How much does being embedded in and around these communities enhance the work that you all are doing?

SPEAKER_03 17:48

We absolutely need those folks to be involved, yeah, to provide input, to provide us direction, to tell us what are their challenges, what are their problems. Um that's what drives our research questions. Um and so the proximity and the volume of those folks in the Savannah region really drives what we're doing. Um I mean, we made some contacts at the conference uh that are gonna really launch us into some new spaces, for instance, with the Savannah SWAT team. Yep. Um you know, which is gonna be a natural extension of some of the things that Joe and I have been doing with our military focus. Right. So it's absolutely critical to have that population.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

That's amazing. That is amazing. And to have them right here in our in our local area is fantastic. So well, listen, both of you all have been really involved in involving undergraduates as well as master students into serious research. I mean, they're contributors, they're not just observers. Um this is really a hallmark for both of you. So what do students working in the in the in the institute actually get to do? And what do they walk away with when they're done?

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Okay, I'll start, but uh the the short the answer from my side is well following Brian's lead. I I I saw what Brian how how he incorporated students and I and I thought um, you know, it's a natural fit for what we do. And and thinking back to my time at Euserium up with the Army Labs, we used to bring in a lot of interns right out of either their bachelor's degree or right out of their master's degrees and put them around these world-class researchers and and just watch them excel. Um and I had the opportunity, the the good fortune being able to hire a few to work on our teams, and it was great, and I'd bring them in and I'd just let them know, hey, look, we want you to be an intellectual contributor to what we're doing, and we want to contribute to your intellectual growth. So this is a two-way street. Um and and we want you to grow as much as you can and contribute to the team. Sure. And at a certain point, um, understanding that you may outgrow your position on this team and we may have another one within the institute, or you may move on. Right. Um and and that's great. Yes, that's that's not a negative thing. Yeah. Um, so yeah, just trying to get the most, um, both get the most out of people and give them the most. And I don't mean get the most like in a taking from them, but you know, get the most out of them and help them realize their potential. Exactly. Um, so help them realize their potential and and just grow the intellectual products that we have right.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

And then really seeing it applied out in the field, you know, once they take what they've learned here and actually put that to use out in the in the real world.

SPEAKER_03 20:06

And that's really uh being in academics for all my career, that's really the connection. Right. Um too often classroom doesn't necessarily connect, and research is sort of seen as a different bucket. It's abstract. Yeah, it's abstract. And um and so I've spent a career trying to bring in those undergrads, those grad students, show them, and it's not uncommon. We'll be in the lab and I'll say, Hey, do you remember last semester when we talked about this in class? This is what it means. Yeah, you know, and and they start to see all those connections. Um and so it's a natural fit. And I think it enhances their education, and many of those students have probably gone to places they might not have otherwise done so, right? Absolutely. Many of them have terminal degrees at this point.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Yeah, yeah. That is amazing.

SPEAKER_03 20:50

Amazing, amazing.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Well, listen, uh Georgia Southern University is evolving as a university, right? We are now members of the Georgia Research Alliance. We're knocking on the door of becoming a Carnegie R1 institution, right? So the question I have as we can get closer to the end here, is what's next for this research? And what's next for the institute? Where do you see this going in three, five, ten, twenty years from now?

SPEAKER_01 21:12

The pie in the sky would would have would be to have a self-sustaining uh institute uh that is self-funding, um, builds with the community, um, really engages with our strategic partners, and I think that's the next step that we're taking. Um, it's not just the service that we can provide or the the science that we're trying to explore, but having our stakeholders um weigh in and let us know more of what they may need to fulfill um what it is that helps them get get their jobs done and improve their quality of life. So I think as we get more stakeholder engagement, um we're looking to grow into that self sustaining entity. We're also looking at different funding sources with different organizations. So we we will um it won't morph our mission, but it'll support our mission, um, probably with the the the DOJ, the uh the that being the Department of Justice. And several other scientific um uh communities are routes that we typically tend to take. So I think we'll do that. And and just to hit on one more thing before letting Brian um uh give his give his input in this one, um, is that you know we have a huge industrial base, probably more so than people realize in Savannah. And I think that's gonna be a natural growth because these are folks who are also have physically and mentally demanding jobs um and and need to um need some of the same things that we see within corporate America and within the services.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

They're working at the ports, they're you know out in agricultural fields doing all kinds of things.

SPEAKER_03 22:34

So absolutely initially our focus has been on the T top. Um I think the natural progression is gonna start to be to focus on the oh occupation um and and take advantage of what's around in the Savannah area and begin to see what challenges and problems we can partner with to try to fix, to try to help um those in individuals as well.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

I love that. That's fantastic. Yeah, and for our listeners who are not from the Savannah area, it is an enormous area of economic growth. I mean, we have all kinds of investment and new corporations coming here, a huge uh port, you know, that is one of the most active on the Eastern Seaboard, so really impressive to see. So Well, listen, as we kind of wrap things up today, the question I like to ask every guest uh is my parting question is tell us one thing about each of you that we would never know about you from simply reading your research.

SPEAKER_03 23:23

Uh I'm a tinker. Fix things, rebuild things, make things. Engines? Engines, okay. It doesn't matter. Okay. Uh I've completely remodeled the house. Okay. Framing, tile, electric plumbing. Okay. Uh that's what I love doing on my own time. Um tearing apart a boat engine on an afternoon on a Saturday, um, I'm in heaven.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

You you heard it here first, folks. You know, if you need something fixed, Dr. Reman is your go-to source for all those things. So it's fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 23:52

Uh yeah, and you know, people laugh at me. I'll pick stuff up that's put out in the trash and rebuild it and sell it on eBay or whatever and and and have at it.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Oh, that's amazing. That is amazing.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Joe, what about you? Um, similar along those same lines. I'm a bit of a gearhead and a car enthusiast. Um so uh, you know, traveling around uh with my job in the military, uh and I never really had to got to have that that old classic vehicle that I wanted to restore, so now I can. Oh yeah. So um you'll see me tooling around. Um I have a 1969 Camaro, uh, so I bring it to campus occasionally. But um, yeah, I like to it's similar to Brian, like to tinker with things. Um cars have always been uh um uh something that that's just I've just loved. That's the way they work mechanically, the way they look through all the different eras of development. Yeah. Um and so yeah, the same thing. I kind of like to tinker with things, and my love is the automobile.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

So it sounds like beyond biodynamics, y'all have a lot in uh in common personally there in terms of loving to fix stuff and rebuild things. That's great, fantastic. Well, listen, to learn more about the Tactical and Occupational Performance Institute and the work of Dr. Carduni and Dr. Riemann, uh just go ahead and do a search on Top Institute WCHP in your favorite browser, and it'll take you right over to it. Gentlemen, thank you so much uh for both being here. And until next time, I'm David Weindorf. May your curiosity always run as deep as the roots of research and hail Southern