Harvard Medical School
USA
Cheri Blauwet, MD is an Associate Professor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School, the Distinguished Chair in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Chief Medical Officer of Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. She is an attending sports medicine physician at Mass General Brigham, where she also serves as Founding Director of the Kelley Adaptive Sports Research Institute.
Dr Blauwet is also a former Paralympic athlete in the sport of wheelchair racing, competing for the United States Team in three Paralympic Games (Sydney '00, Athens '04, Beijing '08) and bringing home a total of seven Paralympic medals. She is also a two-time winner of both the Boston and New York City Marathons.
Translating her background as an athlete to the clinical setting, Dr Blauwet is a pioneer and change agent in the area of disability and health equity, with a specific focus on sport and physical activity for health promotion and chronic disease prevention.
She is deeply committed to ensuring that opportunities for achieving optimal health are equitable and universally accessible to all, inclusive of people with disabilities. She serves as a Member of the International Paralympic Committee’s Medical Committee and serves on the Board of Directors for the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) as well as numerous other leadership roles throughout the Olympic and Paralympic Movement.
In 2016, she was the recipient of the Harvard Medical School Harold Amos Faculty Diversity Award and was named one Boston’s “Ten Outstanding Young Leaders” by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. In 2019 she was named by the Boston Business Journal as one of the “40 under 40” community leaders. She was a guest at the White House as well as the keynote speaker at the Boston celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute
USA
Dr Dylan Edwards leads the Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute (MRRI), consisting of 10 Laboratories/Programs in Translational Neurorehabilitation science, which is part of a U.S. News and World Report top rehabilitation hospital, MossRehab in Philadelphia. At MRRI, he is also Director of the Human Motor Recovery Laboratory.
Dr Edwards also holds appointments as Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the NeuroRehabilitation and Robotics Laboratory at Edith Cowan University. He is dedicated to translating basic science findings in neurologically healthy people to develop and evaluate novel, clinically-relevant approaches for neurological assessment and neurorehabilitation in stroke and spinal cord injury using non-invasive stimulation, neuromodulation, robotics, combinatorial therapies, and neuroimaging. He is also known for designing and testing telerehabilitation approaches for motor recovery after stroke.
Dr Edwards previously led a successful long standing collaboration between Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Burke-Cornell Neurological Institute to bridge engineering, neurology, and rehabilitation medicine. This cross disciplinary collaboration resulted in scientific advancements in rehabilitation outcome predictors, non-invasive brain stimulation techniques, and rehabilitation robotics, in method as well as application.
Dr Edwards is recognized as a leader in the field of neurorehabilitation, having served two terms on the board of directors, and also the strategic planning committee, for the American Society for Neurorehabilitation.
As a thought leader in the field, Dr Edwards has been a consultant and advisor for large-scale National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded resource grants, a member of the Data and Safety Monitoring Board at Harvard, and a chair of multiple international meetings and symposia on robotics and motor recovery. He also has extensive educational leadership and administration experience, including teaching in and co-leading a successful Continuing Medical Education course at Harvard Medical School for 10 years.
He has over 100 publications and has given over 120 invited lectures, including presentations at the US Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Sciences) and the US National Institute of Health. He has also been an invited expert on the international technical training standards committee for non-invasive brain stimulation (International Federation for Clinical Neurophysiology) and on rehabilitation robotics at the US Food and Drug Administration.
Flinders Medical Centre
SA Australia
A/Professor Zoe Adey-Wakeling, PhD is a Senior Consultant in Rehabilitation Medicine at Flinders Medical Centre, South Australia and is Head of the Rehabilitation Unit in the SA Local Health Network. She also holds Academic Status with Flinders University. Her PhD focused on the hemiplegic upper limb, with publications in Stroke and Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and outcomes cited in national and international clinical practice guidelines for Stroke.
