Faculty Research Areas
| Faculty | Research Areas |
| Dr. Mark Clarke, Associate Professor, Exercise Science | Muscle physiology, muscle adaptation to mechanical loading, cellular basis of muscle function in health and disease. |
Dr. Stacey Gorniak, |
Research interests directed towards understanding healthy and pathological neuromuscular control. Specifically interested in sensori-motor challenges in hand function and understanding how neurological pathology changes how people use their hands. Investigating neural changes due to aging, traumatic brain injury, and neuropathy affect functional hand use, particularly in actions of daily living. |
| Dr. Charles Layne, Professor, Motor Control |
Development of human coordination, investigation of locomotion/posture control and the role of somatosensory input on muscle contraction. |
| Dr. Tracey Ledoux, Assistant Professor | Develop effective obesity prevention interventions that target psychosocial mediators to mitigate the impact of the obesigenic environment and the natural rewarding properties of food on the individual among families in the earliest years of development. Related to these ultimate research goals are identifying 1) mediators to overeating, 2) effective behavior change strategies, and 3) valid/reliable measures of these variables. |
| Dr. Rebecca Lee, Associate Professor, Obesity Studies | Research is anchored in an ecological framework that incorporates environmental and individual determinants of physical activity, dietary habits and obesity prevention in ethnic minority and underserved populations. Her work combines theory and techniques drawn from behavioral medicine, community psychology, geography, policy science, social ecology and social marketing. |
| Dr. Thomas Lowder, Assistant Professor | Examining how exercise and stress affect the immune system in young and aged subjects. Current research examines the role of regulatory T cells and how exercise-training can alter their suppressive ability. How the musculoskeletal system can be maintained and even enhanced throughout the lifespan with resistance training, animal and environmental physiology, and how different individuals and species adapt to wildly varying climates and conditions. |
| Dr. Brian McFarlin, Assistant Professor, Exercise physiology, Nutrition |
Physiology of Systemic, Low-grade Inflammation associated with Adiposity. Role of High-Intensity Exercise in the Modulation of Post-Exercise NK cell responses |
| Dr. Kimberly Matalon, Associate Professor - Nutrition | Metabolic diseases, metabolism, and nutrition. |
Dr. Daniel O'Connor, Assistant Professor, Exercise Science |
Evaluation of subject-level outcomes and effects; measurement of health, health-related quality of life, and health-related behaviors; measurement error, validity, linear models, and latent variable models. |
| Dr. William Paloski, Professor | Understanding normal and abnormal sensory-motor control of balance and locomotion. Studying and modeling the biomechanics, neural control, and adaptive responses of this system to space flight, aging, injury, and disease, other manifestations of altered sensory-motor control. Multi-system physiological adaptations to acute and/or chronic changes in gravito-inertial loading. Using rotational inertial loading (artificial gravity) to alleviate effects of physiological deconditioning caused by long-term exposure to microgravity. |
| Dr. Richard Simpson, Assistant Professor | Effects of exercise, age and disease on immune function. Physiological demands and performance indicators of soldier load-carriage performance. |
| Dr. Adam Thrasher, Assistant Professor Exercise Science |
Neuromuscular physiology and motor learning; Biomechanics and gait analysis; Electrical stimulation of paralyzed muscles to restore function; Rehabilitation engineering; Pathological locomotion. |