Hello! Why are we doing this?
My interest in caffeine goes back to my early college days (like most of us!). I became interested in it's ability to influence athletic performance and that led me to Australia to complete my PhD with some of the caffeine "gurus". I quickly realized, however, that there was an almost untapped area of looking at caffeine's performance-enhancing effects from a public health angle. Since then I've done several studies looking at how caffeine and coffee influence appetite and exercise behavior.
This study is the first step towards what I envision to be a larger funded project (a "pilot" or trial run). It is my hope that we eventually run a study where we pair caffeine with structured individual exercise sessions to see if caffeine makes the exercise easier and improves individual adherence to exercise (i.e. do people attend more exercise sessions when they are given caffeine?).
This is my first full-time tenure-track faculty position and I am fortunate to have a very well-equipped lab at my disposal and I intend to make every use of it! I also want to encourage student growth and retention by including undergraduate students as part of my research team, which will give them new and exciting experiences.
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