Dr. J.R. Rizzo is a physician scientist at NYU Langone Medical Center’s Rusk Rehabilitation Institute, where he is an Assistant Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation with a cross-appointment in the Department of Neurology. He leads the Visuomotor Integration Laboratory where his team focuses on eye-hand coordination as it relates to acquired brain injury and the Technology Translation in Medicine Laboratory, where the focus is on assistive technology for the visually impaired and benefits from his own personal experiences with vision loss. He recently completed an R03 grant through the National Institute of Aging, as a GEMSSTAR Scholar, focusing his research goals on eye-hand coordination in elderly stroke, and is completing a K12 award, as an RMSTP Fellow, focusing on visuomotor integration in brain injury. He has funding at the federal, state, municipal and foundational levels. He has numerous peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, in addition to domestic and international patents filed for his rehabilitation tools. An honors graduate in neuroscience at NYU, he completed medical school on scholarship at New York Medical College and was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor’s Society Iota Chapter. He completed his residency, including a chief year, at NYU’s Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation Program where he subsequently was awarded funding to complete a clinical research fellowship at Rusk.
In the second part of this Grand Rounds presentation Dr. Rizzo continues his description of a pilot research project involving chronic stroke patients who were recruited from outpatient clinics. The investigation included eye tracking while simultaneously recording motion capture of patients’ limbs. He indicates how eye errors correlate with limb errors in this study and mentioned some cognitive implications derived from the project. A question and answer period followed his presentation.
