Kristen Dams-O’Connor, Ph.D. is the Director of the Brain Injury Research Center (BIRC) of Mount Sinai, an internationally recognized program for traumatic brain injury (TBI) research and care. She is the Jack Nash Professor and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Rehabilitation and Human Performance, and Professor of Neurology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS). She completed a BA in Neuroscience at Colgate University, a PhD at the University at Albany, and predoctoral training at the Rusk Institute at NYU. She completed postdoctoral fellowship in clinical neuropsychology and brain injury research and joined the faculty at ISMMS as an Assistant Professor in 2011.  

 Dr. Dams-O’Connor’s multidisciplinary program of research aims to improve long-term outcomes in individuals with TBI and repetitive head impacts sustained through sports, military service, and intimate partner violence (IPV). The Late Effects of TBI (LETBI) project is a longitudinal prospective TBI brain donor program that aims to characterize the clinical phenotype and postmortem pathological signatures of post-traumatic neurodegeneration to facilitate in-vivo diagnostics. The ‘Leveraging Existing Aging Research Networks to understand associations of TBI and AD (LEARN TBI-AD)’ project aims to harmonize data across 5 of the largest longitudinal studies of cognitive aging in the United States. The ENRICH Brain Health Focused Program Award spans 5 research projects investigating clinical and pathological signatures of post-traumatic neurodegeneration, psychological health decline, and suicide risk in civilians and Veterans with TBI. The New York Traumatic Brain Injury Model System of care is one of 16 centers of excellence for TBI research and clinical care in the United States. Her research has been supported by federal grants from the DoD, NIH, NIDILRR, CDC, and PCORI. She has authored over 200 scientific publications and is the recipient of awards for her research, mentorship, and brain injury advocacy.