Staff

Camila Cuesta

Administrative Assistant
Camila is responsible for providing high-quality customer service to patients and administrative support to physicians and nurses

Luis Espinal

Administrative Assistant
Luis is responsible for providing high-quality customer service to patients and administrative support to physicians and nurses.

Ponnette Miller

Sr. Administrative Assistant
Ponnette is responsible for providing high-quality customer service to patients and administrative support to physicians and nurses; she also provides clerical support in the department's operations, administrative, and some financial areas.

Julia Santana

Administrative Assistant
Julia is responsible for providing high-quality customer service to patients and administrative support to physicians and nurses.

Sandy Aya

Representative, Clinical Business Operations
Sandy offers support in everything that is Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. She assists in all aspects of clinical operations including scheduling, patient clearance, managing expectations surrounding pre-and-post patient care as well as any other daily activities within the department.

Daniel Hernandez

Sr. Surgical Scheduler
Daniel is responsible for scheduling surgical procedures and assures that all of the appropriate clinical and insurance coding information is collected for the surgery schedule.

Dairah Welch

Representative, Clinical Business Operations
Dairah offers support in everything that is Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. She assists in all aspects of clinical operations, including scheduling, patient clearance, and managing expectations surrounding pre-and-post patient care and other daily activities within the department.

Maritza Brown, RN, BSN

Registered Nurse II
Maritza coordinates surgical procedures and peer-to-peer for the department, prior authorization for medication for the PMR physicians, and patient advocate.

Kathryn Collazos, Ph.D., BSN, RN

Dr.Felix's Research team

Dr. Collazos joined the South Florida Spinal Cord Injury Model System team in 2024. Drawing upon her clinical nursing (University of Wisconsin-Madison ’16) and nursing science (University of Miami ’23) backgrounds, she aims to build upon her program of research focused on neuroinflammatory markers to better understand neuropathic pain and outcomes in patients with neurological conditions.

Katherine Martinez, BA

Research Associate
Dr. Felix's Research Team

Katherine assists with data collection for the National Spinal Cord Injury Model Systems (SCIMS) database. She also helps with other research studies conducted by the South Florida SCIMS and collaborating centers.

Dinorah Rodriguez, RN, BSN, CCRC

Nurse Specialist, Research
Dr. Gater’s Research Team

Dinorah is a research nurse responsible for the coordination of clinical research protocols. This includes initiation of the IRB process for review and approval of various protocols, screening and recruitment of subjects, observance of federal regulations and good clinical practice as it relates to human subjects in research.

Alicia Sneij, Ph.D., RD

Postdoctoral Associate
Dr. Gater’s Research Team
Publications

Dr. Sneij aims to use metabolism research to understand why persons with spinal cord injury (SCI) develop profound obesity and optimize therapeutic strategies to manage this outcome. Primarily he is a team member on a study examining the effect of home-based exercise on cardiometabolic health in persons with SCI and is also involved in other projects regarding dietary fat metabolism, the energetics of exercise, hurricane preparedness, and novel tests of the sympathetic nervous system.

Lais Vidotto, MS

Clinical Research Coordinator 2
Dr Felix's team.

Lais coordinates research projects exclusively for the South Florida Spinal Cord Injury Model Systems, including the national database, site-specific projects, as well as research administrative work. With strength in interpersonal and collaborative skills, Lais is dedicated to ensuring ethical standards and humanization in research.

Matthew De Vlieger

Research Analyst

Matthew is the manager of research data for the Spinal Cord Injury Model Systems. He helps recruit participants with spinal cord injuries into research studies and assists with analyzing the data. He also provides support and manages the participant entries into the national database.

Katherina Moll

Residency Coordinator
Katherina is responsible for providing administrative support for the residency and fellowship program at PM&R.
She assists:
Coretha Davis