Phillip Popovich, PhD

Professor

Neuroscience

Phillip Popovich

Academic contact

Phone: 614-688-8576

Phillip.Popovich@osumc.edu

Academic information

  • Department: Neuroscience

Leadership titles

  • Executive Director, Belford Center for Spinal Cord Injury
  • Director, Center for Brain and Spinal Cord Repair
  • Faculty Affiliate, Chronic Brain Injury

Research interests

  • Neuroimmunology
  • Pathophysiology of Spinal Cord Injury

About

Biography

An often-overlooked feature of a traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) is the permanent damage cause to the autonomic nervous system (ANS). Many autonomic neurons, including all that comprise the sympathetic branch of the ANS, are located in the spinal cord. After a SCI, profound dysautonomia develops, wreaking havoc on all organ systems, of which the immune system is arguably the most important. Indeed, insufficient or excessive immune responses cause disease and impair healing. All current projects in the Popovich lab are driven by the overall hypothesis that after SCI, an aberrant autonomic anti-inflammatory reflex develops that breaks immune homeostasis which in turn causes or contributes to various pathological sequelae including gastrointestinal dysfunction, systemic infection and deficits in tissue repair (within and outside the spinal cord).

Credentials

Education

Postdoctoral Training - Immunology
The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States
PhD - Psychology
The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States

Research

Research interests

  • Neuroimmunology
  • Pathophysiology of Spinal Cord Injury

Research Approaches

The Popovich lab uses both “macroscopic” (physiological systems function, behavior) and “microscopic” (cells to molecules to microbes to genes) tools to study the pathophysiological significance of altered neuro-immune communication after SCI.

More about my research

News and media

My news coverage