Congratulations to the recipients of the 2023 Rehabilitation Institute Pilot Award Program and the 19th Annual Rehabilitation Institute Research Day best research and poster session winners!
2023 RI Pilot Award:
Amrita Sahu, PhD, Assistant Professor of PM&R – "Personalizing Exercise Prescriptions for Cognitive Impairment in Late-life Depression: Role of Brain Aging and Biological Sex in Responsiveness to Aerobic Exercise"
Licelia Williams, PhD, MBA, BSRT(T), Post-doctoral Associate in Occupational Therapy – "Comparing The Lived Experiences After Inpatient Stroke Rehabilitation Based on Race"
The RI Day best research awardees were:
Resident: Melissa Yunting Tang, MD, is a second-year resident in the University of Pittsburgh Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and a current research fellow in the Ferguson Laboratory for Orthopaedic and Spine Research. She is the recipient of the 2023 Albert B. Ferguson, Jr Resident Research Day Award for her study "Effect of Lactate and Histone Lactylation on Nucleus Pulposus Cell Extracellular Matrix Homeostasis." Dr. Tang is pursuing the research track of the residency program and is on the path toward becoming an academic spine surgeon. She came to the University of Pittsburgh after earning her medical degree from the University of Arizona College of Medicine in 2021. While becoming a physician scientist was a long-standing ambition, she hopes to continue her research in spine surgery, intervertebral disc degeneration and gene therapy, as a future lab director, like her mentors Drs. Nam Vo, Gwendolyn Sowa and Joon Lee.
Post-doctoral Fellow: Bailey Petersen, PhD, DPT, is a postdoctoral scholar in the Pediatric Neurointensive Care and Resuscitation Research Fellowship (T32) through the Department of Critical Care Medicine and the Safar Center. Bailey received her BS and MS degrees in Kinesiology-Biomechanics from the Pennsylvania State University and her dual-degree DPT-PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Pittsburgh. In her graduate work, Bailey was awarded a F30 fellowship for her work with people with a lower-limb amputation in the Rehab Neural Engineering Labs. She is currently studying the epigenomic mechanisms associated with neurobehavioral recovery in children with traumatic brain injury and plans to continue this work by investigating the role of physical activity in recovery. Bailey's career goal is to become a principal investigator of a clinical research laboratory that uses the foundations of neurorehabilitation, neural engineering, and epigenomics to improve outcomes for children with neurological conditions.
Pre-doctoral/Master’s Student: Cristiane Carlesso is a Ph.D. student in Rehabilitation Sciences at the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences – University of Pittsburgh. Her primary mentor is Dr. Piva, with whom she shares interests in enhancing physical function in clinical populations. Ms. Carlesso is a Physical Therapist with over ten years of clinical experience in musculoskeletal conditions, and this expertise has heightened her interest in pursuing research in low back pain (LBP). Lately, Ms. Carlesso has refined CT image analysis methods to evaluate lumbar paraspinal muscle in adults with cLBP and provided evidence of its reliability. Such a novel analysis approach will be used in her dissertation to classify paraspinal muscle degeneration at each lumbar spinal segment in adults with chronic LBP and analyze its relationship with physical function and segmental spinal mobility. In the long term, Ms. Carlesso aims to bridge this knowledge into developing interventions to improve paraspinal muscle health and functional outcomes in people with chronic LBP.
Medical Student: Lilly Tang is a medical student in the Physician Scientist Training Program at Pitt Med. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a BA, majoring in Neurobiology and minoring in Education. She currently works in the Rehab Neural Engineering Labs under the mentorship of Dr. Pirondini, studying the effects of deep brain stimulation on facial motor recovery in patients with traumatic brain injury. Lilly aspires to integrate her passions in neuro research and social advocacy in her practice as a physician-scientist to promote the holistic well-being of her patients.
Undergraduate: Mara Hartoyo recently graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a Bachelor of Philosophy (BPhil) in Rehabilitation Science, a certificate in pathokinesiology, and a minor in chemistry. Under the mentorship of Dr. Sara Piva, Ms. Hartoyo gained experience in data analysis and research writing. She was heavily involved in research, pursuing projects in rheumatology, trauma medicine, and organic chemistry. She will begin medical school this summer and is excited to continue supplementing her education with meaningful research projects.
The RI Day poster session awardees were:
Resident: Nicholas Race, MD – "Psychosocial safety learning impairments following parietal or frontal experimental TBI in rats: unhealthy social behavior, impaired stress coping, and altered social preferences"
Post-Doctoral Fellow: Erinn Grigsby, PhD – "Direct electrical stimulation of the motor thalamus improves speech motor deficits following traumatic brain injury"
Pre-doctoral/Master’s Student: Josep-Maria Balaguer – "GABA Regulates Spinal Cord Stimulation Efficacy"
Medical Student: George Tankosich – "Implementation of PM&R Assessment into Lung Transplant Patient Selection and Listing Process"
Undergraduate: Ellen Annas – "Combining a α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor allosteric modulator and environmental enrichment improves sustained attention and cholinergic neurotransmission after controlled cortical impact injury in male and female rats"
Thank you to all who submitted proposals and abstracts, as well as to those who reviewed submissions!
A special thanks to our planning committee members: faculty – Drs. Brad Dicianno, Beth Skidmore, Corina Bondi, and Shawn Flanagan; and staff – Jessa Darwin, Selena Crawford, and Kelsey Shrader.
