Recent advances in behavioral, biological, and engineering sciences provide exciting opportunities to attack important problems faced by people with disabilities. Scientists with strong backgrounds in rehabilitation, who bring multidisciplinary research approaches to answer important questions related to rehabilitation, are scarce. The goal of this pre-doctoral training program is to improve the quality and quantity of individuals who will contribute to the knowledge base and practice of physical rehabilitation. This training program, coordinated through the Department of Physical Therapy, includes faculty members from the Mechanical Engineering and Physical Therapy Departments at the University of Delaware. The program fuses two independent training programs: an entry level Doctorate in Physical Therapy (DPT), designed to train clinical physical therapists, and the PhD in Biomechanics and Movement Sciences (BMSC). Research concentrations during the PhD portion of the program include: Applied Physiology, Exercise Physiology, Biomechanics, Motor Control, and Rehabilitation Technology. The program is analogous to the MD/PhD programs that are designed to train medical scientists. Students in the proposed program become both physical therapists and research scientists. Trainees are selected from a pool of outstanding students with diverse undergraduate backgrounds who enter the DPT program. Many of these students express an interest in research before admission to the program. Unfortunately, because of the sizable debt incurred during graduate school and the opportunity to earn the salaries that clinical physical therapists enjoy, very few of these students go on to pursue the PhD. This training program attracts individuals who have a sincere interest in physical rehabilitation research and tracks them early in their training into research careers. The need for these individuals is enormous. Both new and established programs need doctorally trained individuals for teaching and research positions. Graduates of this training program are ideal faculty members who will foster excellence in rehabilitation research.
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