OUR PEOPLE

EXECUTIVE GROUP

Our start-up ISRRA Executive is working to implement our strategy.

CURRENT EXECUTIVE GROUP MEMBERS

Julie Bernhardt

Julie Bernhardt (Chair)

Julie Bernhardt is an Australian Researcher with a background in Physiotherapy. She is head of the Stroke Team at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and serves as the current president of ISRRA.

Sean Dukelow

Sean Dukelow is a Canadian physician, specialized in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. His research focuses on the use of robotic tools for the assessment and rehabilitation of individuals with stroke and brain injury. He currently serves as Director of Stroke Rehabilitation for the Calgary Stroke Program.

Katharina Sunnerhagen

Katharina Sunnerhagen is a Swedish physician, researcher and educator specialized in rehabilitation medicine. She currently serves as Head of the Rehabilitation Medicine Research Group at University of Gothenburg.

John Solomon

Dr John Solomon is a researcher, lecturer, and Head of the Department of Physiotherapy at University of Manipal, India. He also serves as the Coordinator of the Centre for Comprehensive Stroke Rehabilitation and Research alongside his clinical role as the person in charge of the Balance and vestibular rehabilitation Unit and Neurosurgery wards in Manipal.

Geert Verheyden

Professor Verheyden is a researcher and educator with a background in Rehabilitation Sciences and Physiotherapy. He is based at the Katholieke Universiteit (KU) Leuven, Belgium. He leads the Stroke Rehabilitation Research team at KU Leuven through supervision of a team of doctoral and post-doctoral researchers.

Nick Ward (Scientific Committee Lead)

Nick is Professor of Clinical Neurology & Neurorehabilitation at UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology and The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square. He leads the first dedicated upper limb neurorehabilitation programme in the UK. His work seeks to understand the mechanisms of recovery of movement after stroke to predict both optimal treatments and long term outcomes of upper limb impairment after stroke. 

Natalie Fini (Emerging Leaders Group Lead)

Natalie is a physiotherapist, senior lecturer and stroke researcher based at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She is also the current lead for the ISRRA Emerging Leaders group. Her research priority is physical activity and rehabilitation after stroke.

PAST EXECUTIVE GROUP MEMBERS

Rachel Stockley (Emerging Leaders Lead)

Rachel is an experienced neurological physiotherapist and a senior research fellow at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. Her work centres on producing programmatic research into the rehabilitation of people living with stroke, particularly to improve upper limb recovery. Rachel is a UK Research and Innovation Future Leader Fellow and leads a team which is conducting research into the development, implementation and evaluation of digital health technologies in stroke rehabilitation. She led the initial development of the ISRRA emerging leaders group.

Dale Corbett

Dale Corbett is Emeritus Professor at University of Ottawa. His research looks at rehabilitation, exercise and drug treatments to enhance neuroplasticity and stroke recovery. He was an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow at Harvard University and also serves as Scientific Director of the Canadian Partnership for Stroke Recovery at University of Ottawa.

Sean Savitz

Professor Savitz is Chair in Neurology and Director of the Institute for Stroke and Cerebrovascular Disease at The University of Texas, Health Science Center in Houston (USA).

Marion Walker

Marion is Emeritus Professor at University of Nottingham. She has a professional background in Occupational Therapy and conducts research in stroke rehabilitation as Senior Investigator, a Fellow Royal College of Occupational Therapist the National Institutes for Health Research (NIHR).