Nathalie Maitre, MD, PhD - Director of NICU Follow Up Programs, NICU Dev Therapies, Nationwide Children’s Hospital

Rachel Byrne - Executive Director, Cerebral Palsy Foundation

Thomas Bartman, MD, PhD
Associate Chief Medical Officer of Nationwide Children's Hospital

Thomas Bartman, MD, PhD, focuses his work on quality improvement (QI) and safety for Nationwide Children’s Hospital. He co-leads institution-wide projects to improve inter-provider communication to reduce patient harm, and is a national leader in Safety II – building resilience and adaptive capacity in individuals and systems to improve success under unusual/unanticipated conditions. He is a core instructor in NCH’s Quality Improvement Essentials (QIE) course, which had educated over 300 providers at NCH and other institutions in the art and science of performing QI. He co-leads a QI writing group to ensure that results of projects performed at NCH reach publications. He is a co-PI on an NIH-funded R01 to examine the relationship between NICU nursing workload and error. 

Additionally, Dr. Bartman is Co-Director of the Clinical Fellowship in Quality and Safety Leadership, a unique 2-year-long program to train the next generation of quality and safety leaders. This program provides intense, hands-on experiences in every aspect of quality and safety at Nationwide Children’s and in conjunction with the Fisher School of Business at Ohio State University leads to a Master’s degree as well as other certifications.

He is active in multiple national quality improvement organizations including the Children’s Hospital Neonatal Consortium, Children’s Hospital Association Quality and Safety Leaders, and Solutions for Patient Safety. He frequently teaches and has provided keynote addresses at national meetings on quality and safety techniques, and is on the editorial board of Pediatric Quality and Safety.

Jeanette Betancourt, Ed. D.
Senior Vice President, U.S. Social Impact
Sesame Workshop

 Dr. Betancourt is the Senior Vice President for U.S. Social Impact at Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street.  She directs the development and implementation of community and family engagement initiatives making a difference in the lives of vulnerable children and their families. These research-based initiatives are designed to impact children’s early learning, health and well-being, and provide strategies and resources to counteract the effects of trauma while fostering the critical connections that adults have on children’s lives. Prior to joining Sesame Workshop, Dr. Betancourt created programs in adult learning and early childhood education at Teachers College, Columbia University.  She is a licensed bilingual speech and language pathologist and educational therapist. She participates on several national and local boards and has contributed to the start of charter schools. Dr. Betancourt has a BA and MA in Speech and Language Pathology; an MS in Bilingual Reading/Special Education, and an Ed.D. in Special Education. 

Dr. Ayanna Howard
Chair for Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Endowed Chair in Bioengineering in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Director of the Human-Automation Systems Lab
Chief Technology Officer, Zyrobotics 

Dr. Ayanna Howard is an educator, researcher, and innovator.  Her academic career is highlighted by her focus on technology development for intelligent agents that must interact with and in a human-centered world, as well as on the education and mentoring of students in the engineering and computing fields. Dr. Howard has made significant contributions in the technology areas of artificial intelligence, computer vision, and robotics. Her published research, currently numbering over 250 peer-reviewed publications, has been widely disseminated in international journals and conference proceedings. She has over 20 years of R&D experience covering a number of projects that have been supported by various agencies including: National Science Foundation, Procter and Gamble, NASA, ExxonMobil, Intel, and the Grammy Foundation. She continues to produce novel research and ideas focused on applications that span from assistive robots in the home to therapy gaming apps to remote robotic exploration of extreme environments. By working at NASA before entering the academic world, she brings a unique perspective to the academic environment.

Currently, Dr. Howard is the Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Professor and Chair of the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing. She also holds a faculty appointment in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering where she functions as the Director of the Human-Automation Systems Lab (HumAnS). In 2015, she founded and now directs the $3M traineeship initiative in healthcare robotics and functions as the lead investigator on the NSF undergraduate summer research program in robotics. She received her B.S. in Engineering from Brown University, her M.S.E.E. from the University of Southern California, her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, and her M.B.A. from Claremont University, Drucker School of Management. To date, her unique accomplishments have been highlighted through a number of awards and articles, including highlights in TIME Magazine, Black Enterprise, and USA Today, as well as being recognized as one of the 23 most powerful women engineers in the world by Business Insider and one of the Top 50 U.S. Women in Tech by Forbes. In 2013, she also founded Zyrobotics as a university spin-off and holds a position in the company as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Zyrobotics, LLC is currently licensing technology derived from her research and has released their first suite of mobile therapy and educational products for children with differing needs. From 1993-2005, Dr. Howard was at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, where she was a Senior Robotics Researcher and Deputy Manager in the Office of the Chief Scientist. She has also served as the Associate Director of Research for the Georgia Tech Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, Chair of the multidisciplinary Robotics Ph.D. program at Georgia Tech, and the Associate Chair for Faculty Development in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Julie Samora, MD,PhD,MPH
Associate Medical Director of Quality
Director of Orthopaedic Quality Improvement
Director of Hand and Upper Extremity Research
Co-Director of the Clinical Quality Improvement Fellowship
Nationwide Children’s Hospital

