Sebastiano Nutarelli, Sports PT, PhD Candidate (ACL rehab), MS Biomechanics, Clinical Researcher, Sports Rehab PT clinics & EU Knee Arthrofibrosis Center co-founder

About Sebastiano Nutarelli, Sports PT, PhD Candidate (ACL rehab), MS Biomechanics, Clinical Researcher, Sports Rehab PT clinics & EU Knee Arthrofibrosis Center co-founder

Sebastiano was born in Turin, Italy, in 1980. Always into sports, after basketball, soccer, and alpine skiing, he played semi-professionally as a 5-a-side/futsal player. He was then won over by a full-speed career as a futsal referee, becoming a CAN-5 National referee in 2007.

He studied IT and digital communication as a multimedia systems designer, and from 2003 until 2007 worked for one of the most important Italian IT and digital communication companies, as Web Accessibility Engineer. He specialized in developing e-government web portals, became the web accessibility technical representative for people with various disabilities, and an instructor for web accessibility companies. In 2005, he became the 5th Italian member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG2.0) working group, the international institution based in the U.S. that sets the web guidelines.

At 27 years old, at the peak of his professional and sports career, his life took a complete U-turn; due to a serious knee injury, he was forced to stop any activity for more than 4 years, to dedicate all his efforts to the recovery from knee arthrofibrosis, with many surgeries and daily PT 365 days a year. After several consultations with European knee experts, he moved to the U.S. for more than 1 year and a half, to become a patient of top-notch orthopedic surgery and sports medicine/rehabilitation centers, mainly in Colorado and Florida, then briefly in California.

With this extended U.S. stay, he had the opportunity to directly experience the marked differences between the European and the U.S. clinical-rehabilitative approaches, with the chance to do such thing directly with worldwide-renowned surgeons and PTs, who later became mentors. This experience led him to choose to pursue a new path once back on his feet.

He enrolled for a 4-year BSc in Physiotherapy in Lugano, Switzerland, and accomplished it with the highest grade point average (GPA) of his course. During his studies, he went back to the U.S to further expand his own educational pathway with the American approach, as follows:

- PT and orthopeadic surgical observership at Cincinnati SportsMedicine & Orthopaedic Center - Dr. Noyes Knee Clinic (Cincinnati, OH - United States)
- Clinical rotation at TIRR Memorial Hermann - Texas Medical Center (Houston, TX - United States).

Since 2015, he has joined several surgical teams observing in operating rooms in Italy, Switzerland, and the United States.

He completed a series of postgraduate specializations:

- Certificate of Advanced Studies in Sports Physical Therapy at SUPSI University (Lugano, Switzerland)
- Master's degree in Biomechanics at San Raffaele University (Rome, Italy)
- Postgraduate stand-alone 'Statistics in Health Research' module, part of the MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care (University of Oxford, UK)
- Certificate of Advanced Studies in 'Clinical Research - Clinical Trial Planning and Conduct' (University of Basel, Switzerland)
- MET Medical Exercise Therapy Program (Holten Institute, Sweden)
- Strength and Conditioning Certificates (Italy/UK)
- Sportsmetrics™ Certification program - certified Sportsmetrics™ instructor (United States)

Furthermore, he's currently a PhD Candidate at UCD / University College Dublin (Dublin, Ireland) on ACL rehabilitation of the knee.

Sebastiano was the co-founder and President of the non-profit company NFC, which organised CPD courses for PTs & MDs in Italy, which he consecutively translated from English to Italian.
In 2017, he co-founded NOVAVIA Project, a company that acted in the field of professional Evidence-Based education (CPD courses, workshops, etc.) for MDs, PTs, and ATs mainly in Italy, Switzerland, and France. The organized courses involved the highest level of professors, physical therapists, and clinical researchers from all over the world, with Sebastiano acting as their interpreter from English to Italian and being the assistant to some of them during the teaching process.

In the summer of 2022, Sebastiano became the Scientific Coordinator for all the CPD training projects in the 'Sports Rehab/Medicine, Exercise, and Scientific Research' area for PhisioVit, keeping up with the continuous effort to organize top-notch post-graduate professional training for health care professionals and athletic trainers.

He now teaches courses for physical therapists, athletic trainers, and health professionals on knee and lower limb injuries, and injury risk reduction in Switzerland, Italy, Romania, Denmark, Sweden, China, and the United States.

