Maria Ribeiro Cunha
Short bioMaria Ribeiro Cunha
Short biography
Maria Ribeiro Cunha is a physiatrist at the Spinal Cord Injuries Rehabilitation Department at Centro de Reabilitação do Norte – Dr. Ferreira Alves (CRN), Valadares, since 2014. She became the coordinator in 2017 and, since 2021, she is also the Head of Department, Quality Management, Risk and Humanization Department – Centro Hospitalar de Gaia e Espinho (Portugal). The Spinal Cord Injuries Rehabilitation Unit – Centro de Reabilitação do Norte – Dr. Ferreira Alves, Valadares (Portugal) is specialized in the rehabilitation of spinal cord injury and provides patient-designed assistance at different levels, including inpatients, consultation of outpatients (general and specialized), and using complementary tools and means for diagnostics and therapeutics. MR Cunha develops and coordinates integrative rehabilitation programs that are comprehensive, intensive and tailor-made for each patient and extends her analysis by clinical long-term monitoring. MR Cunha has medical know-how on SCI in general and on the rehabilitative management of SCI patients, in particular, being aware of the challenges of rehabilitative protocols.
Martin E. Schwab
Short bioMartin E. Schwab
Short biography
Martin E. Schwab is Professor of Neuroscience at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine of the University of Zurich, em.Prof. at the Dept. of Health Sciences and Technology of ETH Zurich, and founder and President of the UZH spin-off company Novago Therapeutics Inc. He studied biology in Basel and was a postdoc at Harvard Medical School and the Max-Planck Institute of Psychiatry (Munich). He joined the Brain Research Institute and the Medical Faculty of the University of Zurich as professor and co-director in 1985. His research focuses on the mechanisms of structural and functional plasticity and repair of the injured brain and spinal cord. He pioneered the concept of specific inhibitors of neurite growth as a cause of the absent regeneration of injured fiber tracts in the brain and spinal cord. With his group, he isolated the membrane protein Nogo-A and showed that Nogo-A neutralization leads to fiber regeneration, enhanced plasticity and increased functional recovery after spinal cord or brain injuries in adult rats and monkeys. These results led to currently on-going clinical trials. Martin Schwab has served on many boards of research foundations and academies and received a large number of international prices and awards.
Ronaldo Ichiyama
Short bioRonaldo Ichiyama
Short biography
Ronaldo Ichiyama is Professor of Neural Control of Movement at the School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Leeds. He is an expert in recovery of motor function following spinal cord injuries. Ronaldo Ichiyama completed his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA under the supervision of Prof. Gary Iwamoto, investigating areas in the central nervous system controlling cardiorespiratory function in exercise. He then moved to the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), USA where he studied the effects of locomotor training following spinal cord injuries under the supervision of Prof. V. Reggie Edgerton. While at UCLA, he was also an Associate of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation International Research Consortium. He is now Professor in Neural Control of Movement at the University of Leeds, UK where he investigates the processes underlying the recovery of motor function after spinal cord injuries in both animal and clinical models.