Health Promotion and Kinesiology students selected for experiential program

Ryan Gordon (Edwardsville, Illinois) is pursuing a PhD in Kinesiology with a specialization in exercise physiology. His project aims to examine the influence of exercise on skeletal muscle growth and regeneration. Specifically, this study will examine the influence of exercise on microRNA expression in skeletal muscle cells and how these microRNA may regulate skeletal muscle growth and regeneration. His project will begin later this fall and will conclude in the spring.

The focus of Matthew Sokoloski’s (Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania) project is to monitor markers of muscle damage and fitness measures that are relevant to firefighters following firefighter simulated tasks. According to Sokoloski, who is pursuing a PhD in Kinesiology with a specialization in exercise physiology, firefighters are a greatly underserved population. Many are out of shape and over worked, which leads to a greater risk of injury. Sokoloski wants to monitor how long it truly takes firefighters to recover after fighting a fire. Data collection should begin in March and finish in April.

Qin Yang (Gui Zhou Providence, China) is pursuing a PhD in Kinesiology with a specialization in adapted physical education. Her project uses an intervention program called Drums-Alive to explore the effect on on-task behaviors of children with an autism spectrum disorder. Drums-Alive combines music, drumming and exercise to make participants move to the rhythm. Yang was introduced to the Drums-Alive program while she was pursuing her master’s degree at Southern Connecticut State University and conducted her thesis using this program for young adults with a neurodevelopmental disorder, which positively affected attention. Her new research project will involve collaboration with a local autism center and will last for at least 16 weeks.

For her project, Emily Zumbro (Bude, Mississippi), who is pursuing a PhD in Kinesiology with a specialization in exercise physiology, chose to focus on an in vitro model of skeletal muscle aging and its influence on cellular pathways essential to the health of skeletal muscle cells. She previously completed pilot work leading into this particular project, funded by the 2019-2020 Student Experiential Scholar Program, in which she developed a working aging model. She will be using this aging model for her dissertation and to further assess physiological changes to important cellular pathways and how exercise may help to restore or reduce the detrimental effect of aging on these pathways. Dr. Anthony Duplanty's lab previously established an exercise mimetic that will be used as the basis for the exercise treatment within this aging model. The timeline for this model will take approximately 3-4 months of aging the cells, conducting the exercise treatment on them, running gene expression and analyzing data.