He currently contributes as an Italian translator of rehabilitative guidelines, and he's in the process of translating further scientific manuals - some of the translations are listed below:

- Derby Shoulder Instability Rehabilitation Programme (Derby Shoulder Unit, UK)
- Melbourne ACL Rehabilitation Guide 2.0 (Australia)
- Kinesiology of the Musculoskeletal System, Foundations for Rehabilitation, 3rd Edition (Prof. Dr. Donald Neumann - Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI - USA)
- Advanced Strength and Conditioning: An Evidence-based Approach - (Anthony Turner & Paul Comfort)
- Brukner & Khan's Clinical Sports Medicine: Injuries, Volume 1, 5a edizione (P. Brukner, B. Clarsen, J. Cook, A. Cools, K. Crossley, M. Hutchinson, P. McCrory, R. Bahr, K. Khan)
- Kendall's Muscles - Testing and Function with Posture and Pain (V. Conroy, B. Murray, Q. Alexopulos, J. McCreary)

His university roles & teaching assignments:

- from February 2018 to January 2019: associate professor in the BSc of Physioterapy at L.U.de.S. Lugano Campus, Switzerland (Semmelweis University) - teaching "Kinesiology of the upper and lower limbs" & "Evidence-Based Physioterapy in Orthopaedics 2"
- from February 2019 to July 2022: lecturer at 'Sapienza' Università di Roma, Italy - teaching “Evidence-Based Practice & Orthopaedic Evidence-Based rehabilitation”
- since November 2024 - ongoing: associate professor in the Master's Program in Clinical & Sport Biomechanics (University of Camerino, Italy) in the subjects “Biomechanics of the lower quadrant applied to sporting gesture” and “Biomechanical assessment methodologies of movement in sport, exercise and rehabilitation (2-3D video analysis, optoelectronic analysis, wearable inertial sensors, force platforms and dynamometric force measurements)
- since December 2023 - ongoing: Master Program Coordinator & Scientific Committee member for the Master in Clinical & Sports Biomechanics (University of Camerino, Italy).

Sebastiano is also a:

- KNEEguru Clinical Advisory Board member (knee rehabilitation)
- International Arthrofibrosis Association Board member
- Italian Society of Arthroscopy, Knee, Upper Limb, Sports, Cartilage and Orthopaedic Technologies (SIAGASCOT) member
- SIAGASCOT Sports Medicine Committee member
- International Partner of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA)
- Swiss Physical Therapy Association (Physioswiss) member
- Swiss Sports Physiotherapy Association (Sportfisio) member
- International Society of Arthroscopy, Knee Surgery and Orthopaedic Sports Medicine (ISAKOS) Allied Specialty Member

Since 2023, Sebastiano has been the co-organizer and Head of the Scientific Committee of the International Sports Rehabilitation Meeting, the sports medicine Congress organized by Sports Rehab.

He started practicing as a physical therapist in Switzerland in the summer of 2017, then from August 2018, he began working at the Centro Cantonale di Medicina dello Sport (CCMS) in Tenero, and since the summer of 2018 he co-founded the Sports Rehab PT clinics along with his managing partner and Physical Therapist, Andrea Balboni. Moreover, he was the team physio for the Swiss National Swimming Team for the Elite, Youth & Juniors teams, from 2018 to the Tokyo Olympics 2020 (2021 due to the pandemic).

Since the beginning of 2020, he has been working as a part-time clinical researcher at the Clinical Research Orthopaedic & Traumatology Unit of the EOC Regional Hospital in Lugano.

In his non-stop idea to set up a center in Europe to actually help people dealing with knee arthrofibrosis, which plagued himself eventually leading to his new life as a Physical Therapist, he developed the European Knee Arthrofibrosis Center (EUKAF) kicking it off in 2022 (hosted in the Sports Rehab clinics), progressively training a staff of Physical Therapists and putting together a multidisciplinary team of skilled health professionals genuinely willing to join the project (knee orthopaedic surgeons, pain specialists, psychologists, nutritionists, clinical & lab researchers, and so on).

Sebastiano is a strong supporter of the evidence-informed practice in rehabilitation, and he takes care of the standardization of the clinical practice within the Sports Rehab & European Knee Arthrofibrosis Center teams, sharing the guidelines and the constant updates, thanks to the exchanges with the international experts he's in contact with. He works with patients daily to help them in the process of recovery from an injury, whether they are professional athletes or "weekend warriors".

Two are probably the current goals:

- building a clinical setting where patients with whatever social, athletic, or country of origin can find a solid, skilled, and genuinely empathetic team; a group of professionals driven by actual passion, as seen in top-notch organisations in the U.S, as a patient first and later as a Physical Therapist
- developing scientific research with a practical effect on the PT clinical practice.