Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital (SRH) is recruiting a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow to join the SRH Neurorehabilitation Laboratory. The mission of the SRH Neurorehabilitation Laboratory, directed by Dr. Joseph T. Giacino, is to advance the development of more precise methods of assessment, assess the performance of clinical outcome assessment measures and develop more effective approaches to treatment of persons with acquired brain injury. Research activities address the full spectrum of brain injury severity, but include a special focus on severe brain injury and disorders of consciousness.

The Neurorehabilitation Lab serves as the base of operations for the Spaulding-Harvard Traumatic Brain Injury Model System (SH-TBIMS) (www.tbindsc.org/), one of 16 centers in the U.S. funded by the National Institute on Independent Living, Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) to conduct longitudinal follow-up of persons with moderate to severe TBI. The TBI Model Systems Program is the largest and longest-running longitudinal studies in the world with over 16,000 persons enrolled over the last 30 years. The SRH Neurorehabilitation Laboratory serves as the national Outcomes Core for the largest study of traumatic brain injury (TBI) funded to date by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), “Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in Traumatic Brain Injury (TRACK-TBI)” (https://tracktbi.ucsf.edu). This 18-site investigation aims to identify TBI “phenotypes” by acquiring clinical, neuroimaging and biomarker data on 3000 persons with mild to severe TBI, and two comparison groups without brain injury. The approach to outcome assessment employed in TRACK-TBI was designed by our lab with the goal of ensuring that multiple outcome domains (e.g. physical, cognitive, psychological, social) are captured and tracked across all phases of recovery. We also co-lead the Outcomes Core for the TBI Endpoint Development (TED) Initiative, funded by the U.S. Department of Defense (https://tbiendpoints.ucsf.edu). TED represents an innovative partnership between federal agencies, academic institutions and industry that aims to identify and/or develop more precise clinical outcome assessment measures, neuroimaging tools, and biomarkers. A new collaboration between the TRACK-TBI/TED consortium and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) national laboratories will bring together scientists and engineers in order to analyze these large, complex datasets using next-generation artificial intelligence-based tool development for precision diagnostics and prognostic modeling.

The Post-Doctoral Research Fellow will play a key role in TED and TBIMS research activities, and will collaborate with TRACK-TBI investigators. The Fellow will work closely with clinical outcome assessment (COA) experts from collaborating TED centers throughout the U.S. to evaluate COA measures for use in TBI clinical trials and observational studies. This experience will provide access to the TED Metadataset, a large repository of fully-curated measures of cognition and psychological health, imaging data and blood-based biomarkers acquired from persons with mild to severe TBI. As a Co-Investigator on the SH-TBIMS team, the Fellow will work with a multidisciplinary team of neuropsychologists, neurointensivists, critical care specialists, physiatrists and allied health professionals to develop and validate a new standardized assessment instrument designed to monitor recovery of consciousness in the intensive care setting.