Professor
University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine
Walter R. Frontera, MD, PhD, is Professor in the Departments of Physical Medicine, Rehabilitation, and Sports Medicine (PM&R) and Physiology at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR). He has been Professor and Founding Chair of departments of PM&R at Harvard Medical School/Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and the UPR School of Medicine. He was also Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the UPR. During his tenure at Harvard, he served as Chief of the PM&R Service at the Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s Hospitals. He received a Master of Arts degree (Hon. Causa) from Harvard University in 2004.
His main research interest is geriatric rehabilitation and in particular the study of the mechanisms underlying muscle atrophy and weakness in elderly and the potential benefits of exercise training in older men and women. Dr. Frontera’s research has been funded mainly by the US National Institutes of Health. He has more than 330 scientific publications including 122 peer-reviewed articles and 12 edited. His books
have been translated into Chinese, Italian, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Currently, Dr. Frontera serves as the Editor-in-Chief of The American Journal of PM&R.
He is an elected member of the US National Academy of Medicine and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal College of Physicians (London), the American Physiological Society, the American College of Sports Medicine, and the American Academy of PM&R. He has been President of the International Society for PM&R (ISPRM), Visiting Professor of Neurophysiology at the Karolinska Hospital (Sweden), and Honorary Professor at the Nanjing Medical University (China). Dr. Frontera has presented more than 500 invited lectures in 64 countries and served as a research and faculty reviewer for universities in Canada, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and South Africa. He is a member of two committees of the World Health Organization on Long Term Care and Sarcopenia Rehabilitation Interventions and is Co-Chair of the Research Committee of the WHO World Rehabilitation Alliance.
Dr. Frontera has received several awards including the Association of Academic Physiatrist’s Distinguished Academician Award, Outstanding Service Award, and Distinguished Member Award. He has been the recipient of the Best Scientific Research Paper (3 times) of the American Academy of PM&R, the Harvard Foundation Award, the Sydney Licht Lecture Award of ISPRM, the Excellence in Rehabilitation of Aging Persons Award of the Gerontological Society of America, the Distinguished Member Award of the American Academy of PM&R, the Howard Rusk Award for Leadership and Innovation in PM&R, and the Mayo Clinic Krusen Visiting Professorship.
He is a Corresponding Member of the Japanese Association of Rehabilitation Medicine and an honorary member of national PM&R societies in Belgium, Chile, Dominican Republic, Euskalerria (Basque Country, Spain), Italy, and Mexico.
