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Final Program


Final Program

Fabrisia Ambrosio, PhD, MPT

Director
Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital/ Harvard Medical School

Dr. Fabrisia Ambrosio is the Atlantic Charter Director of the Discovery Center for Musculoskeletal Recovery at the Schoen Adams Research Institute and associate professor in the Department of PMR at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Ambrosio’s research has the long-term goal of improve tissue healing and functional recovery by bridging physiology and physics across scales—from sub-atomic interactions to organismal function. She has been credited with founding the field of Regenerative Rehabilitation, which integrates rehabilitative strategies with regenerative medicine to enhance tissue regeneration and functional recovery. Since its inception, this paradigm has been applied to diverse models, including osteoarthritis, stroke, and spinal cord injury, and has been recognized by the NIH as a strategic research priority. In 2022, she was inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows, “for outstanding contributions to the field of Regenerative Rehabilitation, integrating applied biophysics and cellular therapeutics to optimize tissue function.”

The Ambrosio lab applies diverse biophysical tools to interrogate cell and tissue behavior, including machine learning to decode age-related signatures in extracellular vesicles, mathematical modeling to optimize therapeutic delivery, and Information Theory to track transcriptional entropy. These studies have earned “Best Paper of the Year” awards, patent applications, and media attention in outlets such as Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and The Scientist. A major focus of her current work centers on mechanisms underlying female aging, including how menopause influences musculoskeletal tissue health. Dr. Ambrosio’s research portfolio has been continuously funded by the NIH, totaling over $30M. Most recently, Dr. Ambrosio has expanded her research into quantum biology, exploring how quantum phenomena guide stem cell behavior, potentially pointing toward another emerging paradigm that, like Regenerative Rehabilitation, seeks to transform our understanding of tissue recovery.

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