Teresa Lever, PhD

As a clinician-scientist, Dr. Lever has a broad background in neuroscience in swallowing impairment, or dysphagia, related to adult-onset neurological disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson’s disease and stroke. Her clinical degree is in speech-language pathology and she is board-certified with more than 20 years of clinical practice experience working in various medical settings with adult populations. Dr. Lever transitioned from patient care to research after seeing a need to improve patient outcomes.

Dr. Lever’s translational research focuses on understanding the pathophysiology of dysphagia in neurodegenerative diseases across multiple species including humans, dogs, horses and rodents. Her research spans from basic science to veterinary medicine to clinical research. She has developed several forms of technology and methodology to permit direct comparisons of dysphagia between humans and animals. She is currently conducting pre-clinical investigations to identify candidate treatments for future use in clinical trials with patients affected by neurological conditions that result in dysphagia. Dr. Lever has several ongoing studies with human subjects to accelerate the translation of her biomedical innovations into products that directly improve patient care. To date, continuous funding for her work has been provided through federal, foundation and intramural sources.

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