Jerome Bickenbach
Jerome Bickenbach
Member of the Center for Rehabilitation in Global Health Systems, Faculty of Health Sciences & Medicine at the University of Lucerne
Consultant with the World Bank, UNICEF and OECD
Until December 2025, Prof. Jerome Bickenbach was a member of the ICF Research Branch Steering Committee.
As a consultant to World Health Organization, Prof. Jerome Bickenbach, PhD, LL.B worked on developing and finalizing the ICF. His research spans various aspects of disability studies, including quality of life of persons with disability, disability epidemiology, participatory action, inclusion, modelling disability statistics for population health surveys, the relationship between disability and health, and the ethics and the application of ICF to monitoring the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
A Steering Committee of the ICF Research Branch and Senior Research at Swiss Paraplegic Research (Switzerland) until December 2025, Prof. Bickenbach had been instrumental in advancing the implementation of functioning and the ICF in healthcare and other application areas. His tireless work as an advocate for functioning and the ICF continues well into retirement.
Gerold Stucki
Gerold Stucki
gerold.stucki@unilu.ch
Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences & Medicine at the University of Lucerne
Co-Director, Center for Rehabilitation in Global Health Systems
Until December 2025, Prof. Gerold Stucki was Director of the ICF Research Branch.
For over 25 years, Prof. Stucki's had been collaborating with the World Health Organization's (WHO) Classification, Terminology and Data Standards team in an international effort to implement the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) in rehabilitation and the health sector in general. To facilitate human functioning sciences research, Prof. Stucki had initiated the ICF Research Branch at the former Institute for Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich as an international research network under the auspices of WHO´s German Collaborating Center for the Family of International Classifications.
As Director of Swiss Paraplegic Research (SPF). from 2005-2025, Prof. Stucki continued his instrumental role in promoting the implementation of functioning and the ICF in healthcare and in other application areas. This has continued in his role as Co-Leader of the Lucerne Initiative for Functioning, Health and Well-Being (LIFE). The LIFE Initiative advances health and well-being in the face of illness and aging by anchoring the WHO concept of functioning as a new paradigm of health. It fosters interdisciplinary research and drives the reorientation of health and social systems towards lived health.
Melissa Selb
Melissa Selb, PhD
ICF Research Branch Coordinator
Project Scientist, Swiss Paraplegic Research
Dr. Melissa Selb is the Coordinator of the ICF Research Branch and a Project Scientist at Swiss Paraplegic Research focusing on ICF and functioning-related topics. She consults on ICF-related projects worldwide, including development ICF-based tools, coordinates/conducts ICF trainings, and supports governmental and non-governmental organizations and professional societies on ICF implementation in clinical practice, clinical quality management and research endeavors. She has been involved in several ICF Core Set projects and is manages the ICF case studies website. Melissa Selb has also supported the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases/ICD-11 work with focus on functioning. She has (co-) authored approx. 60 scientific publications in peer-review journals, including the A guide on how to develop an International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health Core Set in the Eur J Phys Rehabil Med. and several book chapters, including in DeLisa's Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Principles and Practice, in the Handbook of Vocational Rehabilitation and Disability Evaluation: Application and Implementation of the ICF, and in ICF Core Sets: Manual for Clinical Practice (also as Co-Editor of the 2nd edition). She worked in several rehabilitation facilities and agencies in the United States before moving to Europe in 1992. Before joining the ICF Research Branch (hosted by Swiss Paraplegic Research in Switzerland) in 2009, Melissa ran a counseling centre and half-way house for homeless people in Germany, and worked in the pharmaceutical industry, including 3 years as an administrator of a medical research foundation and a grant programme.