Joe Julian

  • Artist in Residence

12 Visual Arts

Joe Julian

Biography

After completing his medical degree, Joe Julian, MD, obtained nine years of post-doctoral training in neurology, internal medicine and rehabilitation medicine. Joe then served on the faculties of the medical schools of the University of Wisconsin, University of Pittsburgh and the Medical University of South Carolina where he specialized in post-acute motoric recovery after brain injury, motor control and the clinical implications of neuroplasticity. He also spent five years living, traveling and working in Africa, Asia and Central America including one and a half years developing rehabilitation programs for land mine victims on the Thai-Cambodian border.

An ongoing interest in the brain as the "creative engine" and the experience of making prosthetics and orthotics from locally available materials [described in a chapter he collaborated on with Charles Garoian in Garoian's book, "The Prosthetic Pedagogy of Art"] led to training in sculpture at Penn State University.

Since 2012 he has been Artist in Residence in sculpture in the School of Visual Arts at PSU and in 2015 he joined the Arts and Design Research Incubator [as Lead Investigator Applied Neuroscience] where he works in collaboration with faculty in the College of Arts and Architecture as well as other campus faculty on trans-disciplinary projects that are at the intersection of neuroscience, the visual arts, performance art and the workings of the embodied brain/mind.