Performance Research Lab

About Us

Cristine Agresta, PT, MPT, PhD
Director

I’m an Assistant Professor in the UW Department of Rehabilitation Medicine and am the Program Coordinator for the UW Sports Physical Therapy Residency Program. In addition to UW, I hold an Affiliate Faculty position in the Department of Kinesiology at Seattle University. Prior to UW, I co-directed the Michigan Performance Research Laboratory at the University of Michigan. I research how to enhance decision-making about athlete readiness, equipment design, training, rehabilitation, and return-to-play through better assessment and monitoring methods. I work with companies, sports organizations, athletic medicine teams, and engineers to conduct translational research. My specialties include clinical assessment, biomechanical movement analysis, physical demands assessment, human interaction with footwear, and employing human performance field measures, including wearable sensors.

Education and Training

  • Postdoctoral fellowship: Kinesiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
  • PhD: Movement Science, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
  • Masters: Physical Therapy, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH
  • Undergraduate: Movement Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

Areas of Research Expertise

  • wearable sensors
  • sports medicine
  • assessment and monitoring techniques

See LinkedIn and X pages for more information and professional updates.

Projects

We are interested in gaining knowledge and advancing assessment methods that improve decision-making about injury susceptibility, equipment design and recommended use, training logistics, rehabilitation, and athlete readiness or return-to-play. Whenever possible, we aim to understand the relation between the human musculoskeletal system and task demands occurring in native environments. Thus, we try to use in-field measures whenever possible. However, we use the Amplifying Movement & Performance (AMP) Lab for more traditional data collection. Check here for a list of our available equipment.

We study a range of sports and athletes.

Our projects are typically staffed by a multi-disciplinary group of engineers, data scientists, kinesiologists, and physical therapists.

We like to partner with industry, teams, and sport organizations to apply sports medicine and science research into action. If you are interested in discussing potential collaboration, contact me.

See links for related peer-reviewed publications and media coverage from current and previous projects.

Services

We offer ad-hoc consulting services in the following areas:

  • team-level athlete evaluation and movement analysis
  • product testing and validation
  • research design and methods development for in-house testing of products or technology
  • insight on clinical and sport application of new product or technology
  • educational content development or presentations on human anatomy and function, human biomechanics, kinesiology principles, clinical examination and injury risk assessment

Contact me for more details.