Petra Schweinhardt MD, PhD

Petra Schweinhardt, MD, Ph.D. is the Head of Research in the Department of Chiropractic Medicine at the Balgrist University Hospital and the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Her clinical research is focused on outcomes in patients with musculoskeletal pain and in particular back pain, and potential predictors of treatment outcome. Dr. Schweinhardt's experimental work is conducted in healthy human volunteers as well as in patients with back pain. An important line of research concerns spinal and supraspinal sensitization processes, their interaction, and how they might be contributing to back pain. Methods she uses include psychophysics, kinematic modeling, and brain imaging. Before moving to Switzerland, Dr. Schweinhardt held an Associate Professorship and a Canada Research Chair Tier II at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where her research was centered on cerebral pain processing and modulation as well as brain alterations in chronic pain patients. Dr. Schweinhardt earned her medical degree at Ruprecht-Karls University in Heidelberg, Germany, and a Ph.D. in Neurosciences at the University of Oxford, England.