Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Cornell University, Ithaca, NY	BS	12/1995	Mechanical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA	MS	05/1998	Mechanical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA	PhD	05/2001	Biomedical Engineering
New England School of Acupuncture, Newton, MA	MAcup	05/2002	Acupuncture

Vitaly Napadow is a Professor at Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Scott Schoen and Nancy Adams Discovery Center for Chronic Pain Recovery at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and the Center for Integrative Pain Neuroimaging (CiPNI) at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital. Somatosensory, cognitive, and affective factors all influence the malleable experience of chronic pain, and Dr. Napadow’s Lab has applied human functional and structural neuroimaging to localize and suggest mechanisms by which different brain circuitries modulate pain perception. Dr. Napadow’s neuroimaging research also aims to better understand how non-pharmacological therapies, from acupuncture and transcutaneous neuromodulation to cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness meditation training, ameliorate pain. Dr. Napadow has more than 240 publications in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals, is past-President of the Society for Acupuncture Research, and served on the board of the US Association for the Study of Pain (USASP) and numerous conference, journal, and NIH review panels.