Dr. Monica Perez is an internationally recognized leader in spinal cord injury (SCI) research whose team has been studying the mechanisms contributing to the control of voluntary movement in healthy humans and in individuals with SCI for over 15 years. She has developed novel experimental methods for eliciting cortical and spinal cord plasticity in humans with paralysis due to SCI. These mechanistic experiments can probe transmission in cortical and spinal neuronal circuits during different motor behaviors. Increased understanding of these circuits will support the development of targeted neurorehabilitation in patients with SCI, as well as in other patient populations.