Dr. Tim Uhl

Tim Uhl, PhD, ATC, PT, FNATA, has been practicing physical therapy and athletic training since 1985 in various sport medicine settings. Tim received his bachelor’s degree in health science from the University of Kentucky in physical therapy. After three years of clinical practice at the Lexington Sports Medicine Center he went on to receive his masters’ degree in Kinesiology from the University of Michigan.

“I’ve been at the University of Kentucky College of Health Sciences since 1999,” Uhl said. “I started in the athletic training program when it was a post professional program and transferred over to the department of physical therapy two years ago, so most of my research is focused on upper extremity rehabilitation.”

At Michigan he worked with the athletic programs and at MedSport, their sports medicine outpatient center. He served both on the staff and as the director of outpatient physical therapy at the Human Performance and Rehabilitation Centers in Columbus, GA. He completed his doctorate in sports medicine from the University of Virginia in 1998 where he studied shoulder proprioception and is presently a Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy, at the University of Kentucky.

Uhl is an active member of the APTA, NATA, American Society of Shoulder and Elbow Therapist (ASSET) and American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES), and American Baseball Biomechanics Society (ABBS).

“We currently have a project going on that’s funded through the National Science Foundation and it’s working on exercise adherence using some wearable devices,” he said. “We’re getting ready to start a virtual reality intervention with patients who have difficulty using their hands after surgery or after trauma — a lot of projects going on, a lot of opportunities to gain more information and hopefully help patients ultimately and help clinicians treat patients better.”

And Uhl always utilizes help from his students.

“Almost every project I’ve ever done has always involved a student,” he said. “I would say 75 to 80 percent of every paper I’ve ever published has had a student of some level — doctoral student, master's student, undergraduate student — involved on my projects.”

It’s all a part of why CHS is such a special to be, he said. Amazing professors. Amazing students.

“If you like to get your hands dirty — I understand surgeons get their hands dirty, also — but if you like to figure out problems, if you like to interact with people … we do a lot of interacting and we change peoples’ lives every day,” Uhl said. “And if you like doing that, you like working with people, it is a fantastic place to learn how to do it.”

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