Julie Balch Samora received her orthopaedic training at The Ohio State University and completed a fellowship in hand and upper extremity surgery at Harvard.  She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University, a masters of music at Yale University, and an MD/PhD at West Virginia University, where she concomitantly earned masters degrees in public health as well as public administration. 

Dr. Samora specializes in pediatric hand surgery at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, where she is Associate Medical Director of Quality, Director of Orthopaedic Quality Improvement, Director of Hand and Upper Extremity Research, and Co-Director of the Clinical Quality Improvement Fellowship.  Dr. Samora has a clinical associate professor faculty position at The Ohio State University, is on the board of directors of the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America (POSNA) and Ruth Jackson Orthopaedic Society (RJOS).  She has published dozens of peer-reviewed manuscripts and text book chapters, and has presented at numerous national conferences.  Dr. Samora has a passion to provide safe, efficient, culturally-sensitive, and excellent patient care, focusing on best practices and quality improvement initiatives.

Diane Damiano, PPT, PhD

Chief of the Functional and Applied Biomechanics Section, National Institutes of Health

Andrea Duncan, MD, MS

Neonatologist in the Division of Neonatology at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

Eileen G. Fowler, PhD, PT

Professor, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). 

Jill Heathcock MPT, PhD

Associate Professor, The Ohio State University
Director of the Pediatric and Rehabilitation Laboratory (PEARL Lab)

Nathalie Maitre, MD, PhD

Neuroscientist and Neonatologist Director of the NICU Follow-up Program and Medical Director of NICU Developmental Therapies. Nationwide Children’s Hospital

Sarah Winter, MD

Neurodevelopmental Pediatrician
Professor, Department of Pediatrics
University of Utah

Advanced Practitioner Telehealth HINE Training Course - Thursday, August 6 (FREE)

Schedule - 12-2pm ET
Only available for those attending the conference. Must have previously attended a HINE training course and able to confirm date and location of completion.

For those who have completed the Hammersmith Infant Neurological Examination (HINE) training in the past, there is now an opportunity to learn how to implement this neurologic examination via telehealth.

Ipsen Biopharmaceuticals, Inc

Ipsen Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. is a US affiliate of Ipsen SA, a global biotech company. At Ipsen Biopharmaceuticals, we are focused on developing and providing access to therapies a for patients who suffer from extremely difficult-to-treat diseases. For more information on Ipsen in North America, please visit www.ipsenus.com.

Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare

Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare, founded in 1897 in St Paul, Minnesota, is the first hospital in the United States dedicated to the diagnosis and treatment of patients who have complex, rare and traumatic conditions affecting the neurological and musculoskeletal systems. Gillette is recognized for clinical excellence, research, and innovation, particularly in the areas of cerebral palsy, gait and motion analysis, movement disorders, orthopedics, neurology, neurosurgery, and rehabilitation medicine. Gillette consistently serves patients from all 50 US states and dozens of other countries.

Gillette’s mission is to help children, adults and their families improve their health, achieve greater well-being and enjoy life. For more information please visit, gillettechildrens.org.

PTC Therapeutics, Inc.

PTC is a science-led, global biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of clinically-differentiated medicines that provide benefits to patients with rare disorders. PTC's ability to globally commercialize products is the foundation that drives investment in a robust pipeline of transformative medicines and our mission to provide access to best-in-class treatments for patients who have an unmet medical need. To learn more about PTC, please visit us on www.ptcbio.com and follow us on Facebook, on Twitter at @PTCBio, and on LinkedIn.

Permobil

Permobil Independence is a basic human right and for over 50 years Permobil has held fast to that belief. Passionate about better understanding our users’ needs and improving their quality of life. Today, those solutions include power wheelchairs, seating and positioning, power assist, and manual wheelchairs.

permobil.com.