With great respect and admiration, the Division of Biomedical Sciences remembers our colleague and friend, Dr. Michelle Ploughman, who passed away in April 2026. Michelle was an internationally recognized neuroscientist, physiotherapist, educator, and leader in neurorehabilitation whose work advanced our understanding of how exercise, rehabilitation, and neuroplasticity can influence recovery and function in people living with neurological disease. Throughout her career at Memorial University of Newfoundland, she built a highly successful and collaborative research program spanning multiple sclerosis (MS), stroke, brain recovery, rehabilitation, and exercise neuroscience. A defining feature of Michelle’s work was her ability to bridge fundamental neuroscience with questions that directly mattered to patients, with a strong focus on improving mobility, independence, quality-of-life, and neurological function. She made particularly important contributions to MS research in Newfoundland and Labrador through the Recovery and Performance Laboratory and the Health Innovation Team in Multiple Sclerosis (HITMS), helping establish a multidisciplinary program that integrated exercise, rehabilitation, clinical outcomes, physical and cognitive function, and biological measures of disease. Michelle also developed strong and enduring relationships with people living with MS and understood that research participants were partners in discovery and research. She was an exceptional mentor who supported and trained numerous graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, clinicians, research staff, and undergraduate trainees, and brought tremendous energy, ambition, and generosity to her collaborations. At the time of her passing, Michelle remained deeply engaged in an ambitious research program examining exercise as a potential neuroprotective and disease-modifying strategy in MS. Her loss has been felt deeply throughout the Division of Biomedical Sciences, the Faculty of Medicine, the neuroscience and rehabilitation communities, and among the many patients, trainees, colleagues, and families whose lives she touched. Her legacy will continue through the people she mentored, the programs she built, the collaborations she created, and the enduring belief that research will improve the lives of people living with neurological disease. The Division of Biomedical Sciences is proud to have Dr. Michelle Ploughman among its faculty and colleagues. Her contributions to Memorial University and the people of Newfoundland and Labrador will continue to have a direct impact for many years to come.