Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Saitama Prefectural University, Saitama, Japan	BS, PT	03/2009	Physical Therapy
Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan	MSc	03/2014	Human Health and Sciences
Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan	PhD	03/2017	Human Health and Sciences
Keio University, Yokohama, Japan	Postdoc	03/2019	System Design and Engineering
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA	Postdoc	03/2022	Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan	Assistant Professor	09/2023	Health Informatics

Hirotaka Iijima is a Research Faculty of the Spaulding Research Institute Discovery Center for Musculoskeletal Research and an Assistant Professor within the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School. Inspired by prior clinical experience as a physical therapist, he has been working in interdisciplinary fields with the long-term goal of developing innovative rehabilitative strategies for musculoskeletal diseases across the translational spectrum. To achieve this goal, he uses the integrated approaches of rehabilitation medicine together with network medicine, regenerative medicine, and cellular and molecular mechanobiology, under the supervision of Dr. Fabrisia Ambrosio at Harvard Medical School. The significance of this line of study is highlighted by the fact that these projects were awarded by the Osteoarthritis Research Society International, the Japanese Society of Cartilage Metabolism, and the Japanese Society for Bone and Mineral Research. He has published over 90 refereed journal articles and reviews in these fields. He currently serves as a Guest Editor in the JoVE Methods Collections and an Editorial Board Fellow in The Journal of Physiology.

• Rehabilitation
• Exercise
• Systems Biology
• Network, Gene Regulatory
• Mechanotransduction, Cellular
• Aging
• Osteoarthritis, Knee
• Musculoskeletal Diseases