BI-ISIG Award Winners

Submitted by: Donna Langenbahn, PhD, FACRM

In its commitment to support early career involvement, each year the Brain Injury Interdisciplinary Special Interest Group (BI-ISIG) awards Early Career Scholarships to attend the ACRM Mid-Year Meeting (MYM). To be eligible for one of these scholarships, the individual must be within 5 years of completion of training (e.g., terminal degree, post-degree internship or fellowship), and planning to attend the MYM.

Award recipients are introduced at the MYM BI-ISIG Business Meeting, where they also learn about the ongoing projects of the 8 very active BI-ISIG task forces. Participation in task forces is strongly encouraged, as is taking the opportunity to network and collaborate with experienced brain injury professionals.

This year, four Early Career members of the BI-ISIG received a scholarship award of $400 to help allay travel expenses to the 2015 MYM in Indianapolis, IN. Award recipients are:

Felicia Connor, PsyD

Dr. Connor was previously at DuPont Children’s Hospital in Wilmington, DE and joined Rusk Rehabilitation, in New York, as a staff psychologist in January 2015. Dr. Connor is currently a member of the Pediatric/Adolescent, Cognitive Rehabilitation, and Mild-TBI Task Forces. She notes excitement at making BI-ISIG connections with colleagues who share her interests, and that she now reads research articles more critically, reviews current research, and brainstorms with other professionals about areas of research needing attention.

Mary Alexis Iaccarino, MD

Dr. Iaccarino is a physiatry resident at Harvard/Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, MA, and will be the 2015-2016 Spaulding Neurorehabilitation Fellow. Dr. Iaccarino expresses strong clinical and research interests in mTBI, particularly sport-related head injury, and thus her primary BI-ISIG focus lies with the Mild TBI Task Force.

She joined ACRM and the BI-ISIG because of her goal of pursuing clinical research in mTBI within her home institutions, as well as collaborating with others nationwide.

Maria Kajankova, PhD

Dr. Kajankova is a second-year post-doctoral fellow in clinical research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. Dr. Kajankova attended the Cognitive Rehabilitation Task Force meeting at the 2014 ACRM Annual Conference. Having trained on the systematic review process with Marcel Dijkers, she anticipates involvement in various systematic reviews being completed by the task force. She was excited to attend the MYM, meet task force members, familiarize herself with ongoing projects, and take steps to get involved.

Quratulain Khan, PhD

Dr. Khan will complete a post-doctoral fellowship at JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute, Edison, NJ this year. Dr. Khan is currently involved in the BI-ISIG Cognitive Rehabilitation Task Force, where she serves as a reviewer for the evidence-based review of cognitive rehabilitation treatments for TBI and stroke. Within ACRM, she is also a member of the Early Career Networking Group. As she nears completion of her clinical residency, she will seek to expand her involvement in the BI-ISIG and its task forces.

The BI-ISIG membership was thrilled to welcome these early career individuals to the MYM in Indianapolis and anticipates working with them in current and future projects.