A/Professor Adey-Wakeling has presented at national and international conferences, including the International Stroke Conference and the Stroke Society of Australasia. She has a particular interest in Driving Fitness Assessment and was the lead in the Australian College of Rehabilitation Medicine Working Party in the development of a position statement regarding driving assessment and has developed telehealth clinics addressing driving in regional communities.
Victorian Paediatric Rehabilitation Service
VIC Australia
Michael Blyth is the Technical Advisor for Victorian Paediatric Rehabilitation Service. His clinical work involves interfacing children with disability to smart devices for educational and recreational use. As a wheelchair user and person with a disability, Michael offers a unique perspective within the rehabilitation environment. His work often sees him taking on a peer support role that is unforced and natural, shaped by his own experiences as both a patient and clinician.
Flinders University
VIC Australia
Maria Crotty is a clinical academic and works as the Professor of Rehabilitation, Aged and Extended Care at Flinders University and a Senior Research Fellow at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Unit (SAHMRI). She works as a rehabilitation physician at Flinders Medical Centre and was unit head until March 2022. She was awarded Public Service Medal for services to rehabilitation in 2018. She is clinical lead with the Australasian Rehabilitation Outcomes Centre (AROC) and is co-chairing (with Professor Chris Poulos) a group who are developing a national plan for Rehabilitation. This work is sponsored by the AFRM and RMSANZ and focuses on identifying key directions and priorities for rehabilitation in the coming decade.
Momentum Prosthetics & Orthotics
ACT Australia
Richard graduated from La Trobe University in 2010. In 2012 he founded Momentum Prosthetics & Orthotics to assist many of the nation’s top para-athletes based at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra. Momentum has now grown to provide P&O, Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy services to clients of all ages and abilities across the ACT & Southern NSW regions. Richard currently leads Momentum’s Prosthetic & Orthotic services and provides ongoing clinical support to top para-athletes throughout Australia.
Perron Institute
WA Australia
Taya Hamilton is a Physiotherapist with post-graduate training in Adult Neurological Rehabilitation. She practiced in several clinical settings focusing on Neurological and Stroke rehabilitation before moving into the design, development, implementation, and research of rehabilitation robotics and neurotechnology. Taya currently combines her passion for clinical care, research, and neurotechnology in her roles as Research Coordinator for Perron Institute for Neurological and Translational Science, as a Clinical Consultant for the PROMOTE study out of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and as the Oceania Region Clinical and Research Consultant for Fourier Intelligence. Taya’s research to date has been conducted on the design, feasibility, and kinematics of rehabilitation robotics, the importance of patient engagement, and the application of telemedicine.
Tasmanian Paediatric Rehabilitation Service
TAS Australia
Dr Eliza Maloney is a paediatric rehabilitation consultant and the Head of the Tasmanian Paediatric Rehabilitation Service. She holds a Senior Lecturer Position at University of Tasmania. Dr Maloney is passionate about equity and access to rehabilitation care for children and their families and early detection of health conditions to create most impact.
Children's Health Queensland Hospital
QLD Australia
Dr Lynne McKinlay is Medical Director, Learning and Workforce Children’s Health Queensland and a Senior Medical Educator at the Cognitive Institute.
Lynne has specialist qualifications in paediatrics, rehabilitation medicine and medical administration. She was Director of the Queensland Paediatric Rehabilitation Service from 2001 to 2014 before moving into medical administration and leadership in a full-time capacity. Lynne holds the position of senior lecturer with the School of Medicine, University of Queensland and was the founding clinical director of the Queensland Cerebral Palsy and Rehabilitation Research Centre in the Faculty of Medicine at The University of Queensland.
Lynne is driven to improve health care through her experience that a clinician is able to make a difference at both the individual patient and the health system levels through innovation, systems improvement and the development of communication and health leadership skills. She has recently been working in the area of burnout and clinician wellbeing, presenting webinars and facilitating workshops relating to these important issues.
Gold Coast University Hospital
QLD Australia
Dinesh Palipana was the first quadriplegic medical intern in Queensland. Dinesh is a doctor, lawyer, disability advocate, and researcher.
