Liew tapped to lead NIH-funded P50 national specialized research center
October 15, 2025

By Mike McNulty

Sook-Lei Liew is the principal investigator of the newly funded Data Science and Analytics for Precision Rehabilitation (DAPR) Center, a five-year project supported by a $6.5 million P50 grant from the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Prestigious P50 grants are meant to support a full range of research and development activities around a specific, yet often multidisciplinary, problem area.

The purpose of the DAPR Center is to generate large, harmonized rehabilitation datasets for personalized, precision rehabilitation, and to improve the rigor of medical rehabilitation research by leveraging data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning. These objectives will be achieved by developing comprehensive, standardized ways in which researchers can store and manage their data, which will make it easier to combine data across rehabilitation studies.

“We are thrilled about the DAPR Center, which at its core, is all about readiness — making sure rehabilitation research is well-poised for the AI revolution that has already begun,” Liew said. “By building large, harmonized, and accessible datasets, we’re laying the foundation for truly personalized, data-driven rehabilitation. This is a transformative step for our field and will enable rehabilitation researchers nationwide to work together, identify critical scientific insights, and ultimately deliver the right rehabilitation treatment, at the right time, for each individual.”

At USC Chan, Liew directs the Neural Plasticity and Neurorehabilitation Laboratory. She also holds joint faculty appointments with the USC Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy, the USC Keck School of Medicine Department of Neurology, the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute and the USC Viterbi School Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Liew and her colleagues will encourage community uptake by developing a DAPR data schema that will bring together many different types of data, providing hands-on consulting for data management and analysis, building accessible educational resources and creating user-friendly tools, like those to be developed as part of Liew’s new NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke-funded project to better forecast stroke survivors’ recovery through 12 months after stroke.

One of Liew’s longtime collaborators, James Finley, associate professor at the USC Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy, will lead DAPR’s Community Engagement and Outreach Core to build community partnerships, disseminate DAPR developments and resources, host events and foster a community of practice.

The DAPR Center will be part of a dynamic network of six national Medical Rehabilitation Research Centers collectively tackling topics such as precision rehabilitation, data science and analytics, community-engaged research and health promotion.

Data Science and Analytics for Precision Rehabilitation (DAPR) Center (1P50 HD118603; PI: Liew, S.-L.) is funded by the NIH Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

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