Sharon Cermak - Advisory Board

Sharon Cermak, Ed.D., OTR/L, FAOTA
University of Southern California (USC)
Department of Occupational Therapy and Rehabilitation Counseling

Sharon Cermak is currently a Professor of Occupational Therapy at USC, prior to that she was a Professor of Occupational Therapy at Boston University, Sargent College, and Adjunct Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health at University of Massachusetts Medical School. Dr. Cermak is the Director of Occupational Therapy in the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (LEND) program at the E.K. Shriver Center, University of Massachusetts Medical School, and at the LEND program at Children’s Hospital. Dr. Cermak is a member of the Advisory Board for the Maternal and Child Health program at the School of Public Health, Boston University, a member of the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Chapter of Partners of the Americas, and a member of the Advisory Boards of the Spiral Foundation (Watertown, MA) and Pediatric Network (Torrance, CA). Dr. Cermak also has a small private practice where she provides evaluation and consultation services to families with children adopted from orphanages.

Dr. Cermak received her Bachelor of Science degree in Occupational Therapy at Ohio State University, and her Master of Science and Doctoral degrees at Boston University. Dr. Cermak enjoys international travel and combines work and pleasure whenever possible. In 1992, she received a Fulbright lecture award and spent a semester at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, School of Occupational Therapy. In 1999, she received the R. K. Gray award, and worked at the University of Western Australia in Perth Australia where she and her colleague, Dr. D. Larkin, edited a book on motor coordination problems in children, Developmental Coordination Disorder published in 2002 by Delmar/Thompson Learning.

Dr. Cermak’s research focus is in two areas: developmental dyspraxia and sensory processing. She is interested in children with motor coordination problems (Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) or dyspraxia and, with her LEND colleagues at the Shriver Center, just received a grant from National Institutes of Health (NIH) to examine the relation among motor coordination, physical activity and fitness in children. Her passion involves working with institutionalized and post-institutionalized children and their families. She has been involved in research examining the developmental and sensory processing outcomes of children living in deprived orphanage environments in Eastern Europe. She has done extensive work in Romania for the past 12 years, and, with Dr. Laurie Miller and colleagues at New England Medical Center, is involved in an NIH grant examining neurocognitive outcomes of children in orphanages in Russia.