Sahana Kukke, Ph.D.

Job Title
Program Director, Neural Engineering
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Division
Division of Neuroscience
Cluster
Repair & Plasticity
Contact
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Dr. Sahana Kukke is a Program Director in the Repair and Plasticity Cluster in the Division of Neuroscience. She received her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University, her M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University, and her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Stanford University. Her graduate research focused on neurophysiological mechanisms of impairment, sensorimotor control, and neurorehabilitation in children with dystonia due to cerebral palsy and adults with spinal cord injury. Dr. Kukke completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the NIH Division of Intramural Research in Rehabilitation Medicine and Human Motor Control, where she further studied childhood-onset dystonia from neurophysiological, biomechanical, and behavioral perspectives. Prior to arriving at NIH as a Program Director, she was an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Catholic University of America. She taught undergraduate and graduate students, directed the Neuromotor Control Lab, and co-managed the Neuroscience Minor program. She received funding from NIDILRR to study the development of sensorimotor control using sensorized toys and video assessment in infants with and without early brain injury. As a Program Director, Dr. Kukke manages a portfolio of research awards and cooperative agreements focused on Neural Engineering in NINDS and in the BRAIN Initiative. The portfolio includes research with neural interface technologies that record, modulate or stimulate neural activity, research on neural repair and plasticity, novel biomaterials for repair, bioengineering applied to the nervous system, cerebrospinal fluid shunts, intracranial pressure management, and development of diagnostic and therapeutic devices.