02/27/2023
By Hsien-Yuan Hsu

Speaker: Jiabin Shen, FAHSS

Jiabin Shen is an Assistant Professor at Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Lowell. Trained as a life-span developmental psychologist, Dr. Shen’s research primarily focuses on theory-driven and technology-assisted interventions for the primary and tertiary prevention of injuries among typically developing and neurodiverse children in collaboration with clinicians, computer scientists, and engineers. Shen also works closely with methodological experts to apply advanced statistical modeling in understanding the longitudinal health disparities in children and adolescents. Shen’s research has received support from both public and private agencies including American Psychological Foundation, the Society of Public Health and Education, Ohio Department of Public Safety, and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Topic: Use of Randomized Controlled Trial Design for Virtual Reality-based Cognitive Rehabilitation among Children with Traumatic Brain Injury

Traumatic brain injury is a leading cause of mortality and disability in U.S. children with 700,000 childhood TBI cases every year. Developing accessible and effective evidence-based interventions for cognitive rehabilitation in children with TBI and evaluate such interventions using the “gold-standard” randomized controlled trials (RCTs) is thus a high priority. This presentation will introduce the audience with a four-step framework to develop a high-quality and high-fidelity RCT study with emphasis on evidence-based approach to determine the target population, intervention modality, intervention content, and RCT protocol evaluation. This framework will be illustrated by a programmatic line of pediatric TBI research, represented in four connected studies conducted by the speaker over the past eight years that culminated in an NIH-funded virtual reality-based cognitive rehabilitation RCT project funded by the NIH K99/R00 mechanism.

Time/Location: Wednesday, March 1, noon to 1 p.m., Coburn Hall 275.
Lunch is provided. If you would like to join the seminar via Zoom, please reach email Yan_Wang1@uml.edu.

Please RSVP if you haven’t already. We look forward to seeing you.