A throng of more than 50 world-class investigators from some of Georgia’s top research institutions gathered recently at the Georgia Institute of Technology to kick off a new initiative – the first symposium of the Georgia Concussion Research Consortium.

“This was a great turnout,” said Michelle LaPlaca, who heads the consortium planning committee and presided over the event in the Marcus Nanotechnology Building.

“Since concussion is such a broad topic and affects so many individuals, not just athletes, it tends to attract a lot of researchers and clinicians,” added LaPlaca, associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, and a researcher in the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Tech.

Actually, there aren’t many researchers in Atlanta studying traumatic brain injury and concussion at any one location, she noted, “but put them together and the group could rival any of the large centers around the U.S. in expertise, innovation, and impact.”

The experts came from all over: Georgia Tech, Emory, the University of Georgia, the Shepherd Center, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Morehouse School of Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Gwinnett Medical Center, the Atlanta VA Medical Center.

“Atlanta has a large clinical population and is ripe for clinical research,” LaPlaca said. “Because of Georgia Tech and Emory’s strength in translational research, I think that the timing is right to catalyze new activity in concussion research. It was also great to see people coming from Athens and other Atlanta universities. We hope that this is the start of new collaborations and innovative solutions to concussion diagnosis, care, and outcomes research.”