Interim Chair and Distinguished Professor
University of Maryland
Dr. Colloca is an MPower Distinguished Professor at the University of Maryland . She holds an MD, a master’s degree in Bioethics, and a PhD in Neuroscience reflecting the interdisciplinary lens that defines her work. She completed postdoctoral training at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and later held a senior research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. Her research investigates the brain’s endogenous systems for pain modulation, with a focus on both healthy individuals and those living with acute and chronic pain. More recently, her work has expanded into digital medicine, including the use of virtual reality and music to understand and modulate pain mechanisms and translate them into real-world clinical applications. Dr. Colloca has authored over 227 peer-reviewed publications, with more than 23,300 citations (H-index: 73), appearing in leading journals such as Pain, JAMA, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet Neurology, and Nature Digital Medicine.