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CENTER DIRECTOR
Walter M. High, Ph.D.
713-666-9550

Center Director
Walter M. High, Jr., PhD

Director of Research
Angelle M. Sander, PhD

Director of Training
Karen A. Hart, PhD

Collaborators
Charles Contant, PhD
H. Julia Hannay, PhD
Harvey Levin, PhD
Claudia Robertson, MD
Margaret A. Struchen, PhD

Walter M. High, JR., PhD, is a neuropsychologist and has been the Principal Investigator of the TBI Model System Research Program since 1994. He has been the Director of Research for the RRTC on Rehabilitation Interventions since 1993 and became Principal Investigator and Project Director in 1996 following the retirement of  Dr. Don Lehmkuhl. He is the Director of the Brain Injury Research Center of TIRR. Dr. High is Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Baylor College of Medicine and is Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, UT-HMS and in the Department of Psychology at the University of Houston. He has published and presented many papers on brain injury rehabilitation, and has been an invited speaker at many national brain injury conferences. Dr. High directs the day-to-day operations of the RRTC.

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Angelle M. Sander, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Baylor College of Medicine and is Associate Director of TIRR”S Brain Injury Research Center. She is a licensed neuropsychologist who specializes in the area of TBI but also has experience with a variety of neuropsychological disorders, including epilepsy and stroke. Dr. Sander’s research interests include the assessment and prediction of outcome after TBI and the impact of TBI on the family. She is currently principal investigator for a multicenter grant investigating the impact of the family environment on patient and family outcome after TBI. Dr. Sander is also the principal investigator on a Model System project investigating the impact of extended case management on vocational outcome. She is Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Houston, where she co-teaches a course on Neuropsychological Rehabilitation.

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Karen A. Hart, PhD, is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Vice President for Education at TIRR. Dr. Hart is also Director of Education for the Departments of PM&R at Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas-Houston Medical School and in that capacity oversees the residency and fellowship training programs for the largest PM&R residency program in the United States. She has been Director of Training for three RRTC's over the past 15 years (RRTC for Community-Oriented Services for Persons with Spinal Cord Injury (SCI), RRTC on Community Integration of Individuals with SCI, and RRTC on Rehabilitation Interventions Following TBI). For the past four years she has served as Center Co-Director on the RRTC for Community Integration of Individuals with SCI. Dr. Hart is past President of the National Association of Rehabilitation Research and Training Centers and is a past President of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Dr. Hart oversees the day-to-day operation of the training projects.

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Charles Contant, PhD, is a Biomedical Statistician with extensive experience in the field of TBI. Dr. Contant is Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine and has been the primary biostatistician on many medical and behavioral clinical trials involving persons with TBI.

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H. Julia Hannay, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at the University of Houston where she is the Director of neuropsychology track of the APA accredited clinical psychology doctoral program. Dr. Hannay is a Past-President of the International Neuropsychological Society and has played a prominent role in establishing standards of training for neuropsychologists. Dr. Hannay's research interests and expertise includes visuospatial processing, cerebral blood flow, animal behavior, acute physiological predicators of outcome following TBI, to rehabilitation. Dr. Hannay is the primary neuropsychologist for the NICU at Ben Taub General Hospital. She has participated in a randomized clinical trial comparing the efficacy of neurosurgical protocols for preventing anoxic/ischemic events. She has been a principal collaborator with the RRTC on Rehabilitation Interventions Following TBI for the past 5 years. Dr. Hannay will oversee all of the assessment portions of the projects examining the factors influencing outcome following mild TBI and the randomized clinical treatment trial for persons with mild TBI.

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Harvey Levin, PhD, is Research Director of TIRR as well as for the Departments of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation of Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas Health Science Center. Dr. Levin is a past President of the International Neuropsychological Society. His work has elucidated the relationship of the pathophysiology of brain injury, including the utilization of magnetic resonance imaging to characterize focal brain lesions and tissue loss, to the neurobehavioral sequelae in children and adults, and quality of life issues. His work in mild TBI has been seminal.  Dr. Levin is the Principal Investigator on a NIDRR collaborative grant to study the effects of Ritalin on working memory. He is also the Principal Investigator of a CDC grant to study the incidence of depression following mild TBI. Dr. Levin's research has also produced widely used assessment instruments, including the Galveston Orientation and Amnesia Test to evaluate posttraumatic amnesia, and the Neurobehavioral Rating Scale which measures behavioral disturbance after brain injury. Dr. Levin is the Principal Investigator on the randomized treatment trial comparing errorless learning and trial-and-error learning in children with TBI.

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Claudia Robertson, MD, is Medical Director of the Neurosurgical Intensive Care Unit at Ben Taub General Hospital and Professor in the Neurosurgery Department of Baylor College of Medicine. Her research interests include acute care management of traumatic brain injury, cerebral blood flow physiology, and nutritional support of trauma patients. Dr. Robertson has an international reputation of research in these areas and is currently a principal investigator on an NIH-NINDS program project grant entitled "Vascular Mechanisms of Secondary Insults After Severe Traumatic Brain Injury." The studies funded by this grant will be investigation the role of nitric oxide in the cerebral blood flow abnormalities that occur after brain injury.

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Margaret A. Struchen, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Baylor College of Medicine and a Clinical Neuropsychologist at the Brain Injury Research Center of TIRR. She is a licensed psychologist who specializes in the area of clinical neuropsychology, with an emphasis on traumatic brain injury (TBI) and rehabilitation. Dr. Struchen's research interests include the assessment and prediction of outcome following rehabilitation, the assessment of social skills following TBI, and the development of clinical intervention programs for rehabilitation. She is currently Principal Investigator for a NIDRR field-initiated grant investigating the development of social communication assessment instruments and the relationship between social skills functioning and outcome following TBI. Dr. Struchen is also Co-Investigator for the NIDRR Rehabilitation Research and Training Center grant (RRTC) on Rehabilitation Interventions following TBI. She is responsible for overseeing the day-to-day assessment and data collection portions of a risk factor study of poor outcome following mild TBI, as well as for the design and implementation of a randomized clinical trial of rehabilitation services for this population. Dr. Struchen is also an Adjunct Professor of Psychology at the University of Houston, where she co-teaches a graduate course on neuropsychological rehabilitation.

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