Dr. Cameron Mitchell is the School of Kinesiology’s newest faculty member, having joined in January 2019. Cameron came to UBC from the University of Auckland, where he spent the last five years. And despite the fact that he cycled to work every day of those five years in shorts, he still seems excited to have joined us here in rainy Vancouver.

Cameron brings with him a unique set of research interests. “I’m interested in how and why muscle grows and shrinks,” he says. “Everything from the molecular mechanisms as to why that happens to how we can use exercise and nutrition to help improve the performance of athletes or maintain physical function as people age.” Cameron’s current research asks: What are the mechanisms underpinning the age-related decline in muscle size and size, and what interventions can preserve muscle size and physical function during aging?

In Auckland, Cameron looked at these questions in the nutrition and mobility clinic at the university. “We used the lab for exercise and nutrition intervention studies as well as acute studies – so in my research I use stabilized isotopic tracers which are essentially heavy amino acids that allow us to track muscle metabolism,” he says. He also used the clinic for large-scale studies looking at how much protein elderly individuals need to maintain physical function. Through that study, Cameron and his team learned that the current recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for protein intake for the aging population was nowhere near enough to maintain muscle function and size. “We know that there are clear adverse implications for older adults who do not exceed current minimum protein recommendations.”

Cameron’s research is part of a growing body of evidence supporting the need for slightly higher protein diets in older people to maintain physical function, and he’d also like to see the minimum recommendations changed. “It’s also really important to note that diet plays a role, but without exercise people are always going to see a physical decline as they age,” he says.

Cameron started down this path while he was completing his undergraduate degree in Kinesiology at McMaster University. “At first I just wanted to play on the rugby team,” he l

aughs. “I never thought I would do any other school. Then I decided I might be interested in becoming a strength and conditioning coach, I really enjoyed the resistance training and training aspect, and then during my third year I was exposed to more evidence- and research-based classes and I got very interested in that from a sport point of view. Over time, as I did a Masters and PhD, my interest evolved a little more into how to maintain function with aging and how to improve health and quality of life in older adults.”

Cameron’s found his research rewarding because he’s seen that his discoveries can have a huge impact in the life and health of an older adult, with simple changes to their exercise and nutrition. And he brings a unique angle to the work that he’s doing. “The muscle metabolism and molecular mechanism portion is a big focus for me, and I think this is a new focus for the School.”

Molecular mechanisms means that Cameron focuses on the muscle cell and what’s controlling changes in muscle size and function. “We do everything from activation of signalling pathways to gene expression to post-transcriptional regulation – a lot of my research has been on something called micro-RNAs, which are small, non-coding bits of RNA that don’t make proteins but help to regulate which proteins are made by the cell leading to differences in muscle size and performance.”

Being at the University of Auckland for the last five years in a completely research-focused institute exposed Cameron to a lot of lab skills he says he wouldn’t have had access to elsewhere. “I was able to be part of a very large research team that spanned almost the whole discipline of nutrition,” he says.

Cameron’s hoping that the work that he does will have real-life impact within the School’s BodyWorks programming. “I’m hoping to use some of the BodyWorks facilities as a laboratory to determine the best exercise and nutrition advice we can give to maintain function as we age.” Cameron is hoping to provide academic support to the BodyWorks program to allow for continual incorporation of new evidence-based practices into the program offerings.

Since leaving Auckland, Cameron has been taking in all that the Greater Vancouver Area (and further) have to offer. “I really appreciate the outdoor recreation access that Vancouver offers,” he says. Since retiring from rugby and coaching rugby at a national level, Cameron’s interests have shifted much more to the outdoors. He enjoys rock climbing, ice climbing, mountaineering, and split boarding. “Really anything in the mountains,” he says. Cameron also runs through the Pacific Spirit Park, where he says he comes up with or improves upon some of his best research ideas. “I find that if I’m out on a long climb, especially on the walk out, I’ll be relaxed and come up with some of my best ideas,” he says.

With regard to how he approaches prescribing exercise based the research that he does, Cameron says: “I think it’s important to remember that many people don’t want to go to the gym and have a very complex and prescribed program, they want to go out and be active and do sports. So when making exercise recommendations, I’m reminded to have a physical activity first mentality rather than a very prescribed, numbers-based approach.”

