Training: Dorcas graduated in Physiotherapy on 2009 from the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, India and went on to pursue her Master’s degree in Neurophysiotherapy from the same university from 2010-2012. She also completed her Stroke rehabilitation research Fellowship by the Wellcome Trust UK-DBT India Alliance in 2018. She is currently pursuing her PhD at the Manipal Academy of Health Sciences, India and is working on Contextualized Clinical practice Guidelines for motor rehabilitation after a stroke in India.

Research areas: Dorcas is passionate about low cost models of stroke rehabilitation, contextualized models of therapy regimes, clinical protocols for post-stroke rehabilitation, contextualization and implementation of clinical practice guidelines for stroke, Tele-stroke rehabilitation and co-design/stakeholder involved stroke rehabilitation research. She was the National clinical administrator for the first ever multicentre rehabilitation trial in India (the ATTEND trial funded by NHMRC) and provides her expertise as the intervention expert for the first largest rehabilitation trial in the world, the AVERT-Dose trial funded by NHMRC

Awards: Emerging leader in Stroke Rehabilitation- International Alliance of Stroke Recovery & Rehab, 2023-2028, Young Investigator award- European Stroke Organization in 2019 and 2023, Physio-scientist award 2022 - Indian Association of Physiotherapists, Young Fellowship Award 2021 by Indian Federation of Neurorehabilitation, Young Investigators award- World Stroke Congress in 2018, Emerging Leaders 2018 in Stroke Rehabilitation by World Heart Federation in collaboration with World Stroke Organization, Travel award for Stroke conference (ISC) 2016, Los Angeles, Gold medal for highest marks in the university in MPT degree, Dr. Veerendra Hegde award for academic excellence in MPT.

Professional: Dorcas works as a Project Officer with the WHO-SEA regional office through its collaboration with CMC Ludhiana. In this project she has developed and implemented a set of training and technical-support modules on Stroke rehabilitation for this region and developed a training document on ‘Integrating stroke services in health-care systems: A practical approach Stroke care’ for Primary Health care workers in countries of the same region in 2019. She has been part of the Lancet Citizen’s commission, WSO-Lancet Neurology Commission, member of WSO, ESO, World Federation of Neurorehabilitation and its counterpart in India, World Rehabilitation Alliance (WRA). Dorcas is the founding member of the ‘Global Consortium of Stroke Rehabilitation-servicing low-resource settings.’ Dorcas also collaborated with bioengineers and movement analysts in providing her expertise to their neurorehabilitation-related projects and studies.

Publications: Dorcas has over 25 publications in peer reviewed and indexed national and international journals with an H-index of 12 and over 1000 citations

In Private: Dorcas is happily married for the past 7 years and has a daughter. She loves to sing, cycle, read and travel in her free time but deeply dislikes cooking. She believes that every life is valuable and making lives better is a something to pursue relentlessly.