CV

Vanessa Seijas has joined the team of Prof. Carla Sabariego to work in the field of rehabilitation and healthy aging at the University of Lucerne and the Swiss Paraplegic Research in Nottwil from September 2021.

Vanessa is a physician and researcher with a passion for improving innovative and evidence-based rehabilitation, focusing on strengthening rehabilitation services within health systems. She graduated from the University of Antioquia, Colombia in 2013 and as a specialist in Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine in 2017. She became interested in rehabilitation very early in her medical studies. In 2011, Vanessa joined the Rehabilitation in Health Research Group, first as a research assistant and later as a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Antioquia. In the research group, she developed clinical practice guidelines for the Colombian government, measured disability and quality of life in older adults who had suffered traffic accidents, and developed a university model for the inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities in higher education. From 2020 until joining the University of Lucerne, she worked at the Sensory Functions, Disability and Rehabilitation Unit of the World Health Organization (WHO) on the development of the Package of Interventions for Rehabilitation as part of the WHO Rehabilitation 2030 initiative. In May 2023, she completed a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her thesis focused on the effect of sex hormone levels during the acute rehabilitation phase after spinal cord injury and their impact on functioning.