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.jpg "Ashraf S. Gorgey, PhD, MPT, FACSM, FACRM photo")
Director of SCI Research
Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center
Ashraf S. Gorgey, MPT, PhD, FACSM, FACRM is currently the Director of Spinal Cord Injury Research at Hunter Holmes McGuire at VA Medical Center and Associate Professor at Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Virginia Commonwealth University. He has a bachelor and master degrees in physical therapy. He acquired his PhD in exercise physiology in 2005 with special emphasis on electrical stimulation, muscle activation and fatigue from the University of Georgia. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan with special focus on body composition and metabolic profile after SCI. His research work has focused on investigating rehabilitation strategies that could improve quality of life in individuals with SCI and minimize health related secondary complications. He is also interested in understanding the cellular and molecular adaptations to unloading and hypertrophy. In 2010 and 2018, he was awarded the fellowship status from the America College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM), respectively. Dr. Gorgey’s research has received national recognition by different organizations including the Department of Veteran Affairs and Department of Defense. His studies were funded to study the effects of electrical stimulation, exercise and testosterone replacement therapy on parameters of physical activity in persons including body composition, metabolic profile and mitochondrial health. Most recently, he was funded to study the applications of exoskeleton with and without neuromodulation techniques similar to epidural stimulation and trans-spinal stimulation on motor recovery. Dr. Gorgey has published close to 110 peer-reviewed articles and presented nationally as well as internationally in different scientific meetings.