MAGGIE FRENCH

Like many physical therapists, I went into the profession due to my personal experience with physical therapy due to sports injuries. When working on my DPT at Emory University, I was sure I would go into sports physical therapy, but my full-time clinical rotation at an inpatient rehabilitation facility changed that. Instead, I pursued a career in neurologic physical therapy and completed a neurologic physical therapy residency at Johns Hopkins and University of Delaware after completing my DPT in 2013. I continued practicing at Johns Hopkins at the end of the residency before deciding to pursue a PhD in Biomechanics and Movement Science at University of Delaware in 2016.

My PhD work focused on understanding variability related to relearning walking behaviors after stroke, with an emphasis on how non-motor factors (e.g., cognition) impacting this. At the completion of my PhD I decided that I want to understand variability in recovery on a larger scale and, therefore, shifted my focus to using large-scale, real-world data to understand variability in functional outcomes and rehabilitation utilization. I honed my skills related to learning health systems, data science, and bioinformatics during my post-doctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. 

I am now an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah in the Department of Physical Therapy and Athletic Training. My long-term research goal is to improve the value of post stroke rehabilitation by understanding person and system level variability. I am a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Neurologic Physical Therapy and serve on the Education Committee for the American Society of Neurorehabilitation. My favorite parts of my job are mentoring future clinicians and scientists and seeing the final results of a new analysis.

Outside of work I enjoy running, camping, playing with my pup, and a good lego set. After a particularly stressful day, you might find me indulging in some trash reality TV or reading a murder mystery. On the weekends, I'll be on the trails with my husband and pup.