Our Members
The ViP-TERC dynamic is fueled by the diversity of member experiences and backgrounds. Our seasoned mentors are as impressed by our junior investigators as our junior investigators are motivated by our mentors. All are inspired by our lived-experience members whose journeys guide our work.
- Leadership
- Early Career Investigators and Faculty
- Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program Officers
- External Advisory Board
Leadership
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Read More about Ramon Diaz-ArrastiaRamon Diaz-Arrastia
Director, PTERC
Ramon Diaz-Arrastia
Director, PTERC
Dr. Ramon Diaz-Arrastia, John McCrae Dickson Professor of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, where hedirects the Clinical TBI Research Center, and is Associate Director for Clinical Research of Penn’s Center for Brain Injuryand Repair (CBIR—a collaboration of over 60 Penn faculty across the School of Medicine, School of Engineering, and School of Arts and Sciences focused on TBI research). Dr. Diaz-Arrastia is an epileptologist with important contributions to the TBI field over the past 25 years,7-13 focusing on understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neural injury and neuroregeneration, with the goal of developing novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. He is the Principal Investigator of the ERP-funded Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in TBI (TRACK-TBI) Epileptogenesis Project (WX81XWH-19-1-0861), which leverages resources of the TRACK-TBI Consortium to identify novel imaging and molecular biomarkers of PTE, and prospectively assess how PTE and associated comorbidities affect outcome afterTBI. He is also co-PI and Biomarkers Core Leader of TRACK-TBI, a multi- institutional observational study designed to develop precision medicine tools, including neuroimaging and biomarkers, to improve the next generation of clinical trials in TBI. Dr. Diaz-Arrastia has served on several national and international committees related to TBI clinical research and practice, convened by NIH, DoD, VA, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), and the International TBI Research Consortium (InTBNIR). Dr. Diaz-Arrastia also has a long track record of mentoring junior investigators in neurology and TBI, and has been the primary mentor of for 5 NINDS K23 career development awards, and co-mentor of additional career development awards from
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Read More about Mary Jo "MJ" PughMary Jo "MJ" Pugh
Deputy Director, PTERC
Mary Jo "MJ" Pugh
Deputy Director, PTERC
Dr. Mary Jo Pugh, Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Utah, and the VA Salt Lake City Medical Center. Dr. Pugh is a retired Air Force nurse and a developmental psychologist who studies the long-term sequelae of military exposures. Dr. Pugh is a Fellow of the American Epilepsy Society and the American Academy of Neurology. She is the Principal Investigator of four ERP funded projects, which integrate DoD and VA data with data from self-report surveys, ecological momentary assessment, neuroimaging, and biomarkers from post-9/11 Veterans with TBI, epilepsy, andcontrols. Her work was the first to examine the association of mild TBI and epilepsy in Post-9/11 Veterans, and she has made many seminal contributions to the PTE field.
Early Career Investigators and Faculty
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Read More about Chad R. FrasierChad R. Frasier
East Tennessee State University
Chad R. Frasier
East Tennessee State University
Chad Frasier grew up about 2 miles and 100 years away from Thomas Edison in Port Huron, MI so it is no surprise that he has a strong interest in studying (bio)electricity. He received his B.S. in Neuroscience and Psychology from Central Michigan University. While initially a pre-med student, he fell in love with research during his time at CMU and pursued a Ph.D. instead of an M.D. His initial research was on the cognitive deficits associated with early stages of Parkinson’s disease. After graduating, he attended Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University to further his research training. While at Brody he researched the link between mitochondrial function and injury following a “heart-attack” in multiple models. He received further training in his post-doc at The University of Michigan on models of atrial fibrillation and epilepsy. He moved to Quillen in October 2018 to start his independent lab investigating the link between the mitochondria, epilepsy, and the heart. His current work focuses on the role of mitochondrial function in epileptogenesis and SUDEP in models of Post-Traumatic Epilepsy and Dravet Syndrome.
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Read More about James J GuggerJames J Gugger
University of Pennsylvania
James J Gugger
University of Pennsylvania
James J Gugger, MD, PharmD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Following several years of practice as a pharmacist, Dr. Gugger completed his medical training in Adult Neurology at Johns Hopkins and Epilepsy at Penn. He stayed at Penn to complete an additional post-doctoral fellowship in quantitative brain imaging. Dr. Gugger has a particular interest in the relationship between seizures and brain injury and is involved in several projects at the intersection of epilepsy and traumatic brain injury. Dr. Gugger also maintains an active epilepsy practice.
