Michael D. Roberts Professor

Academic Areas:

• Fitness, Conditioning and Performance
• Kinesiology

Teaching Interests

• Exercise Genetics
• Nutrient Timing for Performance Optimization
• Graduate Laboratory Techniques in Kinesiology

Research Interests:

• Determining how different exercise modalities and nutritional strategies affect physiological outcomes
• Examining the physiological effects of whey protein supplementation
• Determining the physiological effects of dairy exosomes
• Examining how exercise affects the aging muscle transcriptome

The Molecular and Applied Sciences Laboratory’s research focuses on:

1. How nutrition and exercise affects the molecular environment of muscle and fat tissues (e.g., mRNA and protein expression changes as well as morphology)
2. How aging affects the genetic architecture of skeletal muscle
3. How weight-training affects intra-muscle cell adaptations

Recent and ongoing studies include:

1. How whey protein and amino acids affect chronic resistance and endurance training parameters.
2. How skeletal muscle aging affects LINE-1 “jumping gene” activity in skeletal muscle.
3. How different forms of weight-training affect molecular adaptations in skeletal muscle.
4. What physiological differences exist between individuals that grow muscle during resistance training versus those that do not.