UAB Synopsis, Vol. 25, No. 11, May 22, 2006

UAB Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Director of Neuroscience Rehabilitation Research Marca L. Sipski, MD, has been appointed to the Women’s Committee of the Spain Rehabilitation Center (SRC) Endowed Chair in Rehabilitation Neuroscience Research. The chair, recently established by the University of Alabama Board of Trustees, is the only chair of its kind in the nation located in a department of physical medicine and rehabilitation.

The endowment was established to acknowledge the national and international impact of a Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation faculty member and to enable medical and research staff to expand its research mission to include neuroregeneration. The Women’s Committee, whose members support the SRC by volunteering their time and resources by sharing information and news, assisting with patient activities, and coordinating fund-raising activities, began raising money for the endowment in 1996.

Dr. Sipski, first holder of the chair, specializes in women’s issues and translational research in spinal cord injury. She is president of the American Spinal Injury Association and serves on the National Advisory Board on Medical Rehabilitation Research. She also has served as guest editor for Topics in SCI Rehabilitation and Neurorehabilitation, is associate editor of Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development and is on the editorial boards of Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy and Spinal Cord.

Dr. Sipski joins UAB from the University of Miami, where she established a new Department of Rehabilitation Medicine and directed a federally funded project to establish a regional spinal cord injury system, one of 16 in the nation.

A graduate of Pennsylvania State University, Dr. Sipski completed her MD degree at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, followed by a rehabilitation medicine internship and residency at Thomas Jefferson University. She is also an alumna of the Executive Leadership Program in Academic Medicine sponsored by Drexel College of Medicine.