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Read More about Zulfi HaneefZulfi Haneef
Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center
Zulfi Haneef
Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center
Zulfi Haneef is Associate Prof. in Neurology, Baylor College of Medicine/MEDVAMC
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Read More about W. Brad HubbardW. Brad Hubbard
University of Kentucky
W. Brad Hubbard
University of Kentucky
W. Brad Hubbard received a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Biomedical Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2016. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology and the Spinal Cord & Brain Injury Research Center (SCoBIRC) at the University of Kentucky. He is also a Research Physiologist in the Lexington VA Healthcare System. The research interests of his lab are understanding the pathobiology of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and investigating therapeutics in preclinical models that can target critical mechanisms of injury to improve outcomes. Using both blast-induced and impact-induced rodent brain injury models, his lab investigates mechanisms related to neurovascular and mitochondrial dysfunction in mild TBI.
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Read More about Eamonn KennedyEamonn Kennedy
University of Utah
Eamonn Kennedy
University of Utah
Dr Eamonn Kennedy BSc MSc PhD is a Research Assistant Professor within the Division of Epidemiology in Internal Medicine at the University of Utah and a member of the TBI and Concussion Center at the Department of Neurology. His work focuses on TBI, machine learning for health, data harmonization, and clinical phenotyping. He is also a contractor at the VA Salt Lake City Health Care system, where he is engaged in research on Veteran health trajectories. Dr Kennedy’s completed a PhD on topics in Biophysics at University College Dublin in 2014, and went on to postdoctoral positions at both Brown University (2017-2020) and the University of Notre Dame (2014-2017). He has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed papers across a wide range of research questions within biomedical and health domains, and he is the recipient of numerous international awards and grants.
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Read More about Oleksii ShandraOleksii Shandra
Florida International University
Oleksii Shandra
Florida International University
Oleksii Shandra, an Assistant Professor in the Biomedical Engineering Department at Florida International University, is a distinguished expert in neuroscience and biomedical engineering. He earned his MD and Ph.D. degrees from Odesa National Medical University in Ukraine and has completed postdoctoral fellowships at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and Virginia Tech in Virginia. With over ten years in the field, Dr. Shandra performed all aspects of mouse EEG surgeries, EEG recordings, and data analysis in his research. His expertise extends to personally training personnel, epilepsy research course development and overseeing the progression of a complex, multi-PI $2.6 million project on post-traumatic epilepsy (PTE). His work incorporates advanced techniques like in vivo two-photon imaging of calcium, glutamate, and GABA sensors, contributing significantly to the understanding of seizure mechanisms and sleep neurophysiology. Dr. Shandra's development of new models for studying PTE and his hands-on approach in his research have earned him widespread recognition in both scientific and news publications.
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Read More about Nishant SinhaNishant Sinha
University of Pennsylvania
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Read More about Clio Rubinos MS MSCRClio Rubinos MS MSCR
University of North Carolina
Clio Rubinos MS MSCR
University of North Carolina
Clio Rubinos, MD, MS is an Assistant Professor of Neurology in the Division of Neurocritical care and Epilepsy at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, USA. Dr Rubinos provides care to patients with traumatic brain injuries, status epilepticus, intracranial hemorrhage, acute ischemic stroke, and epilepsy and also does critical care EEG and clinical neurophysiology. Dr Rubinos completed her neurology residency at Loyola University Medical Center, her clinical neurophysiology- Epilepsy fellowship at New York University (NYU) and her neurocritical care fellowship at New York Presbyterian- Columbia University. One of Dr. Rubinos's research interests is in EEG, serum, blood and cerebral spinal fluid biomarkers and multimodality monitoring to predict epileptogenesis after brain injury. Additionally, she works Global health neurology to improve education in Neurocritical care and neurophysiology of both Neurologist and non-Neurologist in Latin America. Dr. Rubinos works with Latin American Brain Injury Consortium (LABIC) and created ICU-EEG workshops, online courses, and neurocritical care webinars. She is the co-director of a bilateral neurology Resident rotation between UNC and Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Lima, Pero, and the Director of the Neurocritical care Fellowship at UNC.
Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program Officers
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Read More about Melissa MillerMelissa Miller
ERP Program Manager
Melissa Miller
ERP Program Manager
Dr. Miller currently serves as a Program Manager within the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP). As program manager she is responsible for the execution and management of tax-payer dollars supporting investigation into critical biomedical research topics. The CDMRP Epilepsy Research Program (ERP) aims to advance our understanding of PTE and develop strategies to improve the health and well-being of Service members, Veterans, and the American public. Before joining CDMRP Dr. Miller’s academic work focused primarily on drug development and characterization of ion channel physiology.
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Read More about Erin Sanders
Erin Sanders
Science Officer
External Advisory Board
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Jeanne Paz
Gladstone Institutes and University of California San Francisco
Jeanne Paz
Gladstone Institutes and University of California San Francisco
