2018 Award Recipient

The NDNG Awards Task Force is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2018 Women in Neurodegenerative Disease Rehabilitation Science Award is Sonya Kim, CRC, PhD. Dr. Kim is a research scientist at the NYU School of Medicine where she has a joint appointment as an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology and in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine. She is an early career clinical psychologist, a certified rehabilitation counselor and has board certification in biofeedback. As the pioneering force behind the use of heart rate variability biofeedback to improve emotional regulation for individuals with severe and chronic brain injury, Dr. Kim’s major research interests include cognitive deficits in multiple sclerosis, chronic TBI, and exploring mechanisms and interventions that help rehabilitate functioning post-brain injury.

Dr. Kim has published and presented on the importance of the lived experience as a framework for clinical care and research. She has served as PI in a grant-funded study to develop a post-traumatic growth (PTG) scale in partners of individuals with multiple sclerosis and was recently awarded a grant by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society to conduct a psychometric validation of this PTG scale for partners of persons with MS. Dr. Kim also serves on the editorial board of the Rehabilitation Psychology Journal.