A special congratulation to Osher Research affiliate and long-time colleague and collaborator, Dr Vitaly Napadow, for his appointment as the inaugural Director of the Scott Schoen and Nancy Adams Discovery Center for Recovery from Chronic Pain across Spaulding Research Network.
Vitaly Napadow, PhD will be joining SRN as our inaugural Director of the Scott Schoen and Nancy Adams Discovery Center for Recovery from Chronic Pain. The Scott Schoen and Nancy Adams Discovery Center for Recovery from Chronic Pain is one of five Discovery Centers within the Spaulding Research Institute. The Discovery Center’s mission is to accelerate scientific discoveries to identify the physiologic processes that cause chronic pain, to improve individual responses to chronic pain and develop new treatments for chronic pain. Dedicated to transforming rehabilitation medicine from discovery to recovery, Dr. Napadow will lead the charge to advance translational research and restore high level functioning in patients suffering from chronic pain.
Dr. Napadow is a Professor at Harvard Medical School, and received his PhD in biomedical engineering from MIT and Harvard Medical School. He will be joining us from the MGH Department of Radiology/Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, where he completed his post-doc research fellowship in 2004 and has since served as a faculty member. Dr. Napadow is also the Director of the Center for Integrative Pain Neuroimaging (CiPNI) at the Martinos Center, and will continue with cross-institutional collaborations with Martinos Center faculty, retaining a secondary appointment with the HMS/MGH Department of Radiology.
Dr. Napadow’s laboratory has pioneered the application of non-invasive neuroimaging techniques to identify the brain circuitry underlying chronic pain, and to better understand how non-pharmacological therapies, such as transcutaneous neuromodulation, cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness meditation training and acupuncture, can improve the lives of patients suffering from chronic pain. In particular, the Napadow Lab has produced the most extensive publication record for acupuncture neuroimaging research in the world. Dr. Napadow is a licensed acupuncturist, graduating from the New England School of Acupuncture, and has been leading the acupuncture service at the Pain Management Center in the Department of Anesthesiology at BWH since 2006. He has been able to directly translate findings from his research to his clinic’s chronic pain patients via innovative treatment protocols.
In addition, Dr. Napadow has authored patents on transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS), which has led to the licensing of Mass General Brigham-held patents by Cala Health, Inc., a medical device company. He has been awarded multiple R01 and P01 level grants from NIH and other non-profit and for-profit sponsors. Dr. Napadow has more than 200 publications in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals, is past-President of the Society for Acupuncture Research, and serves on the board of the US Association for the Study of Pain (USASP) and numerous conference, journal, and NIH review panels. He was recently named to the Academy Distinguished Investigator Council by the Academy for Radiology & Biomedical Imaging Research and received the Excellence in Integrative Medicine Research Award by the European Society for Integrative Medicine.
Dr. Napadow will join Spaulding on August 1st and the rest of his research team at MGH will join Spaulding on September 1st. Dr. Napadow will continue to work in his lab space at the Martinos Center until completion of his new lab space at SRH late this year/early 2022.