Dr. Becker is a graduate of the Tulane University School of Medicine and a clinical professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at Washington State University since 1999. He serves as president of the American Society of Medical Hydrology. Dr. Becker co-authored with Dr. Andrew Cole one of the best-known books in the field of hydrotherapy - Comprehensive Aquatic Therapy, which has been translated into various languages. He has published chapters on aquatic therapy in most of the leading textbooks in the field of rehabilitation as well as articles in many journals. Dr. Becker is a lecturer in the United States and around the world in the field of aquatic therapy. He currently oversees the National Water Treatment Training Program in China, and is the CEO of Aquatic Science Associates LLC.

My interest in aquatic therapy and exercise probably dates to my early childhood, when at the age of 4 I developed poliomyelitis during the epidemic of 1947. Living in Minneapolis then, I was hospitalized for a period of months under the care of Sister Elizabeth Kenny, a gifted Australian nurse who was given responsibility for all the polio patients. She was a staunch supporter of then-controversial aquatic therapy, heat and exercise, and my parents continued her regimen after my discharge. Following my graduation from Tulane University School of Medicine, and military service, I completed residency training in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Washington. I began my medical practice in Eugene OR as the founding Medical Director of the Oregon Rehabilitation Center. It was there that I began working with Nike’s Olympic development program Athletics West training elite and Olympic track athletes. The program coach was a firm believer in using aquatics in athlete training and recovery, and I too became a staunch advocate. The coach and I began a company called SciEx, using deep water tanks for athletic injuries. As the tanks were constructed adjacent to my medical practice, I began using them for my stroke, spinal cord, occupational injury and other traditional rehab patients. I began to research the physiology of aquatic immersion and exercise finding little current medical literature. Fortunately there was a lot of high quality research mainly in the aerospace literature, as scientists had studied human physiology during immersion as a proxy for space weightlessness. I began translating this research into the medical literature. I moved to Detroit as Medical Director of the Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan and Associate Professor at Wayne State University School of Medicine. I used the Institute therapy pool with a broad range of rehab patients, and continued my professional writing on aquatic therapy. In 1998 I moved to Spokane WA to serve as Medical Director of St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute, which had a wonderful large therapy pool, resulting in more research and more publications. With the encouragement and grant funding from the National Swimming Pool Foundation, in 2008 I developed the National Aquatics and Sports Medicine Institute at Washington State University, pursuing physiologic research during aquatic activity. Until the Institute closure in February 2016, I was a Research Professor at WSU and as the Director of Health Benefit Research for the National Swimming Pool Foundation, I promoted research funding for aquatic exercise. Since 1999 I have held a clinical appointment as Clinical Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine. We moved to Bend, OR in 2019 to be closer to grandkids. In 1997, Dr. Andrew Cole, MD and I co-authored the textbook Comprehensive Aquatic Therapy published by Butterworth-Heinemann, which was also published in Portuguese and German. The second edition of Comprehensive Aquatic Therapy was published in 2002. In 2011 the 3rd edition of Comprehensive Aquatic Therapy was published by Washington State University Press and was published in Chinese in 2018 where I teach aquatic therapy. I have contributed chapters on aquatic therapy in most of the leading textbooks in rehabilitation, authored aquatic research articles in numerous journals and lectured nationally and internationally in the area of aquatics over the decades since my early involvement in aquatic therapy. I have been the recipient of many awards throughout my career, including from the Aquatic Therapy and Rehabilitation Institute, Aquatics International Magazine, the International Swimming Hall of Fame and the American Physical Therapy Association Aquatic Physical Therapy Section. As the senior principal in Aquatic Science Associates LLC, I have done extensive forensic consultation, and participated in numerous legal cases involving aquatic activity, physiology, and adverse events across the nation. I continue to swim regularly with a local Master’s Swimming program.