John Krakauer

John Krakauer, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Neurology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a Visiting Scientist at Champalimaud Clinical Centre since 2014. He co-leads the Brain, Learning, Animation, and Movement (BLAM) Lab at Johns Hopkins and the Krakauer Lab at Champalimaud Foundation, focusing on human motor systems and stroke rehabilitation.

His research spans five core domains:

• Experimental/computational studies of human motor control and learning
• Long-term motor skill acquisition linked to decision-making
• Prediction of post-stroke motor recovery
• Mechanisms of spontaneous recovery in humans and mouse models
• Novel neuro-rehabilitation for acute stroke patients

He co-founded the KATA project exploring physics-based movement pleasure and authored the seminal book Broken Movement: The Neurobiology of Motor Recovery after Stroke (MIT Press, 2017).

At Champalimaud, he collaborates with Rui Costa, Noam Shemesh, and clinicians on cerebellar-basal ganglia interactions in rodent prehension while developing technology-driven patient experience enhancements. His lab team includes postdoctoral researchers, clinical fellows, and technicians supporting translational neuroscience.