July 2025

Exciting Arrival…

Simon Driver, PhD, has been named the inaugural director of Spaulding’s Discovery Center for Brain Injury and Concussion Recovery. Prior to this appointment, Dr. Driver served as the chief scientific officer and research center director for the Baylor Scott & White Institute for Rehabilitation, and the Ginger Murchison Endowed Chair in Traumatic Brain Injury Research. He was also the project director of the North Texas Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Model System. Dr. Driver’s research is focused on health promotion efforts for people with TBI, stroke, and spinal cord injury, with an emphasis on cardiometabolic health through physical activity and nutrition. He has also done work on recovery from pediatric concussion.  Dr. Driver has strong interests in comparative effectiveness research, implementation science, and evidence-based interventions to improve the health and function of people with disabilities. He officially joined Spaulding in June, and we look forward to sharing more on his vision for the Center and the accomplishments of his incoming research team in the future.

...Bittersweet Departure

Cheri Blauwet, MD, our Chief Medical Officer and Interim Chair of the Harvard Medical School Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, will be leaving Spaulding as of August 1 to take on an exciting new role as Enterprise Senior Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago, Illinois. Dr. Blauwet’s remarkable career has been defined by a deep commitment to clinical excellence, research, education, and advocacy. Her research has focused on injury prevention, athlete mental health, and the unique needs of female and disabled athletes, and her expertise is widely recognized, with more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and more than 90 invited lectures globally. As we look ahead and wish Dr. Blauwet well in this new professional chapter, we are fortunate to have the leadership and expertise of Jeffrey Schneider, MD, Division Chief of Comprehensive Rehabilitation, who will serve as interim chair of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation effective August 1. 

Attendees of the 2025 Dr. J. Robert Schaughnessey PM&R Research and Education Day.



Educational Events

On June 6, the Harvard Medical School Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Spaulding held the annual Dr. J. Robert Schaughnessy PM&R Research and Education Day. Distinguished guest lecturers included Augusta University’s Amy Baxter, MD (pictured), a pediatric emergency physician who founded the company Pain Care Labs to advance innovative techniques to eliminate unnecessary pain; Johns Hopkins University’s Stacey Suskauer, MD, a pediatric clinician–scientist focused on understanding and optimizing outcomes after childhood brain injury; and Stanford University’s Matthew Smuck, MD, a professor of orthopedic surgery who founded and directs Stanford’s Wearable Health Lab aimed at uncovering and applying new wearable-sensor data analytics.  

These lecturers were joined by three Spaulding speakers: Hye Chang Rhim, MD, year-four resident; Andrew Bolender, clinical research coordinator in the Napadow Lab, and Kandarp Dave, PhD (pictured), postdoctoral research fellow. These early-career experts contributed talks on the association of football exposure with arthritis in professional players, the effect of cognitive behavioral therapy on symptom catastrophizing in gastroparesis (delayed stomach emptying), and the mechanisms behind how exercise-primed extracellular vesicles might improve knee osteoarthritis, respectively.   

The following day, the Department also celebrated the accomplishments of the 2025 class of talented residents and fellows at its 30th Graduation and Awards Ceremony at The Row Hotel. Six of our graduates will continue their work in the Mass General Brigham system, including four at Spaulding. This month, Spaulding also welcomed an equally exceptional new class in its ongoing mission as the official teaching partner of Harvard Medical School to train the best and the brightest in rehabilitation medicine.

Spaulding resident Tracey Hunter, MD, (left) awaits her degree at the 2025 PM&R Graduation Ceremony.

Accelerating Advances in ALS

A renowned physician–scientist specializing in neuromuscular medicine, Sabrina Paganoni, MD, PhD, recently received the Robert H. Brown, Jr., PhilD, MD, Endowed Chair in Neurology from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) for her innovative work on amytrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive and ultimately fatal neurodegenerative disease with few treatment options. Dr. Paganoni, who holds dual appointments at Spaulding and MGH’s Sean M. Healey & AMG Center for ALS, has been leading efforts to accelerate the search for new ALS therapies using the first platform trial for the disease to simultaneously test multiple drugs. This groundbreaking approach, which employs shared trial infrastructure and placebo data, has already enabled the evaluation of four different drugs. Read more about the unique platform trial in News Medical here.

In June, Dr. Paganoni also took part in a Mass General Brigham research town hall, which highlighted her and her MGB colleagues’ involvement in the BrainGate research consortium. A collaboration of diverse experts including neuroscientists, engineers, computer scientists, and mathematicians, BrainGate has developed a groundbreaking brain–computer interface that enables people with ALS and other neurological conditions to communicate using their thoughts. Dr. Paganoni shares more about these latest advances in ALS science in the MGB newsroom here. This month, she was also featured in this article in Women’s World on the early warning signs for ALS in addition to research progress and potential treatments.

Grant Goals

Spaulding researcher Carla Tierney-Hendricks, PhD, received a K23 career development award from the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders to design and test a community-engaged intervention to improve transitional care in aphasia rehabilitation. Post-stroke aphasia is a debilitating chronic disorder that affects the ability to communicate, with devastating impacts on societal participation, psychosocial well-being, and overall health and quality of life. Poor outcomes are further exacerbated by inadequate coordination around hospital discharge and outpatient rehabilitation care for chronic illness. This work will study the impact of a specially designed, multi-faceted intervention spanning the community and the clinic on facilitating access and improving care for patients with aphasia.

