Kristen Dams-O'Connor, PhD

Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine and Neurology, Director of Brain Injury Research Center
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
New York, New York

Kristen Dams-O’Connor, Ph.D. is Director of the Brain Injury Research Center of Mount Sinai and Professor in the Departments of Rehabilitation Medicine and Neurology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, NY. She completed a Bachelor’s degree in Behavioral Neuroscience at Colgate University, a PhD at the University at Albany, doctoral training at the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine at New York University Medical Center and then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Neuropsychology at Mount Sinai Medical Center.
Her clinical expertise is in neuropsychological assessment and intervention for individuals with neurological diseases. An expert in neurobehavioral interventions, including cognitive remediation and compensatory strategy training, she was a founding author of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine Cognitive Rehabilitation Manual and has provided training in the delivery of evidence-based cognitive interventions for thousands of clinicians across the world.
Dr. Dams-O’Connor’s research is focused on applying modern psychometric and statistical techniques to measure individual differences in trajectories of change over time among survivors of TBI and identifying mechanisms, risk and protective factors for post-traumatic neurodegeneration. She leads the Late Effects of TBI (LETBI) Project, a TBI brain donor program focused on characterizing the clinical phenotype and postmortem pathological signatures of post-traumatic dementia and their associations with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. She is also Project Director of the New York Traumatic Brain Injury Model System of care, one of 16 centers of excellence for TBI research in the United States. Her research is currently supported by federal grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Institute for Disability Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research, Department of Defense, Centers for Disease Control, and Patient Reported Outcomes Research Institute. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts and chapters on traumatic brain injury treatments and outcomes, and has presented her research internationally.

Presentation(s):

• Updated ACRM Case Definition of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (848538)

  Wednesday, October 21, 2020
  12:45 PM – 2:00 PM EST

• CHAUTAUQUA: Opioid Use Following TBI: A Perfect Storm (864042)

  Thursday, October 22, 2020
  11:00 AM – 12:15 PM EST

• Brain Injury Interdisciplinary Special Interest Group Summit (1406490)

  Thursday, October 22, 2020
  12:30 PM – 1:45 PM EST

• Factors associated with successful discharge among older adults with traumatic brain injury in skilled nursing facilities.

  Thursday, October 22, 2020
  3:30 PM – 3:47 PM EST

• Scoping Review of Opioid Use Following TBI

  Thursday, October 22, 2020
  4:10 PM – 4:27 PM EST

• Predictors of Neurobehavioral Symptoms After TBI for Special Operations Forces (SOF) vs Non-SOF Service Members/Veterans: A VA TBI Model Systems Study

  Thursday, October 22, 2020
  3:50 PM – 4:07 PM EST

• Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy: New NINDS Consensus Diagnostic Criteria for Traumatic Encephalopathy Syndrome with LIVE VIDEO DISCUSSION (live discussion to begin at 11:40 AM ET) (819418)

  Friday, October 23, 2020
  11:00 AM – 12:15 PM EST