Dr. Fay Horak PhD, PT, Scientific Advisor for the Balance Disorders Laboratory, is the Jay Nutt MD Endowed Professor of Neurology and Adjunct Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience & Biomedical Engineering at Oregon Health & Science University. She is also Chief Scientific Officer at APDM Wearable Technology, a company that provides precision movement technology for clinical trials. Dr. Horak is a physical therapist and neuroscientist who is known for her research on the neurophysiology of balance disorders and their rehabilitation. Dr. Horak received a BS degree in Physical Therapy from the University of Wisconsin, an MS in Neurophysiology from the University of Minnesota and a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Washington in Seattle.  She has received many national awards from the American Physical Therapy Association and is the first physical therapist to receive a prestigious MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health for over 30 years of continuous funding. Dr. Horak has over 400 peer-reviewed papers, over 54,000 citations, and over 50 million dollars in federal grants awarded. Dr. Horak has also patented several new technologies for the measurement and rehabilitation of balance disorders and helped start a small company, APDM, that develops synchronized, wearable sensors to quantify posture and gait. Dr. Horak was the first elected President of The International Society of Posture and Gait Research (ISPGR). She greatly expanded the organization’s membership and helped to develop its charter and organize meetings. She holds one of the most cited articles over the last 125 years by the American Physiological Society for 2012: Horak FB, Nashner LM. Central programming of postural movements - adaptation to altered support-surface configurations. Journal of Neurophysiology. 55: 1369-1381, 1986.

Professor of neurology:

Department of Neurology
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Department of Physiology and Pharmacology

Faculty member:
Neuroscience Graduate Program

Honorary faculty:
University of Oregon
Pacific University
University of Calgary
University of Waterloo

PubMed Listing