Sternad Selected Klein Lecturer
ECE & COS Professor Dagmar Sternad has been selected as this year’s Robert D. Klein University Lecturer. This award honors faculty members who have contributed to their field of study and share that scholarship with the University and the general public.
Dagmar Sternad is an internationally known authority in the field of experimental and computational motor neuroscience. Her academic career has been diverse, spanning the disciplines of movement science, English linguistics and literature, experimental psychology, neuroscience and kinesiology, leading her to Northeastern in 2008 as Professor of Biology, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Physics. Her studies of human motor control and learning shed light on neurological defects in Parkinson patients, children with dystonia, and individuals who have suffered strokes. Her interdisciplinary research has been published in five popular books and over 100 peer-reviewed articles in highly regarded publications such as Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Neurophysiology, Computational Biology, Physics Review E, and Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Professor Sternad is director of the Action Lab; her research is funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the American Heart Association and the Office of Naval Research, among others. She is Co-PI on a NSF-funded STEM education grant: PRISM: Attracting students to Mathematics, Physics and Biology through interdisciplinary research and discovery. In addition, she founded the “Boston Action Club” in 2008, a highly successful seminar series that brings together faculty and students from Boston area universities. She is Executive Editor of Journal of Motor Behavior, Associate Editor of Neuroscience for Kids, a member of the Editorial Board of Biomathematics and a regular member of NIH Study Section on Motor Function, Speech and Rehabilitation. She has served on numerous department, college and university committees here at Northeastern.
Professor Sternad was awarded a BA with highest honors in 1986 in Movement Science and English Linguistics/Literature from Technical University of Munich, Germany; an MS in 1991 in Experimental Psychology from the University of Connecticut; and received a PhD, summa cum laude, in Experimental Psychology from the University of Connecticut in 1995.