The NSF DARE Conference: Transformative Opportunities for Modeling in Neurorehabilitation was held for two days at the University of Southern California on March 3-4, 2023, co-hosted by the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the University of Washington. The DARE Conference was funded in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Engineering through the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems’ (ENG/CBET) Disability and Rehabilitation Engineering (DARE) Program (2240277), and by National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Center/Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
This conference brought together leading engineers, clinicians, computational scientists, rehabilitation researchers, and client advocates to discuss the state of the science and identify transformative opportunities for computational modeling to advance neurorehabilitation. This hybrid in-person & remote conference featured keynote speakers, poster sessions, podium presentations, and a banquet dinner at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
The Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation (JNER) now publishes four peer-reviewed position papers resulting from this conference as a key dissemination product for the benefit and information of the community. These position papers seek to provide a broad perspective with contributors that include NSF and NIH officials, practicing clinicians, established leaders in this field, and early-career leaders.
The Principal Investigator of the DARE Conference was Francisco Valero-Cuevas, with the critical contribution of Co-Investigators James Finley, Amy Orsborn and Katherine Steele, Executive Manager Natalie Fung, and the Advisory Board consisting of Jennifer L. Hicks, He (Helen) Huang, David Reinkensmeyer, Nicolas Schweighofer, and Douglas Weber.