Graduate Student
Virginia Tech
3rd-year PhD student in the Virginia Tech/Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences program. Amirah received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Biomedical Engineering from the Unviersity of Miami with a concentration in electrical engineering. She worked within the South Florida SCI Model Systems group at the University of Miami doing clinical research with program director, Dr.Elizabeth Felix. She also did independent study with Dr. Jorge Bohorquez and Dr. Jonathon Toft-Nielsen on programming and EMG-based communication device for patients with neurodegenerative diseases.
Currently, she works under the advisement of Dr.Pamela VandeVord in the Traumatic Nerve Technologies lab. She focuses on blast traumatic brain injury (bTBI) and it's effect on psychological and chronic pain outcomes. She utilizes animal models to understand the underlying mechanisms for why humans develop chronic headaches and migraines following mild bTBI. She also wants to understand the connection between chronic pain and it's effect on psychological outcomes.