Cleveland FES Center

04/16/2026

Monday, April 20 is a special event honoring Limb Loss and Limb Difference Awareness Month at Cleveland VA Medical Center. Come visit us outside the Canteen from 10 am-1pm where we'll be sharing an information table with the Advanced Platform Technology Center, talking about research directions and goals. Stop by and chat with us!

04/15/2026

We offer our members a whole Bioethics Team-- these experts are available to help our investigators build comprehensive studies by contributing to the ethics considerations of the work. Find out more about the Team at https://fescenter.org/test/research-and-participants/bioethics/

04/10/2026

We're so excited to again support the Paralyzed Veterans of America, Buckeye Chapter Wheelchair Games, coming up on April 24-25 at SPIRE Academy. Sign up to volunteer for an event or come out to cheer on the athletes!

If you're able please come watch our athletes compete in the Buckeye Games in April!

04/08/2026

Wonderful First Tuesday Seminar this week with PhD student Raegan Gouker and Case Western Reserve University Associate Professor Anne Bryden. A bioethics-oriented topic, Raegan shared ethical considerations around studies using neuromodulation technology to treat female sexual dysfunction after neurological injury. An outstanding presentation and discussion. Thank you to our presenters and attendees and to the FES Center Bioethics Team for organizing!

04/02/2026

FES investigator James Sulzer and his team are changing lives through this rehabilitation-oriented clinical trial for people with traumatic brain injury. An amazing approach and program at MetroHealth MetroHealth Old Brooklyn Medical Center

“The old me is not here anymore. I’m trying to build this new life.”   On October 16, 2016, Dee Cottrell and Bobby Pyles had just finished taking their dog Faye home after an afternoon walk around the block. They were walking to a yard sale in their suburban Nashville neighborhood when a drun...

03/26/2026

Our crew at this week!

03/25/2026

Restoring the sense of touch after spinal cord injury is work that FES investigator Emily Graczyk has championed and continues to accelerate. Learn more about the study through this March 2026 article from the Case Western Reserve University newsroom:

People with quadriplegia—paralysis of all four limbs caused by spinal cord injury—may have new hope for restoring a sense of touch in new research...

03/20/2026

Our thanks go out to Jose Zariffa PhD with Toronto's KITE Research Institute! Dr. Zariffa has been visiting with members this week and yesterday was our guest speaker for the March Neural Prosthesis Seminar.

Dr. Zariffa shared his team's amazing research using first-person video and VR devices to measure the quality of a person's hand use after cervical spinal cord injury. Fascinating work that continues!

If you missed the seminar, look for the video replay on our YouTube channel soon. Here's a look at the event in pictures:

03/18/2026

Before a clinical trial ever begins, there has to be a sound and solid foundation. Many of our investigators' projects are based on fundamental studies exploring the development and testing of hypotheses. And these can be the pre-cursor to new clinical approaches that will be tested via feasibility studies, pilots, and clinical trials. https://fescenter.org/research/fundamental-studies/

03/05/2026

Another great First Tuesday Seminar this week! An outstanding collaboration with the Advanced Platform Technology Center, also based at Cleveland VA Medical Center, together we hosted three speakers:

Thomas Nown PhD, an FES Center Post-Doctoral Fellow with the ReWire Lab at MetroHealth Center for Rehabilitation Research shared research on the MetroHealth Old Brooklyn Medical Center Cafe Project, to see if participants exposed to an enriched, interactive "cafe" style of therapy fare better than those in more traditional forms of therapy.

Gourav Datta PhD, Assistant Professor at Case Western Reserve University and new member of the APT Center, presented his experience using agentic AI for multimodal sensing and autonomic health intervention.

Also new to the APT Center, Kevin S. Xu, Assistant Professor at Case Western Reserve University, shared his work using AI and machine learning to model and predict outcomes, such as in the case of organ transplants.

An outstanding trio of seminars! Our thanks to the presenters and attendees.

03/04/2026

Restoring cough after spinal cord injury is among the most life-changing goals our Investigators have pursued, and we are thrilled at the opportunity to make more people aware of the ongoing work by FES Investigators Dr. Anthony DiMarco MD, Kris Kowalski PhD, Raymond Onders MD and their teams.

More than 20 years after a historic surgery, a Cleveland researcher's work is still saving lives, thanks in part to the man many knew as Superman.

02/27/2026

We are happy to share that with support from Research & Development - US Department of Veterans Affairs, we are offering new research grant award opportunities for FES Center Member investigators. The new awards focus on new research approaches and also the use of AI in research.

We also congratulate FES Center Investigators Ahlam Salameh PhD and Elias Veizi MD, PhD, the first recipients of the Center's new Pilot Research Awards.

The Pilot awards foster research into new projects and areas of study by FES member investigators.

Dr. Salameh's new work is exploring the use of spinal cord stimulation in people with diabetic neuropathy.

Dr. Veizi's research is focusing on brain connectivity changes related to spinal cord pattern stimulation.

Read more the new FES Center award opportunities at https://fescenter.org/fes-center-announces-new-pilot-research-funding-awards/