Laura Blackwell is a pediatric neuropsychologist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and an adjunct professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at Emory University. Dr. Blackwell received her undergraduate degree from Emory University, her master’s degree in child development from Tufts University, and her doctorate from the University of Miami. She went to Kennedy Krieger/Johns Hopkins School of Medicine for her predoctoral internship and Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard University Medicine School for her postdoctoral fellowship.

Dr. Blackwell has been conducting research within traumatic brain injury since her fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital, where she began examining the impact of sports related concussion on children and adolescents. She joined the faculty in the Neuropsychology Department at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta where she conducts clinical evaluations in the Day Rehabilitation Program, assessing and monitoring cognitive recovery following an acquired brain injury. She is now actively involved in several research projects and is an integral part of the Pediatric Neurotrauma Lab.

Her interests include measuring and predicting outcomes following pediatric acquired brain injury; characterizing the recovery trajectories of children with disorders of consciousness and examining early predictors of outcome in this population; examining biological markers and platelet functioning in children with moderate to severe brain injury; and exploring factors impacting recovery from mild traumatic brain injury.