Paria Darbandsari

Graduate Student

Department of Kinesiology

Physical Therapy, B.S, Iran University of Medical Science 

Exercise Science, M.S, University of Connecticut 

About

I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Physical Therapy in 2019 and for 3 years I had the chance of working with multiple patients suffering from orthopedic or neurological disorders in clinics and hospitals. This experience gave me a better understanding about being a physical therapist and helped me figure out my main interests, which being a neurologic physical therapist is one of them. 

 Working with my patients, there were always times that established exercise protocols could not address all of their problems because they were not specifically designed for their situations and there were always other behavioral or physical factors that were neglected in a rehabilitation protocol. Attempting to address these problems as a physical therapist, I read some of Dr. Colon-Semenza’s publications and became familiar with her research interests, being a member of her Lab gives me the opportunity of following my two main interests : continuing my studies as Master student in Exercise Science with a focus on Parkinson’s disease population and their needs in a rehabilitation protocol.