Dr. Thomas, director of the Motor Control Lab at VCU, has been a licensed physical therapist for 37 years with over 15 years of clinical experience specializing in orthopedics and low back pain. Over the past 22 years, he has melded his clinical experiences and knowledge with his training in neuroscience to advance understanding on trunk control and low back pain. Dr Thomas takes a multi-track approach understanding trunk control. This approach includes: 1) the development of novel virtual reality assessment and treatment tools for a variety of orthopedic and neurologic impairments, 2) developing techniques to elucidate neural control of trunk movement and 3) using randomized clinical trials to assess the effectiveness of classic and novel treatments for low back pain. In addition to numerous invited presentations, Dr. Thomas has presented his novel virtual reality interventions as a keynote speaker for the Italian Society of Movement in 2018 as well as at Wayne State University Research day in 2020. He has a strong record of extramural funding and has been funded by the NIH since 2004. The MCL at VCU is a state-of-the-art facility providing graduate students a unique opportunity to learn how to collect, analyze, and publish kinematic, kinetic, and electrophysiologic data on participants with and without orthopedic and neurologic impairments.