Brain Wellness Speakers

Dr. Jennifer Reneker, PT, MSPT, PhD, NCS, is a board certified neurological physical therapist with a doctorate in public health, specializing in epidemiology.  She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.  Prior to coming to UMMC in April of 2016, Jennifer was a faculty member at Walsh University in North Canton, Ohio.  While there, she received grant funding and conducted collaborative research with Akron Children’s Hospital Sports Medicine Center, authoring multiple publications on Sports-Related Concussion and rehabilitative management of symptoms after concussion. Reneker is recognized as an expert in concussion and has spoken at multiple national level conferences to an array of healthcare providers on this topic.     
 
In addition to her faculty appointment, Reneker holds a telework appointment at the Louis Stokes Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio as a research mentor within the orthopedic and geriatric physical therapy residency programs.  Employed by the Veterans Affairs since 2003, she has contributed on multiple national workgroups, including being a contributor to the Falls Toolkit for the National Patient Safety Center, the primary author for the Department of Veterans Affairs Clinical Practice Recommendation for Mobility Dogs, and a leader within the Physical Therapy Field Advisory Council on Education Committee. 
 
Reneker is currently occupied with efforts to expand concussion management practices in Mississippi and is engaged with a variety of stakeholders across the state.  She is a board member on the Mississippi Brain Injury Association and is part of a multi-disciplinary, community engaged team at UMMC, supported by the Association of American Medical Colleges, to build a systems approach for the prevention of concussion in youth sport participation.

Dr. Lique Coolen is Professor of Physiology and Biophysics and of Neurobiology and Anatomical Sciences at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and serves as Associate Dean for Postdoctoral Studies in the School of Graduate Studies in the Health Sciences.

Coolen received her Ph.D. from the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands in 1995, and has been on faculty at the University of Cincinnati, University of Western Ontario, and University of Michigan. She has received numerous awards for her research and teaching, including the C.J. Herrick award from the American Association of Anatomists, the Canada Research Chair in Neurobiology of Motivation and Reward, and the Norman Nelson award for Teaching Excellence at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

Coolen has published over 110 papers describing her research on drug addiction, spinal cord injury, and neuroendocrine function, and has been continuously funded by NIH and other federal agencies during the past nineteen years.

Chad Washington, a native of Pontotoc, Mississippi, joined the faculty at UMMC as an Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery specializing in open and endovascular treatment of cerebrovascular disease in 2015. Washington graduated from Millsaps College, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He then completed a Master of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University. He subsequently obtained his medical degree from the University of Mississippi Medical Center, where he was a member of Alpha Omega Alpha. During his neurosurgical residency at Washington University in St. Louis, he obtained a Master’s in Population Health Sciences and completed an international fellowship at the National Neurosurgical Centre in Dublin, Ireland. Following residency, he gained further expertise in cerebrovascular disease while completing a fellowship in endovascular neurosurgery at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, also at Washington University.

Washington’s research interests are focused on the development of new and novel therapies in the treatment of hemorrhagic and ischemic stroke. He has been awarded grant funding from the Neurosurgery Research and Education Foundation, Brain Aneurysm Foundation, Barnes Jewish Foundation, Washington University Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences, and UMMC’s Intramural Research Support Program. Most recently, he was awarded a Career Development Award from the NIH/National Center for Advancing Translational Science. He and his wife Megan live with their sons, Collum and Hayden, in Madison, MS.