School of Kinesiology’s Sarah Greising receives McKnight Land-Grant Professorship

Sarah Greising, PhD pictured in front of Cooke Hall.

The School of Kinesiology would like to congratulate professor Sarah Greising, PhD, on her appointment as a 2020-22 McKnight Land-Grant Professor. 

The goal of the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship program is to strengthen and advance the careers of the most promising junior faculty members who are at the beginning stages of their professional careers, and who have the potential to make significant contributions to their departments and to their scholarly fields. The designation of “McKnight Land-Grant Professor” is held by recipients for a two-year period and is accompanied by funding for their work at the University. 

Dr. Greising was chosen as one of the eleven 2020-22 McKnight Land-Grant Professors, from a University-wide pool of nominees. Recipients of the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship must be early in their academic career and show exceptional promise in their research, illustrating its potential importance in their field and beyond, and its original, innovative, independent nature. Additionally, applicants must highlight their teaching and mentorship capabilities, as well as their service and leadership contributions to the wider community.   

Dr. Greising’s scientific enquiry focuses on leveraging curiosity and physiology to optimize skeletal muscle function after injury. Traumatic orthopaedic injuries can leave patients with significant lifelong dysfunction. Some injuries, such as volumetric muscle loss, are particularly challenging and current treatment guidelines for skeletal muscle remain elusive. To understand these injuries, Dr. Greising’s team evaluates how the muscle environment is limiting to adaptation during treatment (surgical, regenerative medicine, and/or rehabilitation). Her lab is committed to using physiology to promote an endogenous environment supportive of treatments to improve long-term function for these patients. 

Dr. Greising’s research looks beyond today’s standard treatment options with the goal of supplementing or replacing them with more effective alternatives, and has the potential to offer survivors new hope with the possibility of an active and independent future.

The School of Kinesiology is extremely proud of Dr. Greising’s recognition! With this appointment she becomes one of only three faculty members in the College of Education and Human Development to have received this prestigious award since 2013.