Dr. Dupont graduated from State University Limburg at Maastricht, the Netherlands, with a Bachelor in Science degree in Movement Sciences. The title of her research thesis was: “Relationships between Impairment and Disability in Patients with Neuromuscular Diseases” and this study was performed with Dr. Eline Lindeman.

In 1995 she received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Physiology from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Texas. Dr. Roger McCarter was her PhD mentor and her dissertation was entitled: “Exercise and Clenbuterol as Modulators of Muscular Dystrophy in mdx Mice.”

Esther Dupont-Versteegden completed a postdoctoral study in molecular physiology with Dr. Charlotte Peterson at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences entitled: “Molecular Mechanisms of Muscle Responses to Exercise”.

In 1999 she became Assistant Professor of Geriatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and in 2006 she accepted a position as Associate Professor in the division of Physical Therapy and the department of Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Kentucky at Lexington. In 2015 Dr. Dupont-Versteegden was promoted to full professor.

Educational Focus
Doctor of Physical Therapy

• Neurophysiology
• Special Elective: Muscle Physiology
• Research: Analysis and Outcomes
• Human Health Sciences Program, Muscle Biology

Research / Scholarship

• Skeletal muscle plasticity
• Aging
• Skeletal muscle atrophy
• Muscle stem cells
• Apoptosis in muscle

Current Publications