As Cameron moves into a role that gives him more opportunity to teach, I ask what his advice would be to students going through the program now. “If you asked me or anyone that knew me when I was completing my undergrad if there was any chance I’d end up as a professor, and I’m sure there’d have been a 0% chance that anyone would say yes,” he says. “So with that in mind, I’d say don’t over plan anything, just continue to do the things that you’re good at and passionate about instead of setting a very specific goal right away.”

Dr. Bill Sheel, professor with the School of Kinesiology wears many hats: He is head of the Health and Integrative Physiology Lab within the School of Kinesiology. He teaches two courses, supervises shy of 10 grad students, is the Associate Editor of three journals and sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Applied Physiology.

He’s also deeply committed to his research, where he is focused on exercise science, and, namely, oxygen absorption for the creation of energy. “I’m interested in how we get oxygen from the air to the mitochondria,” he says. Though the process from start to finish includes many steps, Bill’s work is focused primarily on the first two steps – breathing and the cardiovascular system, and how these two systems interact. “And I study exercise as a model to alter these systems because it’s a very relevant term to help understand human biology,” he says.

Bill became interested in these systems for a couple of reasons, but it started during his undergraduate degree at the University of New Brunswick. “There were these modules to move through in physiology class,” he says. “The respiratory sections made the most sense to me, and I just did well in this portion of the program. It’s a little bit like an engineering system. But the other reason is that the respiratory system is the first and only line of defense in terms of gas exchange. As they say, if you’re not breathing, nothing else matters.”

From these general themes, Bill and his team have come up with a number of other questions they’re interested in answering, including the differences in these systems and processes when you factor in biological sex. When asked how this interest formed, Bill says, “Just the general lack of information and the bias in science and publications that’s very clear. Funding agencies now require you to justify if you’re only studying one sex.”

Bill points out that there are a lot of differences between the sexes, but a lot of similarities too, and maybe we have yet to ask the right questions. “A paper I read from the 80s, though published in a different era, had only one female in the given study who had very different data than the rest of the participants.” This got Bill asking different questions. “These questions have a number of implications beyond the scope of kinesiology as people know about it,” he says. “For example, we’ve learned through studies that the female diaphragm is more resistant to fatigue. Is that the same under all physiological and pathophysiological conditions? As one example, what are the implications for ventilating men and women in the ICU?”

Bill has focused his attention on dyspnea – or the feeling of shortness of breath – in aging individuals, for which he received nearly $200,000 of federal funding in 2017 to study the sex-based differences. This has been a challenging focus, he admits. “It’s tough because here we’re dealing with psychobiology; you have the act of breathing, but the muscles involved in breathing have inputs into the brain, and we perceive the act of breathing. When we speak about dyspnea, women report to experience it more frequently than men – both related to exercise and disease – and this is a complicated issue. I’m not entirely convinced it’s all biology. It’s important to examine who is asking what questions about respiratory sensations, and how are they asking them.”

The questions Bill poses around aging do also inform his personal life and his own approach to exercise outside of research. “I do something every day. The aging thing is coming into mind as of late, if you must know,” he says. “49 is not 29.” Bill gets up early most days to do something, and that’s advice he seems ready to share with anyone without preaching. “It’s clear that being physically active conveys health benefits, that’s not up for debate. So doing something every day is what you need to be doing. Whatever you’re doing now, do a little bit more is probably a good idea.”

Bill is hoping this research will lead him to some big answers around differences in exercise for the biological sexes. Questions like are we prescribing exercise to men and women the same way, and should we be, is what he’s hoping to tackle.

Having the ability to address some of these questions is integral to answering the question Why UBC? for Bill. “The nice thing about being at UBC is that if there’s something you want to do or measure, it usually can be done with the help of others. I have found great scientific colleagues across campus.”

His new lab in the Chan Gunn Pavilion, which he moved into in December 2018, is changing the way he and his research team interact with other colleagues. “In the 10 years prior, I’d be hard pressed to think about when I’ve sat down and talked to these other scientists and clinicians with any regularity. They are now down the hallway from me and we are routinely engaged in scientific discussions that were not happening before moving into the Chan Gunn Pavilion.”

But when I ask Bill what he’s most proud of here to date, he answers unequivocally, “My students. They’ve all gone their own path, some of them now with their own grad students, some went into medicine, some work for the government or industry. I’m equally proud of all of them. I’d like to think that each of them, regardless of their trajectory, have benefited from time in the lab and it has helped to shape the career they wanted to have.”