Manon Schladen, PhD

Dr. Schladen subsequently completed further graduate training in Systems Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She received her PhD from the College of Engineering and Computing at Nova Southeastern University in 2015 and was recently awarded a two-year fellowship from the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation to study the psychosocial factors impacting the use of wearable robotic exoskeletons in the rehabilitation, home and community mobility of people with spinal cord injury.

Dr. Schladen is well-versed in research methods, specifically in design science and qualitative methods as well as in the conduct of systematic reviews. She has published numerous refereed journal articles and serves as a peer reviewer for several journals in the domains of qualitative research, medical education, and online interventions. Dr. Schladen presents her work regularly at professional conferences, such as those sponsored by the American Congress of Rehabilitation, Medicine (ACRM), the American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA), and The Qualitative Report. She has been a regular grant review panelist for the National Institute for Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILLR) since 2012.

Dr. Schladen’s area of focus is the use of technology both to improve the delivery of patient interventions and to enhance the learning process for health professionals. Her doctoral dissertation to develop an instructional design theory of virtual patients (online interactive simulated patient cases) in clinical learning was selected by the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) to receive the Robert M. Gagné Award for Graduate Student Research in Instructional Design. Dr. Schladen has worked with rehabilitation modality experts to develop, test, and evaluate technology-enhanced teaching in the areas of spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, and stroke. She holds a Medical Education Research Certificate (MERC) from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).