IPBIS Board Members

Beth Wicks is an Education Consultant, specialising in acquired brain injury (ABI). She has worked with young people with acquired brain injury, their families and schools for over 30 years. She acted in an advisory and training capacity to education providers and completed expert witness reports for the court. She has retired from those aspects of her work but continues to work on specific projects.

She has been involved in research regarding school difficulties following acquired brain injuries, spoken regularly at national and international conferences and has written or co-authored many publications, including the textbooks: Educating Children with Acquired Brain Injuries (now in Second Edition) and Effective Learning After Acquired Brain Injury: a practical guide to support adults with neurological conditions. She has co-authored material to support young people with ABI and their families for the Child Brain Injury Trust.

She has been a consultant to a number of innovative projects and programmes for young people with acquired brain injury and regularly contributed teaching sessions for post graduate courses in paediatric neurodisability and neuropsychology.

She was a member of the Criminal Justice and Acquired Brain Injury Interest Group; has previously run family and teenage support groups and has acted as a board member, trustee or advisor for a number of UK ABI charities.

Dr Mark Linden is a lecturer in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland. He holds degrees in psychology and neuropsychology from Queen’s University and The University of London. Mark has worked in the area of brain injury research for nine years and has published his work at both the national and international levels. His research focuses on the social and cognitive impact of paediatric brain injury on the child, family and the social world.

To date these projects have encompassed the social inclusion of children with brain injuries, public perceptions and understanding of brain injury and the use of technology to promote inclusion. Mark sits on the editorial board of the journal Disability and Rehabilitation and is a Trustee of the UK wide charity The Child Brain Injury Trust.

Nick Reed completed his Bachelor of Kinesiology at McMaster University, his Masters of Science in Occupational Therapy within the Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the University of Toronto, and his PhD within the Graduate Department of Rehabilitation Science at the University of Toronto.

Nick joined the Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the University of Toronto as an Associate Professor in August, 2019. Previously, Nick was a Senior Clinician Scientist within the Bloorview Research Institute, Co-Director of the Concussion Centre and the Holland Family Chair in Acquired Brain Injury at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital. Nick remains an Adjunct Scientist within the Bloorview Research Institute at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital.

His work focuses on developing, delivering and evaluating research, educational and clinical programming specific to youth and concussion. His passion is helping youth do the things they need, want and love to do in their lives.

In addition to his research and clinical work, Dr. Reed has lived a life immersed in competitive sport, and more specifically, competitive contact sport. Playing competitive lacrosse from the age of five, he has participated at all levels of the sport and has spent 12 years coaching minor lacrosse within the Toronto area.

Eli Gunnarson’s main competence and clinical interest within child neurology is the field of acquired brain injuries (ABI) in childhood and adolescence. Since about 10 years, and currently, she has been in charge of the multidisciplinary rehabilitation teams for Acquired brain injuries at Astrid Lindgren Children’s Hospital at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden.

As a senior consultant in child neurology in the clinic her main responsibility is the medical and neurological assessments and follow-ups as well as neurorehabilitation after all ABIs, including TBI, cerebral stroke, CNS infection, CNS inflammation, brain tumours, anoxic brain injuries and other acquired injuries in brain and spinal cord in the greater Stockholm area. She has taken part of and contributed to the development of three specific multidisciplinary neurorehabilitation teams providing a chain of care for children from the acute, hospital phase, following the patient through all phases of care and rehabilitation. The follow-up programs run throughout adolescence and include a special unit for preschool and school-based rehabilitation outside the hospital setting, where children receive individualized school-oriented neurorehabilitation after the hospital care and before returning full-time to their ordinary school environment and activities.

Dr Carol Hawley is Honorary Principal Research Fellow at Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick and at the Emergency Department at University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire. She has been carrying out research into brain injury since 1991 and her PhD was on health, social and psychological outcomes after brain injury. She has had the privilege of assessing and working with many hundreds of children, their parents, adolescents and adults who have had a brain injury, and thus has a wealth of experience.

She is a founding board member of IPBIS. She is a member of the Board of Governors of the International Brain Injury Association (IBIA), a member of the Management Committee of the World Federation of Neurological Rehabilitation (WFNR). She also chairs the WFNR Special Interest Group on Driving with Neurological Conditions. In the UK she is a member of the Criminal Justice and Acquired Brain Injury Interest Group and past Chair of the Professional Reference Group of the Child Brain Injury Trust.

Particular research interests are the epidemiology of minor head injury; outcomes after brain injury; education after brain injury; evaluation of interventions; positive psychological growth after head trauma; and the quality and consistency of advice and information given to parents and young people after head trauma.

Dr Mathilde Chevignard is a Medical Doctor specialising in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. She has been working in the field of childhood acquired brain injury for over 15 years, in a Rehabilitation Department devoted to Children and Adolescents with Acquired Neurological Injury, and in an Outreach team devoted to children, adolescents and young adults who sustained Acquired Brain Injury, in the Saint Maurice Hospital in the Paris area, France

The rehabilitation department has been set up and organised to provide specialised care for children with acquired neurological injury since 1986, and provides in- and outpatient care, as well as very long term follow-up on outpatient clinics (until transition to adult services, when the patients tend to finish school and studies and enter the workforce). The outreach team was set up in 1997, to meet specific complex delayed issues arising when patients are back in school, need to determine vocational training and become independent and enter the workforce.

