2015-2016 FACULTY APPOINTMENTS AND PROMOTIONS

Cynthia Pineda, Associate Professor, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine

Dr. Pineda is a board-certified Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (PM&R) specialist and is a consulting physiatrist at MedStar Montgomery Medical Center. Dr. Pineda completed her PM&R Residency at MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital (MedStar NRH) and received the distinction of being the Resident of the Year for three consecutive years.

Dr. Pineda is currently the Associate Program Director of the MedStar Georgetown University Hospital/MedStar NRH PM&R Residency Program. She is also the Director of Continuing Medical Education (CME) Programs at MedStar NRH.

Dr. Pineda is an Associate Professor of Clinical Rehabilitation Medicine at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. She was a MedStar Health Teaching Scholar and received her Medical Education Research Certification in 2010. She is a collaborator on a number of ongoing academic and clinical research projects and grants and is the recipient of 2012-13 Georgetown University Curricular Innovation Research and Creativity in Learning Environment (CIRCLE) Grant. She is the Training Director of the Rehabilitation Research Training Center (RRTC) Professional-Focused Training Project T2: Building Clinical Capacity to Help Persons with SCI Manage or Prevent Cardiometabolic Syndrome, Obesity and Pressure Ulcers.

Dr. Pineda is a Diplomate of the American Board of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, a Fellow of the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, a Diplomate Member of the Association of Academic Physiatrists and an Associate Member of the Alliance for Continuing Education of Health Professions.

Kritis Dasgupta, Associate Professor, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine

Dr. Dasgupta is the medical director of the Brain Injury Program at MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital. He is an associate professor of Clinical Rehabilitation Medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center.

Dr. Dasgupta obtained his bachelor’s degree in English from Princeton University and attended the University of Maryland Medical School. He completed his Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation residency at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. He also completed a Brain Injury Medicine Fellowship at MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital/MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. He holds an MBA in medical services management from Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Dasgupta has extensive experience in the management of brain injury, having previously served as the director of acquired brain injury and mild brain injury programs at rehabilitation centers of excellence in Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Dr. Dasgupta’s particular areas of interest and expertise are traumatic brain injury pharmacology and management of patients with physical agitation.

Alexander Libin, Associate Professor, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine

Dr. Libin is a psychosocial scientist and multimedia learning innovator investigating how critical thinking and shared decision-making promote coping with life stressors in social networks, teams, and individuals. Dr. Libin holds a joint appointment as Scientific Director of the Well-Being Literacy, Multimedia Education, & Psychosocial Research Program (WeLL) at the District of Columbia Veterans Affairs Medical Center and at the MedStar Health Research Institute at the National Rehabilitation Network of MedStar Health. Dr. Libin also serves as Associate Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at the Georgetown University Medical Center.

Dr. Libin conducts studies in well-being literacy and translational sciences exploring the impact of autonomous learning, health education, and digital technology, such as interactive multimedia and simulations, serious games and personal robotics, on well-being and psychosocial functioning across the life span. Vulnerable clinical populations including military veterans, persons with neurological disorders, chronic conditions and disability, children and the elderly are the focus of Dr. Libin’s research.

Elissa Newport, Professor, Department of Neurology (primary), Department of Rehabilitation Medicine (secondary)

Dr. Newport received a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1975. She was a member of the faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Illinois before joining the faculty at the University of Rochester, eventually serving as the George Eastman Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

In July of 2012, she joined the faculty at Georgetown University where she currently serves as the director of the Center for Brain Plasticity and Recovery.

Dr. Newport has been recognized by a number of organizations for the impact of her theoretical and empirical contributions to the field of language acquisition. She has been elected as a fellow in the Association for Psychological Science, the Society of Experimental Psychologists, the Cognitive Science Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. Her research has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the McDonnell Foundation, and the Packard Foundation.

Dr. Newport runs the Learning and Development Lab, which studies the acquisition of language, the relationship between language acquisition and language structure, and the recovery of language after damage to the brain.

Peter Turkeltaub, Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology (primary), Department of Rehabilitation Medicine (secondary)

Dr. Turkeltaub, is the Director of the Aphasia Clinic at MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital and an Assistant Professor of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine at Georgetown University. He is a cognitive neurologist and neuroscientist whose research investigates the brain’s organization for language and other cognitive faculties, how this organization changes after stroke, and how we might enhance recovery. A key aim of his laboratory is to develop new treatments for language disorders and translate these treatments to the bedside.

Please click here for more information on Dr. Turkeltaub’s lab.

Manon Schladen, Assistant Professor, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine

Dr. Schladen has been engaged in research programs at MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital since 2001 and has held a concurrent rehabilitation research appointment to the Washington DC Veterans Affairs Medical Center since 2013. Dr. Schladen’s career trajectory exemplifies the increasingly multidisciplinary nature of 21st-century rehabilitation science. With an undergraduate degree in computer science and broad clinical informatics expertise gained during her early career work at Georgetown University Hospital, she transitioned to the domain of research through rehabilitation engineering. She received her master of science in engineering degree at Catholic University under the auspices of the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on Telerehabilitation, a National Institute on Disability Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) grant awarded jointly to The Catholic University of America and MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH). Her research interests coalesced around the rapidly emerging technology of the Internet and its application in providing rehabilitation services and training at a distance.