The KITE Senior Scientist will be responsible for advancing spinal cord injury research at UHN.
We are pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. José Zariffa as holder of the KITE Chair in Spinal Cord Injury Research at UHN, a joint Hospital-University Named Chair between the University Health Network and the University of Toronto (UofT), for a five-year term, effective April 1, 2024.
The KITE Chair in Spinal Cord Injury Research was initially established in December 2007 thanks to the kind and thoughtful generosity of a variety of donors to Toronto Rehabilitation Institute.
Dr. Zariffa is a Senior Scientist at the KITE Research Institute, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, UHN, and an Associate Professor in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at UofT. He obtained his PhD from UofT in Electrical and Biomedical Engineering. He then completed post-doctoral fellowships at the International Collaboration On Repair Discoveries (ICORD) in Vancouver, Canada, and at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute.
Dr. Zariffa's research interests focus on neuroprosthetics and technology for upper limb neurorehabilitation. His team conducts projects ranging from direct interfaces with peripheral nerves for monitoring neural signals, to wearable sensors that can capture a person's interactions with the world around them. They aim to develop tools that can provide detailed information about movement control and performance in varied contexts from the clinic to the community. Areas of application include closed-loop neuroprosthetic and neuromodulation systems, and the evaluation and optimization of neurorehabilitation interventions, such as rehabilitation robotics and other activity-based programs. Dr. Zariffa's team was awarded the Grand Prize in the Spinal Cord Rehab Innovation Challenge, a national competition focused on new tools to measure rehab activities and their impact.
Please join us in thanking our generous donors to Toronto Rehab who enabled the establishment of this Chair, and in congratulating Dr. Zariffa on this prestigious appointment.
Sincerely,
Dr. Milos Popovic
Director, KITE Research Institute
Toronto Rehabilitation Institute
Dr. Mark Bayley
Dr. Mark Bayley, Physiatrist-in-Chief and Program Medical Director
Toronto Rehabilitation Institute