She is a board member of the French Speaking Neuropsychological Society. Her research focus is predominantly on outcome assessment and interventions aimed at improving everyday functioning, participation and quality of life following childhood acquired brain injury, mainly in TBI, brain tumours and childhood stroke. She has particular interest in the field of ecological assessment of cognitive and behavioural deficits, and the organisation of transition to adult services following childhood brain injury.

Dr. Rajendra Prasad – more information to be added

Linda Ewing-Cobbs, Ph.D. is a Professor of Pediatrics and the Harriet and Joe Foster Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience in the Children’s Learning Institute and Department of Pediatrics at the McGovern Medical School, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, USA.

Dr. Ewing-Cobbs received her graduate degrees in Clinical Neuropsychology from the University of Houston. She directs multidisciplinary clinics providing diagnostic assessment services to children and adults with acquired or developmental differences. Collaborative nationally funded research projects involved assessment of cognitive, psychological health, and structural neuroimaging outcomes following TBI in infants, children, adolescents, and adults. Intervention studies included randomized clinical trials testing interventions for children with preterm birth, reading difficulties, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Current research interests include outcome assessment for cellular therapy trials in TBI and developing eHealth interventions for injured children with post-traumatic stress symptoms.

Andreas Meyer-Heim is the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of the Swiss Children’s Rehab of the University Children’s Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland. He is a Professor at the University of Zurich (UZH) and associated lecturer at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHaW) and Careum Zurich in the field of paediatric rehabilitation.
He is past-chair and board member of the Swiss Academy of Childhood Disability (SACD), past board member of the Swiss Society of NeuroRehabilitation (SGNR), associated member of the Competence Center for Rehabilitation Engineering and Science (RESC) of the ETH Zurich and board member of the Swiss Cerebral Foundation. In his research he focuses on novel therapeutic approaches for sensory-motor learning in children with acquired brain injuries and neurodisabilities. His special interest is in the development, clinical application and effectiveness of a variety of therapies in paediatric rehabilitation especially robot-assisted and computer-based methods.

Sandra obtained her Physical Therapist B.Sc. in 1989 and her Medical Degree in 1996 at the University of Udine (IT). In 2002, she specialized in Neurology at the University of Milan (IT). Since 2001 she has been working at the Scientific Institute Eugenio Medea, Bosisio Parini, LC, Italy.

She is involved in the care and clinical management and rehabilitation of children and young adults who suffered head injury, brain tumor, post anoxic, vascular and post-infectious events. As a specialist in rehabilitation, she follows the course from the acute phase up to family, school or social re-entry. At Scientific Institute Eugenio Medea, rehabilitation is provided on a need basis, according to the severity and complexity of the clinical picture, and is aimed at helping the patients achieving the highest possible level of recovery, independently of specific interventions. To this end, an early and integrated approach is taken.

Since 2005 Sandra is Head of Brain Injury Unit and since 2015 she is Head of Neurorehabilitation Departments at Scientific Institute Eugenio Medea. She is Adjunct Professor of Neurology, Università Statale di Milano, Milan, Italy. Sandra has been the holder of several research grants on acquired brain injury.

Leigh Schrieff is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cape Town, in South Africa. She is a registered neuropsychologist in South Africa. She researches and teaches in the area of paediatric neuropsychology, primarily in traumatic brain injury (her area of expertise and the focus of her PhD research) and more recently on the neuropsychology of HIV infection in children. She convenes the Honours in Psychology program in her department and alongside that supervises and teaches on the paediatric component of the Masters in Clinical Neuropsychology in her department. She has supervised a number of postgraduate students (from honours to doctoral level) to date in the above-mentioned fields. Besides research experience, she has a great deal of clinical experience in the field of paediatric neuropsychology more generally. Most of her publications to date have been in the area of paediatric traumatic brain injury. She has also presented her own and some of her students’ work, either alongside them or on their behalf, at various national and international conferences.

Miriam Beauchamp, PhD is Full Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Montreal and Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Centre where she leads the ABCs developmental neuropsychology laboratory. She holds the Canada Research Chair in Paediatric Traumatic Brain Injury. In 2017, she was recognized as Quebec’s most promising early career researcher (Prix du Québec – Relève scientifique). She was awarded early career awards from both the International Neuropsychological Society (2015) and the International Brain Injury Association (2019), and was inducted to the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada in November 2019. Her work has been featured in over 125 publications.

Her clinical research program in paediatric traumatic brain injury focuses on the cognitive and social manifestations of childhood concussion/TBI and the use of advanced neuroimaging techniques for improving lesion detection. She has a particular interest in the diagnosis, outcome, remediation and prevention of TBI sustained during early childhood. In parallel, her work at the crossroads of social neuroscience and neuropsychology informs the development of novel social cognition assessment methods and targeted interventions for children at-risk for cognitive, social or behavioural problems.

