About the Editors

Associate Editors

 

Anthony S Burns, MD, MSc, Brain & Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Program & University Health Network - Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, Canada

Anthony S. Burns graduated from the Yale University School of Medicine in 1994, and afterwards completed combined residency training in Internal Medicine and Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at the Sinai Hospital of Baltimore - Johns Hopkins University program, followed by a SCI fellowship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is a past participant in the Rehabilitation Medicine Scientist Training Program, sponsored by the Association of Academic Physiatrists (AAP) and funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. From 2000 through 2007, he was Assistant Professor, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia PA; Assistant Director of the Regional SCI Center of the Delaware Valley; and adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia PA. In 2007, Dr. Burns joined the University Health Network - Toronto Rehabilitation Institute Spinal Cord Rehabilitation Program, the largest program of its kind in Canada, and was the Medical Director from 2007 – 2012. Currently he is a Professor in the Division of Physiatry, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, and Affiliate Scientist, Neural Engineering and Therapeutics (NET) Team of the KITE (Knowledge Innovation Talent Everywhere) Research Institute. His clinical and research interests focus on the determination and measurement of outcomes following SCI, as well as the clinical management of spinal cord injuries and related secondary complications.

Sonja de Groot, PhD, Vrije University, Amsterdam

Sonja de Groot studied Human Movement Sciences and graduated in 1997. She attained her PhD from the Faculty of Human Movement Sciences of the VU University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Since 2004, she has worked as a senior researcher at the Reade, Center for Rehabilitation and Rheumatology in Amsterdam. In 2009 she was appointed Assistant Professor at the Center of Human Movement Sciences at the University of Groningen. She joined the Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 2020 as Associate Professor. Dr De Groot was the coordinator of the Dutch multi-center research program titled: 'Restoration of mobility in SCI rehabilitation' and 'ALLRISC' (see: www.nvdg.org/scionn). She is the secretary of the research committee of the Dutch Flemish Spinal Cord Society (DuFScoS). Dr De Groot's current research interests include the study of spinal cord injury rehabilitation, exercise physiology, wheelchair propulsion and configuration, and adapted sports. She has published more than 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Watch a short video from Sonja de Groot here.

research.vu.nl/en/persons/sonja-de-groot

 Michael Fehlings, MD, PhD, FRCSC, FACS, University of Toronto, Canada

Dr. Fehlings is the Vice Chair Research for the Department of Surgery at the University of Toronto and a Neurosurgeon at Toronto Western Hospital, University Health Network. Dr. Fehlings is a Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Toronto, holds the Gerry and Tootsie Halbert Chair in Neural Repair and Regeneration, and is a Senior Scientist at the Krembil Research Institute. In the fall of 2008, Dr. Fehlings was appointed the inaugural Director of the University of Toronto Neuroscience Program (which he held until June 2012) and is currently Co-Director of the University of Toronto Spine Program. Dr. Fehlings combines an active clinical practice in complex spinal surgery with a translationally oriented research program focused on discovering novel treatments to improve functional outcomes following both traumatic and non-traumatic forms of spinal cord injury (SCI). He has published over 900 peer-reviewed articles (h-index 93) chiefly in the area of central nervous system injury and complex spinal surgery. In 2017, Dr. Fehlings led the initiative to create Clinical Practice Guidelines for the management of degenerative cervical myelopathy and acute traumatic SCI. Dr. Fehlings has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Olivecrona Award and Ryman Prize.

Jörg Krebs, PhD, Swiss Paraplegic Centre, Switzerland

Jörg Krebs is the Head of the Clinical Trial Unit at the Swiss Paraplegic Centre in Nottwil, Switzerland. He has been involved in clinical research on spinal cord injury / disease topics, mainly neuro-urology and spine surgery, for over 10 years. Before moving into clinical research, he was active in experimental research with a focus on orthopedic and spine surgery for a decade. He has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals.

Jörg Krebs studied veterinary medicine at the University Bern in Bern, Switzerland and graduated in 1995. He attained a Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine (Dr. med. vet.) from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the University Bern in 2002. In 2007, he received a PhD in Biomedical Engineering (summa cum laude) from the Medical Faculty of the University Bern. Furthermore, he holds a Diploma of Advanced Studies in Applied Statistics.

Rüdiger Rupp, PhD, Heidelberg University, Germany

Priv.-Doz. Dr.-Ing. Rüdiger Rupp received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering with focus on biomedical engineering and his Dr.-Ing. degree from the Technical University of Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1994 and 2008, respectively. In 2018, he received his venia legendi in Experimental Neurology from Heidelberg University. After working at the Institute for Biomedical Engineering and Biocybernetics (Prof. G. Vossius) until 1996, since 1997 he is with the Spinal Cord Injury Center (Head: Prof. N. Weidner) of Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany, where he holds the position as the head of the section Experimental Neurorehabilitation. His main research interests are in the field of rehabilitation engineering for people living with spinal cord injury. This includes neuroprosthetics mainly of the upper extremity, man-machine interfaces, gait analysis, development and clinical validation of novel methods and devices for locomotion therapy and realization of software projects for standardized documentation of rehabilitation outcome.
He is author of more than 320 journal, book chapter, textbook and conference publications and holds two patents. He has been awarded several times for his work and is a member of IEEE, IFESS, VDE, DMGP, DGOOC, NervClub, ISCoS and ASIA. Since 2017, he is chair of the ASIA International Standards Committee.