Penn Medicine Provider
Michelle Jillian Johnson, PhD

About me

  • Director, Rehabilitation Robotics Lab
  • Associate Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation

Michelle J. Johnson, Ph.D., has secondary appointments as an Associate professor in Bioengineering and in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at University of Pennsylvania. She has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, with an emphasis in mechatronics, robotics, and design, from Stanford University.  She completed a NSF-NATO post-doctoral fellowship at the Advanced Robotics Technology and Systems Laboratory at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy.  She directs the Rehabilitation Robotic Research and Design Laboratory located at the Pennsylvania  Medicine Rehabilitation. The lab is also affiliated with the General Robotics Automation Sensing Perception (GRASP) Lab.  Dr. Johnson’s lab specializes in the design, development, and therapeutic use of novel, affordable, intelligent robotic assistants for rehabilitation in high and low-resource environments with an emphasis on using robotics and sensors to quantify upper limb motor function in adults and children with brain injury or at risk for brain injury.  Dr. Johnson has spent over twenty years applying technology solutions to aid in the understanding of disability and impairment after brain injury. 

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My research

Waters EL and Johnson MJ Can an Optimal Control Model Capture Tracking Kinematics? Insights from Healthy and Post-Stroke Robot Interactions , 47th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC): 2025


Azar RM, Zheng S, Charles JY, and Johnson MJ Reliability of Lesion Masks Derived from CT Scans when compared to MR Scans in Acute Stroke , 47th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC): 2025


Sobrepera MJ, Nguyen AT, Anand A, Prosser LA, Evans SH and Johnson MJ Age, Motor Function, and Cognitive Function Influence Preferences for Telerehabilitation Mediated by a Social Robot Augmented with Telepresence , IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering: 2025


Segado M, Prosser LA, Duncan AF, Johnson MJ, Kording KP Assessing Infant Risk of Cerebral Palsy with Video-Based Motion Tracking , 4th Triennial Meeting of the International Alliance of Academies of Childhood Disability (IAACD) and the 37th Annual Meeting of the European Academy Of Childhood-onset Disability (EACD): 2025


Azar RM, Sobotka NS, Cacchione P, Mendonca RJ, Johnson MJ Evaluating the Relationship Between Motor and Cognitive Impairment and Lesion Size and Location Post-Stroke Using CTScans , IEEE International Conference On Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR), RehabWeek 2025, Chicago, IL, USA: 2025,1467-1472


Opong-Duah J, Mittal A, Waters E, Sayani F, Sall S, Shofer F, Johnson MJ Robotic Assessment of Cognitive and Motor Impairment in Adults with Sickle Cell Disease , IEEE International Conference On Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR), RehabWeek 2025, Chicago, IL, USA: 2025,1793-1798


Waters EL, Azar R, Opong-Duah J, Gaardsmoe S, Johnson A, Mendonca RJ, Cacchione PZ, Johnson MJ Towards an Optimal Model of Post-Stroke Sensorimotor Control , IEEE International Conference On Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR), RehabWeek 2025, Chicago, IL, USA: 2025,1313-1319


Davis ME, Sowande OF, Skorup J, Segado M, Shofer F, Prosser LA, Johnson MJ Developing a Methodology for Quantifying Infant Interaction with a Robotic Toy , IEEE International Conference On Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR), RehabWeek 2025, Chicago, IL, USA: 2025,1805-1810


Meng NY, Waters EL, Lin G, Gaardsmoe S, Johnson A, Hallock LA, Mendonca RJ, Cacchione PZ, and ohnson MJ Analysis of Induced Muscle Activations by an Affordable, Reconfigurable Robot for Comprehensive Post-Stroke Rehabilitation , IEEE International Conference On Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR), RehabWeek 2025, Chicago, IL, USA: 2025,1361-1367


Nguyen AT, Zhang H, Tan T, Abrar M, Zhang Y and Johnson MJ Integration of a Gripper-Equipped Humanoid Social Robot for EEG-Monitored Action Observation Paradigms , IEEE International Conference On Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR), RehabWeek 2025, Chicago, IL, USA: 2025,1699-1705


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