Her PhD thesis, titled A computer simulation of the airborne phase of diving, was conducted under the supervision of Richard Nelson.[1][4] Her computational model was accompanied by computer graphics that required more than 3,000 punch cards when implemented as a computer mainframe program.[3][5]
In addition to her academic career, Miller was engaged in the world of competitive diving. She was a diving coach at the University of Saskatchewan prior to her PhD.[3] Later, she was a member of USA Diving's Performance Enhancement Team (2003-2009) and biomechanist for the Olympic Medal Program (1983- 2009).[3][5]
Miller's research area is sports biomechanics with a primary focus is on the biomechanics of diving[1], and additional research across a range of sports including figure skating,[6]sprinting[7] and amputee running.[8] As a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, and alongside the biomechanist Micheline Gagnon, Miller manually digitized 16-mm high-speed film recordings of sprinters for her thesis work, and pioneered early computer graphics for animating motion capture data using punch cards[3]. She completed her PhD, titled "A computer simulation of the airborne phase of diving" in 1970.[3]
Miller collected live biomechanical data during several international diving competitions, most notably the 1986 World Aquatics Championships[9][10] and the 1996 Olympic Games, which included embedding force platforms into 10-meter diving towers.[11] On the topic of Miller's data acquisition methods, Jill McNitt-Gray commented that,
“Few have conquered the many obstacles encountered during competition including those requiring video recording from rooftops in near tropical storm conditions or from flooded underwater window locations.”[12]
As a result of these efforts, data from the 1996 Olympic Games led to a Diving Video Database analysis program that was a forerunner to later commercial software such as Dartfish.[13]
During a project with Sport Canada from 1988 up to the 1992 Olympic Games, Miller helped develop analytical programs by collecting a database of national and international-level dives, which she used to create instructional modules for competitive diving coaches.[14] This meant Miller and her team could equip coaches with a software that provided rapid feedback on the biomechanics their athletes' dives.[14]
Honors and awards
The National Academy of Kinesiology, formerly the American Academy of Physical Education and the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education, inducted Miller as Fellow #288 in 1982 while she was on faculty at the University of Washington. Her status within the Academy changed to Corresponding Fellow upon her return to Canada in 1984.[2]
Also in 2009, the American Society of Biomechanics awarded her the Jim Hay Memorial Award which recognizes "originality, quality, and depth of biomechanics research" relevant to sport and exercise.[19]
Selected publications
Miller, Doris I.; Nelson, Richard C. (1973). Biomechanics of sport: a research approach. Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger. ISBN978-0-8121-0431-8.
1 2 Cardinal, Bradley J. (2022). "The National Academy of Kinesiology: Its founding, focus, and future". Kinesiology Review. 11 (1): 6–25. doi:10.1123/kr.2021-0064.
↑ Zatsiorsky, Vladimir (December 1, 2021). "Dr. Richard C. Nelson: The Founding Father of Biomechanics". Journal of Applied Biomechanics. 37 (6): 580–581. doi:10.1123/jab.2021-0293. PMID34872067.
↑ Enoka, Roger M. Ph.D.; Miller, Doris I. Ph.D.; Burgess, Ernest M. M.D. "Below-knee Amputee Running Gait". American Journal of Physical Medicine 61(2):p 66-84, April 1982.
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