Rate My Professor Chet Moritz

Chet Moritz is the C.J. and Elizabeth Hwang Endowed Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Washington, holding joint appointments in Rehabilitation Medicine and Physiology & Biophysics. He earned a Ph.D. in Integrative Biology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Colorado in 2004 and the University of Washington in 2008. His academic career has centered on neuroengineering, with prior roles including Co-Director of the Center for Neurotechnology, an NSF Engineering Research Center, and Director of the Restorative Technologies Laboratory. Moritz has been recognized as an Allen Distinguished Investigator from 2013 to 2018 and a member of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation's International Research Consortium on Spinal Cord Injury from 2015 to 2018.

Moritz's research specializes in neurotechnologies to restore movement and autonomic function following spinal cord injury, stroke, and cerebral palsy. His laboratory develops transcutaneous electrical spinal cord stimulation techniques that enable high-current delivery without discomfort, demonstrating improvements in hand and arm function, walking, spasticity reduction, and bladder/bowel management in clinical trials. Additional efforts include optogenetic spinal stimulation to promote axonal growth and neuroplasticity in animal models, closed-loop brain stimulation for stroke recovery, and spinal stimulation combined with exoskeletons or treadmill training for children with cerebral palsy. Key publications include 'Non-invasive spinal cord electrical stimulation for arm and hand function in chronic tetraplegia: a safety and efficacy trial' in Nature Medicine (2024), 'Optogenetic spinal stimulation promotes new axonal growth and skilled forelimb recovery in rats with sub-chronic cervical spinal cord injury' in Journal of Neural Engineering (2023), 'Transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation restores hand and arm function after spinal cord injury' in IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering (2021), and 'Recovery of Over-Ground Walking after Chronic Motor-Complete Spinal Cord Injury' in the New England Journal of Medicine (2018). His innovations have contributed to FDA-approved devices for spinal cord injury treatment and earned awards such as the DARPA Young Faculty Award (2012), NIH EUREKA Award (2009), Weill Neurohub Investigator (2020), and multiple mentoring awards in 2024.