Shashwati is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy and Movement Sciences at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). She has a secondary faculty appointment in Biomedical Engineering at UTEP.
Shashwati has a clinical background in physical therapy and a PhD in Motor control, Neuroscience from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2014). Following her PhD, she completed postdoctoral training with (late) Dr. Alexander Dromerick (2015-2020) and with co-mentors Drs. Peter S Lum (Catholic University of America) and Michelle L Harris-Love (Georgetown) at the MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital. As a postdoctoral fellow, she was supported by a national American Heart Association postdoctoral fellowship, a GHUCCTS TL1 postdoctoral fellowship, a NINDS StrokeNet postdoc fellowship, and an Advanced Rehabilitation Research Training (ARRT) postdoctoral fellowship through the National Institutes of Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR). Most recently, Shashwati was the recipient of an NIH Career Development Award as a Research-track assistant professor in Rehabilitation Medicine at the Georgetown University in Washington, DC (2020-2023).
Besides research in Neuroplasticity, she collaborates with the NIDILRR Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) housed at The Catholic University of America (as Co-I; PI: Lum). This work focuses on developing machine learning approaches for 24x7 accelerometry data so that the outcomes are clinically valid and psychometrically robust at quantifying purposeful upper extremity movements in stroke patients living in the community.
She also serves as the biostatistician for a NIDILRR Rehabilitation Research Training Center (RRTC), providing statistical support for ongoing clinical trials at the TIRR Memorial Hermann in Houston, TX, at MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington DC, and MedStar Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC.