Professor Natasha Lannin is an internationally recognised clinician-researcher with a joint appointment at Alfred Health and Monash University, where she is the Head of the Brain Recovery and Rehabilitation Research group in the School of Translational Medicine. Professor Lannin joined The Department of Neuroscience at Monash University in 2019 from La Trobe University, where she had been the inaugural Chair in Occupational Therapy in a joint position with Alfred Health since 2011. 

After completing her PhD investigating the physiological mechanisms and clinical effectiveness of stretch for addressing post-stroke motor impairment, she undertook post-doctoral work at Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney, advancing her experience in clinical trials before establishing her own rehabilitation research group here in Melbourne. She has published over 320 papers and in the last 5 years has been CI on successful grants totalling $44M, of career total >$60M.  Professor Lannin is ranked in the Top 1% worldwide as an expert in “Neurological Rehabilitation” (0.019%; 8^th globally) and “Occupational Therapy” (0.006%; 1st globally) (https://expertscape.com/ December 2024).  She was awarded a NHMRC Translating Research into Practice Fellowship (2016), NHMRC Career Development Fellowship (2018) and is currently supported by successive Heart Foundation (Australia) fellowships. In 2017 her achievements were acknowledged by both the US and Australian Occupational Therapy Research Foundations when she was appointed as a Fellow for her exemplary and distinguished contributions toward the science of occupational therapy.

Professor Lannin specialises in scientifically rigorous clinical trials that inform the evidence-base of neurorehabilitation, and is best known for her whole-of-pipeline approach to improving clinical care, from phase II (pilot, feasibility trials) to phase IV (implementation) trials.  She holds a post-graduate certificate in Implementation Science from University of California San Francisco, and works alongside other trialists to plan for rapid translation of their trial findings into everyday clinical care in broader neurological populations (such as epilepsy) and rehabilitation groups (such as chronic respiratory conditions).

Professor Lannin leads the Brain Recovery and Rehabilitation Research Group in the Department of Neuroscience, and together, the Group works with people with neurological conditions to improve long-term outcomes. Prof Lannin’s current NHMRC- and MRFF-supported work seeks to test the clinical effectiveness of common rehabilitation interventions in trials, including vocational rehabilitation to support working after stroke (VocRehab Trial, MRFF #2008141), implementation of upper limb intervention clinical practice guidelines in rehabilitation (the PROMOTE Trial, MRFF #MRFF000076), and the implementation of high-dose aphasia treatment (the CHAT Trial, NHMRC #1191820).