David Putrino, Ph.D., P.T.

I am a Physical Therapist with a Ph.D. in Neuroscience. I graduated as a Physical Therapist from Curtin University of Technology with First Class Honors in 2004, and was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Western Australia in 2008 for my work studying the neural control of reaching under the supervision of Soumya Ghosh. Clinically, I have worked with patients in hospitals and private practices in the US, UK, and Australia. As a neuroscientist, I have held academic positions studying computational neuroscience at Harvard Medical School and MIT with Emery Brown, and performing motor control and brain machine interface research at NYU with Esther Gardner and Bijan Pesaran. 

I consider teaching to be an essential part of any faculty position. In Perth, Western Australia, I have held teaching faculty positions at Curtin University of Technology and Edith Cowan University, and was responsible for teaching neuroanatomy and neuropathology to hundreds of students over several years, as well as assisting in course development. In New York, I served for two academic semesters as a teaching assistant for Neuroanatomy classes at the NYU School of Medicine, where I taught neuroanatomy and clinical neuroscience to first year medical students and neuroscience graduate students.  

However, I also believe that scientists have a responsibility to assist in the education of their immediate community in order to engage the public in science and technology research and explain why this is important on a fundamental level. As such, I am a co-founder of StreetSmart Science – a not-for-profit organization that works to connect scientist-mentors with local high schools in order to encourage science enrichment in the city of New York. We are currently working with 3 inner-city high schools in Harlem and the Bronx.

I am also a volunteer at Not Impossible Labs, where I am a member of the “Project Daniel” and “BrainWriter” teams. Also on behalf of Not Impossible, I’m currently involved in designing the International Digital Revolution Exhibit for the BrainWriter's debut at the Barbican Museum of London in July 2014.