Yuying Chen, M.D., Ph.D. has been named a university professor in the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Heersink School of Medicine Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.
The distinction is awarded to faculty who demonstrate sustained academic excellence, scholarly achievement, and impactful contributions to their field, as well as to UAB’s mission.
Chen’s appointment reflects more than two decades of contributions and funded research on longitudinal outcomes after spinal cord injury since she joined the department as an instructor in 2000.
A board-certified physiatrist trained in Taiwan and an epidemiologist, Chen brings expertise in medical rehabilitation, stewardship of large-scale longitudinal databases, study design, and advanced statistical methods for longitudinal data. She has earned national and international recognition for her work on spinal cord injury trends, mortality, and long-term outcomes.
Chen serves as director of the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center, which manages the world’s largest longitudinal National Spinal Cord Injury Model Systems Database. Through that role, she provides methodological consultation and technical assistance to researchers in the United States and internationally.
She has led multiple studies and published more than 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts, many using the Spinal Cord Injury Model Systems Database.
Chen also serves as vice chair of research in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation; co-director of the UAB Center for Engagement in Disability Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (CEDHARS); and associate director for the NIH-funded Disability Health Promotion Research Center.
At the national and international level, Chen serves on the board of directors of the American Spinal Injury Association and on the executive committee of the International Spinal Cord Injury Data Sets. She is also a member of the Oversight Committee for the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke’s Spinal Cord Injury Common Data Elements, and the American Spinal Injury Association’s Rehabilitation Standards Committee. In recognition of her contributions to the field, she was elected a Fellow of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine in 2018 and a Fellow of American Spinal Injury Association in 2019.