Michelle LaPlaca
WHC Department of Biomedical Engineering
UA Whitaker Bldg
313 Ferst Drive NE
Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0535
Phone: 404.385.0629
Fax: 404.385.5044
Email: michelle.laplaca@bme.gatech.edu
Dr. LaPlaca is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, a joint department between Georgia Tech and Emory University. Dr. LaPlaca earned her undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering from The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, in 1991 and her M.S.E. (1992) and Ph.D. (1996) in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. Following post-doctoral training in Neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania from 1996-98, she joined the faculty at Georgia Tech. Dr. LaPlaca’s research interests are in traumatic brain and spinal cord injury, neural tissue engineering, injury biomechanics, neural interfacing, and cognitive impairment associated with brain injury and aging. Her research is funded by NIH, NSF, the Coulter Foundation. She has received an NSF CAREER award (2000), the 2007 Atlanta Business Chronicle Healthcare Heroes Award for Healthcare Innovation, and is an elected fellow in the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). In addition, Dr. LaPlaca is a member of the National Neurotrauma Society, Women in Neurotrauma Research, the Society of Neuroscience, the American Society for Neural Therapy and Repair, the American Physiological Society, and the Biomedical Engineering Society.