Diane L. Damiano, PT, PhD, FAPTA is a Senior Investigator at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland and Chief of the Neurorehabilitation and Biomechanics Research Section in the Rehabilitation Medicine Department. Her research focuses on the design and investigation of activity-based rehabilitation programs and development of robotic devices to promote optimal motor functioning and enhance muscle and neural plasticity in cerebral palsy. Her laboratory also has pioneered the use of mobile brain imaging technologies to investigate cortical activation during the emergence of motor skills in infants and children with and without cerebral palsy. She has published more than 150 scientific papers and is an Associate Editor of Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair. She has served as President of the American Academy for Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine (1st physical therapist in their 61 year history) and the Gait and Clinical Movement Analysis Society. In 2016, she was selected as a Catherine Worthingham Fellow of the American Physical Therapy Association, the highest honor in this profession.
