Associate Professor Dr. Ryan Zarzycki of Arcadia’s Department of Physical Therapy has received a three year, $520,154 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study how non-invasive brain stimulation might improve quadriceps muscle function after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction.

The grant is an R15 grant, which supports research projects at universities that have not received major NIH support in the past, while also providing students with quality research opportunities and strengthening the institution’s research environment. The team conducting the research will include undergraduate, doctor of Physical Therapy, and PhD students.

“This will be a great opportunity for our students to be directly involved in work that addresses real-world health challenges,” Zarzycki said. “The benefits are twofold: strengthening their academic careers while preparing to become the next generation of scientific leaders.” 

Graduate students on the research team will include Anne Leung ’19DPT, ’26PhD, Alan Shoykhet ’26DPT, and Emily Nervegna ’27DPT. Undergraduate students will include Biology majors Alexa Barnett ’26, Grace Curnow ’26, Julia Eckert ’27, Brylie Greene ’28, and Natalee Dragotta ’28, and Health Sciences major Irene Tulik ’28, all of whom are pre-Physical Therapy.

“ We’ve known for a long time that the quadriceps muscle is impaired after a traumatic knee injury, specifically after ACL injury and ACL reconstruction,” Zarzycki explained. “ But we really didn’t until, probably the last two decades or so, start to understand is how the nervous system changes after an ACL injury.  If we can directly upregulate the brain region responsible for controlling movement in order to increase muscle activation, this approach could serve as an adjunct to traditional ACL rehabilitation. Thus, non-invasive brain stimulation may help restore not only the patient’s strength and range of motion, but also their nervous system to its pre-injury state.”