I am a practicing Clinical Psychologist specialising in paediatric neuropsychology and Senior Lecturer engaged in brain injury research and teaching. Since my PhD and clinical training I have worked in both inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation services for young people with moderate to severe acquired brain injury. My research and clinical interests include cognitive rehabilitation, trajectories of development, multi-disciplinary team approaches to post-acute brain injury rehabilitation, and the practice of paediatric neuropsychology. I am particularly interested in support for learning in the educational context for children and young people with acquired brain injury.

I enjoy many aspects of collaborative research and clinical practice in this field but I particularly enjoy meeting and working alongside children, young people and their families. I am delighted to serve as an IPBIS Board Member as we work together to improve the lives of young people and their families affected by brain injury.

Dr. Frederike van Markus-Doornbosch is a physiatrist specializing in pediatric rehabilitation medicine at Basalt Rehabilitation in The Hague, The Netherlands. She has been working with children and young adults with acquired brain injury for 15 years. In 2014 she initiated a new outpatient clinic for adolescents aged 14 to 25 years with specific attention for the long-term effects of pediatric brain injury and the transition to adulthood including vocational assessment, increasing social skills and physical activity.

From 2012-2020 she was a PhD student at the Leiden University Medical Center in The Netherlands and received her PhD entitled “Fatigue and Physical Activity in Children and Adolescents with Acquired Brain Injury” in March of 2020. She works as a post-doc researcher in a multicenter research project focusing on gaining more insight into fatigue, participation and family impact in youth with ABI, developing a national treatment program for youth with ABI and developing regional collaboration between hospitals, education, rehabilitation care and community services.

She is a member of the Dutch national group for pediatric brain injury where pediatric physiatrists and neuropsychologists as well as researchers collaborate to develop evidence-based care for children with ABI.

Kimberly Davis, PhD, ABPP is an Assistant Professor in the Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), Department of Pediatrics, Division of Psychology and a Board Certified Neuropsychologist at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, Texas. Dr. Davis is the Attending Neuropsychologist on the Texas Children’s Hospital Inpatient Rehabilitation Unit where she provides comprehensive assessment, consultation, and family education for children, adolescents, and young adults with recently acquired brain injury. She has also established clinical services and pre-doctoral/postdoctoral training curricula for inpatient neuropsychological consultation and outpatient pediatric cognitive rehabilitation. Beyond her work as a clinician-educator, Dr. Davis leads a number of intraprofessional collaborations aiming to enhance care for youth with acquired brain injury. In addition to her role as Board Member for the International Pediatric Brain Injury Society (IPBIS), she also serves as the Vice President of the Pediatric Rehabilitation Neuropsychology Collaborative (PRNC), sits on the board of the International Neuropsychological Society Brain Injury Special Interest Group, and contributes to workgroups through the International Pediatric Rehabilitation Collaborative (IPRC) and American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM). Dr. Davis’ research interests have centered on long-term outcomes of pediatric acquired brain injury, cognitive rehabilitation in pediatric brain conditions, and the role of neuropsychology in acute brain injury recovery.

Brenda Eagan-Johnson, EdD, CBIS-AP has worked in the field of pediatric brain injury for over two decades. She is the State Director for Pennsylvania’s BrainSTEPS Brain Injury School Consulting Program, which is a nationally recognized model. She also serves as a consultant for a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) funded study related to BrainSTEPS student outcomes. The Colorado Department of Education adopted the BrainSTEPS model in 2016. Spearheading development and creation of PA’s Return to Learn Concussion Management Team Model, she has trained over 3,000+ school-based teams in PA and CO.

Dr. Eagan-Johnson received her bachelor’s degree in Education from Wittenberg University in Ohio. She obtained teaching certifications in Elementary Education, Special Education (K-12), and Reading. Dr. Eagan-Johnson obtained her master’s degree in Special Education Transition & Brain Injury from the George Washington University in Washington, DC and her doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in Mind, Brain, and Teaching (educational neuroscience) in Maryland. Dr. Eagan-Johnson is also an Instructor at GWU for the Graduate School of Education and Human Development, teaching brain injury coursework.

Dr. Eagan-Johnson also serves on the Board of Governors for the Academy of Certified Brain Injury Specialists under the Brain Injury Association of America. She serves on the executive board for the National Collaborative on Children’s Brain Injury. Dr. Eagan-Johnson is a Certified Brain Injury Specialist with Advanced Practice in NeuroRehabilitation (CBIS-AP), is published in pediatric brain injury & special education, regularly presents at the state, national, & international levels, and has received multiple state and national awards for her work. In 2022, she was awarded the prestigious Voogt Award in NYC sponsored by the North American Brain Injury Society and the International Brain Injury Association. Dr. Eagan-Johnson is also an active member of the ENIGMA Brain Injury IPV group and Pink Concussions professional advisory board. Her brother sustained a severe traumatic brain injury when they were young teenagers, which is where her passion in the field began.