“I believe this work would be very appealing to patients and clinicians alike since barriers in navigating the care system are a ubiquitous challenge across rehabilitation conditions. This patient-centered, systems-level approach has the potential to have meaningful impact not only in aphasia but across rehabilitation more broadly.”—Carla Tierney-Hendricks, PhD

Hirotaka Iijima, PhD, a researcher in the Discovery Center for Musculoskeletal Recovery, received an additional grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the complex underlying mechanisms involved in the development of knee osteoarthritis (KOA) and how exercise may mitigate the effects of these pathways according to sex. While KOA is a serious public health issue affecting more than 30 million older Americans, current treatments mainly focus on easing pain and managing symptoms rather than stopping or altering the course of the disease itself. This project will study how exercise activates the distribution of protective molecules in the blood (via tiny particles called extracellular vesicles) that may help keep knee cartilage healthy, both directly and indirectly. Iijima’s team will also explore how these pathways may differ in aging women using a mouse model that simulates menopause to better reflect how KOA develops in real life. You can read about Dr. Iijima’s previous NIH grant for this work in our October 2024 Spotlight here.

“Our interdisciplinary research team assembles experts in rehabilitation medicine, biology, and engineering. By working together, we hope to uncover new ways to detect and treat KOA, ultimately leading to better care and healthier joints for our aging population.”—Hirotaka Iijima, PhD

Adina Draghici, PhD, an investigator in the Cardiovascular Research Lab, received a prestigious career development award from the American Heart Association (AHA) to study how blood flow may impact bone health in Type 1 diabetes (T1D). T1D often begins in early childhood and leads to lifelong health problems including poor blood flow and weak bones. Dr. Draghici's research aims to detect these changes early, within the first five to 15 years after diagnosis, before more serious problems develop. Using a safe, non-invasive device she developed that measures blood flow in the shin bone, Dr. Draghici’s team will determine how early vascular change may impact bone strength in young adults living with T1D.

“This project supports the AHA’s goal to help people live longer, healthier lives by looking at a major health issue—how blood flow relates to bone health. If we can figure out how T1D affects vascular health and skeletal integrity, we can improve quality of life not only for people with diabetes but others with health problems related to blood vessel function and bone loss.”—Dr. Adina Draghici

Thinking Out of the Box

Spaulding pediatric brain injury experts Nathan Cook, PhD, and Grant Iverson, PhD, were co-authors on a recent paper in Frontiers Psychology that examined performance of healthy children and teens on the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery—a set of tests designed to measure attention, memory, processing speed, language skills, and executive functioning. They found that even kids without clinical conditions or problems commonly scored low in one or more areas of the battery, which has the potential to be misleading and challenging for clinicians and researchers to determine whether a child’s performance should be considered a true impairment. The authors suggested a more nuanced and statistically informed approach to interpreting performance on the battery, which may help reduce false alarms, so kids aren't mistakenly labeled as having learning or cognitive impairment. This approach may also help ensure that kids who do need support are more accurately identified.

Positive Outcome

Lewis E. Kazis, ScD, research director for the Rehabilitation Outcomes Center at Spaulding, was selected as this year’s winner of the 2025 John Ware and Alvin Tarlov Career Achievement Award in Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (Health Assessment Lab). He will receive the award at annual meeting of the International Society for Quality in Health Care 41st International Conference in São Paulo, Brazil in October.

Influential Impact

The seminal contributions of Joseph Giacino, PhD, director of rehabilitation neuropsychology, to the field of disorders of consciousness (DOC) were highlighted in a recent Atlantic article about a patient living with a DOC after sustaining a traumatic brain injury in a car accident at age 17 in 1986—and his mother’s enduring belief in his potential for recovery.  

Talk of the Town

In June, R. James Cotton, MD, PhD, a neuroscientist at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, delivered the Ralph and Irene Epstein Rosenthal Memorial Lecture: “Clinically Accessible, AI-Powered Motion Analysis Presents Opportunities for Precision Rehabilitation.” Established at Spaulding through the generosity of Leila Joy Rosenthal (pictured with Dr. Cotton above), this annual educational seminar for healthcare professionals is aimed at informing participants about the latest research and innovation in the rehabilitation field.

Hitting the Ground Running

Michelle Bruneau, DPT, PhD, a physical therapist at the Spaulding National Running Center (SNRC), was first author on a study published in JOSPT Open to explore the differences between treadmill and outdoor running on injury risk using wearable technologies. Her work was featured in an article in UConn Today, a news outlet of the University of Connecticut, where she received her PhD. Dr. Bruneau is continuing to pursue related research in her role at the SNRC.

Spotlight on Spaulding Science is a quarterly e-newsletter for donors and friends of the Schoen Adams Research Institute at Spaulding Rehabilitation. For questions or to submit your own research news item, please contact: Alexandra Molloy at amolloy@mgb.org.