Halfway through medical school, he was involved in a motor vehicle accident that caused a cervical spinal cord injury. Dinesh has completed an Advanced Clerkship in Radiology at the Harvard University.
Dinesh works in the emergency department at the Gold Coast University Hospital. He is a senior lecturer at the Griffith University and adjunct research fellow at the Menzies Health Institute of Queensland. Dinesh is a researcher in spinal cord injury. He is a doctor for the Gold Coast Titans physical disability rugby team. Dinesh is a senior advisor to the Disability Royal Commission. He is an ambassador to the Human Rights Commission’s Includeability program. He was a 2021 International Day of People with Disability ambassador. He is a founding member of Doctors with Disabilities Australia.
Dinesh was the Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service’s Junior Doctor of the Year in 2018. He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2019. He was the third Australian to be awarded a Henry Viscardi Achievement Award. He was the 2021 Griffith University Young Alumnus of the Year. Dinesh was the Queensland Australian of the Year for 2021. In 2022, Dinesh was listed as number 33 in the Courier Mail’s top 100 power list for Queensland’s most influential in health and wellbeing. His autobiography, Stronger, was published by Pan Macmillan in 2022.
Monash Children's Hospital
VIC Australia
Associate Professor Barry Rawicki is a consultant physician in rehabilitation medicine. He obtained his medical degree at the University of Melbourne in 1978, and his specialist qualifications in rehabilitation medicine in 1985. He was appointed Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, Monash University in 1999. He is the Medical Director of Paediatric Rehabilitation for the Victorian Paediatric Rehabilitation Service at Monash Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. Until 2020 he was medical head of the Monash Health Clinical Gait Analysis Laboratory at Kingston Centre which performs 3D gait analysis on both adults and children, and is now medical director of the Monash Children’s Gait Laboratory. He was medical director at Florence Nightingale Rehabilitation Hospital from 1991which then became Brighton Rehabilitation Centre. He retired as head of rehabilitation for Epworth Rehabilitation Brighton in 2020, a position he had held from the time Epworth Health acquired Brighton Rehabilitation Centre.
His main clinical and research interests are in spasticity management and gait analysis. He was involved in much of the pioneering work in Australia in the use of both botulinum toxin and intrathecal baclofen in spasticity management. His other clinical, research and procedural interests are in chronic neurology and pain management.
He has published more than 35 papers and two book chapters in these areas. He was appointed Consultant Emeritus at Epworth Hospital in September 2020. He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to Rehabilitation Medicine in June 2021
Neuroscience Research Australia
NSW Australia
Craig Sinclair is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of New South Wales and Conjoint Senior Research Scientist at Neuroscience Research Australia. His work focuses on supported decision-making and advance care planning, particularly among older adults with cognitive impairment. He is an ambassador for Advance Care Planning Australia and an Associate Board member for Advance Care Planning International. He currently leads a National Health and Medical Research Council funded trial of a combined life story work and advance care planning intervention, among older adults receiving home care services.
Australasian Rehabilitation Outcomes Centre (AROC)
NSW Australia
Claire is a Physiotherapist and implementation researcher and works as the Quality and Education Manager at AROC. Claire’s PhD studies investigated ways to support rehabilitation teams to increase the amount of practice completed by stroke survivors during inpatient rehabilitation. She has worked in inpatient and community rehabilitation services for over 15 years prior to her role in AROC and has an interest in how outcomes data can be used to monitor and improve rehabilitation services.
Alfred Health
VIC Australia
Stephen Taffe is a health lawyer with more than 20 years' experience. He has worked as a solicitor at a national law firm, and is currently Senior Legal Counsel at a major Victorian public health service. He is also Chair of the Health Law Committee at the Law Institute of Victoria. Stephen has a Law degree (with Honours) from Monash University and a Masters degree in Health and Medical Law from the University of Melbourne.