Dagmar Sternad

Dagmar Sternad is a University Distinguished Professor at Northeastern University, holding appointments in Biology and Electrical and Computer Engineering, with affiliations in Bioengineering and Physics. Her research focuses on motor control and learning, variability and stability in human movement, and virtual rehabilitation. She leads the Action Lab, which bridges computational neuroscience, engineering, and physics to study human movement coordination and its applications in robotics and clinical interventions.

Education: BS in Movement Science and Linguistics from Technical University of Munich, PhD in Experimental Psychology from University of Connecticut. Prior to Northeastern, she was a professor at Pennsylvania State University (1995-2008). Her work is supported by grants from NIH, NSF, and ONR.

Research interests include sensorimotor coordination in health and neurological disorders, dynamic modeling of movement, and the neural basis of motor expertise. Notable projects involve studying extreme human movements (e.g., whip cracking) to inform robotics and analyzing preterm infant movements for clinical applications.

• Awards: 2021-22 Fulbright Award, Klein Lectureship Award, Distinguished Lecturer on Life and the Sciences of Complexity.
• Grants: NIH, NSF, and ONR funding for projects on object control, stroke rehabilitation, and motor learning.
• Labs/Teams: Director of the Action Lab, collaborating with interdisciplinary teams on robotics, neuroscience, and clinical research.