Luana Colloca is a MPower Distinguished professor at University of Maryland, School of Nursing, Baltimore, Director of the TL1 program, Chair of the Pain and Placebo Special Interest Group for the International Association for Study of Pain (IASP) Society and the Treasurer for the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies of Placebo (SIPS). Colloca holds an MD, a PhD in Neuroscience and a master in Bioethics. She completed a post-doc training at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden and a senior research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. Prof. Colloca received several prestigious awards such as the IASP Wall Patrick Award for basic research on pain mechanisms. Colloca leads an NIH-funded research portfolio on endogenous pain modulation including placebo/nocebo effects and other nonpharmacological interventions such as virtual reality. Colloca and her teamhave been published in top-ranked journals including JAMA, NEJM, Biological Psychiatry, Pain, and Lancet Neurology among others.