Director of the Department of Neuromotor Rehabilitation

Doctor Irene Giovanna Aprile, specialist in Neurology and with a PhD in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, is currently Director of the Department of Neuromotor Rehabilitation of the Don Carlo Gnocchi Foundation. She also holds the role of Clinical Director of the Rome office and Head of research activities in the Central-South Area. She carried out research first in the field of neurophysiology and quality of life in pathologies of the peripheral nervous system and since 2001 in the field of neurorehabilitation with a growing focus, in recent years, on
robotic and technologically assisted rehabilitation. She coordinated a large multicenter randomized controlled trial, aimed at comparing robotic rehabilitation with traditional upper limb rehabilitation in 224 stroke patients.
In July 2020 she was appointed as the Foundation's contact person in the working group on Gender Medicine of the Ministry of Health. From 2019 to 2021 she was part of the Board of Directors of the Italian Society for Clinical Movement Analysis (SIOMOC), while between 2014 and 2018 she collaborated as a support member of the Board of Directors of the Italian Society of Neurological Rehabilitation (SIRN), a company of which she is currently the regional coordinator for Lazio.
Hers research activity includes numerous national and international projects. Since December 2022, she has been the mission leader of the PNC project within the PNRR “Fit for Medical Robotics (FIT4MedRob)” aimed at integrating robotic rehabilitation into clinical practice. In 2019 she coordinated the SIMFER working group “Robot-assisted rehabilitation and electromechanical devices for people with disabilities of neurological origin (CICERONE).” Since 2015 she has also coordinated the Multicentric Robotic Rehabilitation Group of the Don Carlo Gnocchi Foundation, which involves ten centres, and the theoretical-practical training courses dedicated to this discipline.
She has participated in several research projects funded by the Ministry of Health, including
• 2006 – Draft Integrated Programme “ON-REHAB: Definition of a model for the rehabilitation of cancer patients” (UO Coordinator);
• 2010 – Finalized Research Project “Prediction and prevention of falls in subjects suffering from neurological pathologies” (UO Coordinator);
• 2024 – PNRR Funds Project “Soft Tissue Sarcoma: instrumental evaluation of motor performance and impact of Robotic Rehabilitation, Nutrition and Nutraceuticals, and analysis of Quality of Life – START-RUN” (UO Coordinator).

She is also the author of 205 scientific publications indexed in Scopus, with an H-index of 40 and over 5,000 citations.