Michelle Johnson

Michelle J. Johnson, Ph.D., is currently a tenured Associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University of Pennsylvania.  She has secondary appointments as an Associate professor in the departments of Bioengineering and in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics. She has a Bachelor’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, with an emphasis in mechatronics, robotics, and design, from Stanford University.  She completed a NSF-NATO post-doctoral fellowship at the Advanced Robotics Technology and Systems Laboratory at the Scuola Superiore Santana in Italy. She directs the Rehabilitation Robotic Laboratory located at the Pennsylvania Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine. The lab is also affiliated with the General Robotics Automated Sensing Perception (GRASP) Lab. Dr. Johnson’s lab specializes in the design, development, and therapeutic use of novel, affordable, intelligent robotic assistants for rehabilitation in high and low-resource environments with an emphasis on using robotics and sensors to quantify upper limb motor function in adults and children with brain injury or at risk for brain injury. The lab has now a satellite lab in Botswana and actively collaborates with international partners in Mexico, Costa Rica, Italy and Jamaica.