Nathalie Maitre, MD, PhD

  • Director of Early Development & Cerebral Palsy Research,
    Emory University School of Medicine

    Dr. Maitre is a board-certified neonatologist and research investigator with a focus on neurodevelopment in high-risk newborns and developmental interventions after neural injury. Before joining us at Emory and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, she was the Director of the NICU Follow-up Program and the Medical Director of NICU Developmental Therapies at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. In the Department of Pediatrics at Emory, she serves as the Director of Research in Early Development and Cerebral Palsy. She will help support the expansion of the Neonatal Follow-up Clinic (DPC), grown to national repute by the late Dr. Ira Adams-Chapman, and, in collaboration with the Division of Neurology and Department of Rehabilitation, is developing a program focused on early detection and intervention for infants at risk for cerebral palsy. This Children’s and Emory program is now the lead site of the National Implementation Network funded by the Cerebral Palsy Foundation. In support of her growing Implementation Science program, Dr Maitre is a member of the international IMPACT for Cerebral Palsy workgroup and has developed caregiver-based motor learning programs for UNICEF and the World Health Organization.

    Dr. Maitre’s lab’s research focuses on neurodevelopment in high-risk newborns and rehabilitation of long-term disabilities. She emphasizes the development of quantitative measures of neural function in infants to allow the rational design and testing of parent-based and technology-assisted strategies. A career development award from the NICHD allowed her to elucidate mechanisms through which the NICU environment contributes to cortical sensory processing differences in hospitalized neonates and their neurobehavioral outcomes in childhood.  For the past 15 years Dr. Maitre has conducted multidisciplinary research with neuroscientists, engineers and therapists in neurophysiology of NICU infants and rehabilitation. She now leads NIH-and foundation-funded of parent-driven sensory-motor interventions such as constraint and bimanual movement therapy, and pacifier-activated voice players. In outpatient and inpatient settings. She has a robust technology portfolio developed in collaboration with SmallTalk and Enlighten Mobility teams. She continues to work with engineering and mathematical modeling teams in the US and Switzerland to develop new methodologies for brain-based assessment and therapy in infants and young children.

    Dr. Maitre mentors undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral trainees in rehabilitative therapies, developmental medicine, neurology, neonatology and engineering, who are interested in developing a career in the neuroscience of infant developmental interventions.

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