Biography of Scientific Director - Dr. Phillip Gardiner

Dr. Phillip Gardiner is Director of the Health, Leisure & Human Performance Research Institute, and holds professorial positions in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management (as Associate Dean, Research), and in the Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, at University of Manitoba. He is also Director of the interdisciplinary PhD program in Applied Health Sciences at University of Manitoba. He currently holds a tier I Canada Research Chair in Physical Activity and Health Studies. Dr. Gardiner is a member of the Spinal Cord Research Center, where he directs a research laboratory, and of the Neurodegenerative Disease Research Group.

After receiving his PhD in Exercise Physiology at University of Alberta in 1976, and spending 2 years of post-doctoral studies in Neuromuscular Physiology at UCLA, he took a position as Professor of Kinesiology at University of Montreal, where he worked for 26 years before taking his current position at University of Manitoba in 2002. Dr. Gardiner has been Editor-in Chief of the Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology (1995-2000), and President (2000-2002) and Executive Director (2006-2008) of the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology. He conducts research on the effects of physical activity, inactivity and aging on the nervous and neuromuscular systems, and has published over 100 articles and 3 books in this area.

His research has been supported by grants from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council Canada, the Canadian Space Agency, and the National Institutes of Health in the US. He has served as the University of Manitoba delegate to the CIHR, and has been a member and Chair of the MOV peer-review committee of CIHR. Dr. Gardiner has been a member of the advisory board of IMHA since 2007, and assumed the position of advisory board chair in 2010.