PhD in Sport and Exercise Sciences - Ageing and The Cardiopulmonary System

University of Leeds

A research degree in the Faculty of Biological Sciences is an opportunity to gain and develop skills as an independent researcher in your chosen field. Under the supervision of your lead supervisor and one or more co-supervisors, you will get the chance to carry out cutting-edge research on a particular biological problem and to become part of a large research community using multi-disciplinary approaches to tackle today’s important research questions. Throughout your PhD you will not only strengthen your research skills and knowledge within your research area but also develop skills through our training programmes as well as through attendance as seminars and conferences.This is a joint research theme with the Cardiovascular and Sport and Exercise Science research groups. Our ultimate goal is to reduce the severity of cardiopulmonary disease and to improve the quality of life in odler adults. We adopt an integrative approach to our research that spans all the way from measurements of electrical activity in single cardiac cells through to in vivo measurements of lung function, and the consequences for exercise tolerance. We aim to identify the key parameters that change with healthy ageing and cardiopulmonary disease and develop low-cost strategies, such as exercise training and nutritional supplementation which ameliorate functional deficits. We use animal models and human participants for our research in this area, complemented by multi-scale in silico modelling.