Larry Forrester, PhD, Co-Founder
Larry Forrester, Ph.D., Co-Founder, is a leading expert in kinesiology, neuromotor rehabilitation, and exercise science with a focus on lower-limb gait restoration after stroke. He held dual academic appointments as an Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science and an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore.
Dr. Forrester began his academic journey with a comprehensive grounding in movement and health sciences, earning his foundational degrees before completing a Ph.D. specialized in motor control and neuro-rehabilitation. Following his doctoral studies, he dedicated his career to advancing the science of human mobility, collaborating extensively with pioneers in clinical neuroscience, engineering, and neuro-rehabilitation. During his long-standing research tenure at the University of Maryland, Dr. Forrester played a pivotal role in the clinical trial design, validation, and therapeutic application of lower-extremity intervention technologies, most notably evaluating the Anklebot—a novel robotic device engineered for ankle rehabilitation. His groundbreaking research utilizing this device established new methods for measuring paretic ankle motor control and pioneered deficit-adjusted clinical approaches for locomotor training in stroke survivors.
Joining the University of Maryland and the US Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Forrester established a rigorous research program dedicated to improving the lives of individuals with neurological disabilities. Serving as the Founding Director of the Human Motor Performance Laboratory at the Baltimore VA Medical Center and as a core principal investigator at the VA Maryland Exercise and Robotics Center of Excellence (MERCE), he spearheaded the deployment of advanced clinical protocols for rehabilitation sciences. Convinced that traditional gait therapy required a more intense, data-driven approach, his pivotal research focused on bridging exercise physiology with brain plasticity to create novel, task-repetitive locomotor therapies.
Dr. Forrester’s pioneering work led to the clinical validation of progressive treadmill aerobic training (T-AEX) and the co-development of the wearable ankle exoskeleton (AMBLE), innovations that fundamentally reshaped lower-limb rehabilitation paradigms. His extensive clinical trials and neuroimaging advancements demonstrated that adaptive-control ankle robotics can safely and durably improve gait biomechanics and facilitate the reversal of foot drop in chronic stroke survivors by recruiting subcortical neural networks. This transformative technology is backed by an extensive portfolio of clinical validation data and has been supported by significant multi-million dollar funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Furthermore, his groundbreaking research has garnered significant national and international media attention, with features in prominent outlets such as ScienceDaily and the Bangalore Mirror, as well as recognition by the American Heart Association.
These technical and clinical breakthroughs laid the foundation for his role as a Co-Founder of NextStep Robotics. At NextStep, Dr. Forrester steers the therapeutic translation and clinical vision of portable neurorobotic devices designed to restore mobility and human autonomy. His extraordinary contributions to physical therapy and rehabilitation science have been recognized globally, earning him a legacy as a recently retired founding director and an enduring authority in neuroplasticity and locomotor recovery. Alongside his executive leadership, Dr. Forrester actively shapes the future of the field by mentoring the next generation of clinicians and rehabilitation scientists as a long-standing faculty member at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
