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 College of Health Sciences Department of Physical Therapy at the University of Kentucky. In 2015 Dr. Dupont-Versteegden was promoted to full professor and in 2016 she accepted the position of Director of the Rehabilitation Sciences Doctoral Program. She currently also serves as the Director of the Center for Muscle Biology.
Educational Focus
Doctor of Physical Therapy Program
- Neurophysiology
- Physical Inactivity
Rehabilitation and Health Sciences Program
- Academia and Beyond
- Grant writing
Research / Scholarship
- Skeletal muscle plasticity
- Aging
- Skeletal muscle atrophy
- Muscle stem cells
- The effect of massage on muscle properties
- Muscle recovery from severe illness