The Live in Motion Foundation named Kierra Falbo, PhD, MPO, CPO, and Alexis Sidiropoulos, PhD, as recipients of its Early Career Research Grants 2026.
Falbo is a postdoctoral researcher working in the Rehab Neural Engineering Labs at the University of Pittsburgh. She completed her doctoral degree in rehabilitation science at the University of Minnesota and the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System. She has a master’s degree from Northwestern University and an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Sidiropoulos is a health science specialist in the Biomechanics Research for the Advancement of Veteran Outcomes Laboratory at the Department of Veterans Affairs New York Harbor Healthcare System.
The grants, which recognize emerging investigators whose work has the potential to shape the future of orthotics, prosthetics, and pedorthics, provide $30,000 in support to researchers within ten years of completing their terminal degree, helping them establish promising lines of investigation and build the preliminary evidence needed to pursue larger-scale funding from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and Department of Defense.
