Rafael Bahamonde

Founding Dean Bahamonde received his Ph.D. in Human Performance with a sports biomechanics major and a minor in human anatomy from Indiana University, Bloomington. His research interests are in sport and clinical biomechanics which include gait analysis, injury prevention, and sports equipment testing. He served as chair of the Department of Kinesiology, associate dean, and interim dean of the School of Physical Education and Tourism Management. He is currently the founding dean of the IUPUI School of Health & Human Sciences.

Bahamonde is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at IUPUI, a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and the International Society for Biomechanics in Sports (ISBS), and a member of IU Faculty Colloquium on Excellence in Teaching (FACET) and IUPUI Translational Scholar Program. He received the IUPUI Center for Research and Learning Director’s Mentoring Award for Outstanding Leadership and Mentoring of Undergraduate Research and the Joseph Taylor Award for Excellence in Diversity. He served for 10 years as the sport biomechanist for the United States Tennis Association Sport Science Committee.

Bahamonde has been involved in the promotion of undergraduate research and the advancement of underrepresented minorities in higher education. He was the director of the Diversity Scholars Research Program at IUPUI (DSRP) and has been involved as a mentor in federal and university programs such as LSAMP, McNairs, UROP, SROP, and HBCU. He is currently a member of the leadership team and co-investigator of Louis Stokes Midwest Regional Center for Excellence, an NSF-funded program for the development of a national hub of information for scholars to access data, models, and funding opportunities in broadening participation of underrepresented minority (URM) students in STEM. He is also the co-PI and director of the NIH-funded IUPUI Graduate Preparation for the Biomedical and Behavioral Sciences.