Dr Oliver Witard PhD AFHEA

Biography

I am a Senior Lecturer in Exercise Metabolism and Nutrition in the Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine. My multi-disciplinary research spans two research groups within King’s: (i) Muscle: Form and Function in the Centre for Human & Applied Physiological Sciences, and (ii) Diet and Cardiometabolic Health in the Department of Nutrition. I am also Deputy Programme Director for the undergraduate programme in Sport and Exercise Medical Sciences. 

I have a BSc (First class, Hons) in Sport and Exercise Science, MSc in Exercise Physiology and PhD entitled ‘Response of Muscle Protein Turnover to Exercise and Nutrition’ supervised by Professors Kevin Tipton and Asker Jeukendrup at The University of Birmingham. My post-doctoral work (University of Birmingham) was funded by GlaxoSmithKline and investigated ‘The Maximal Effective Dose of Whey Protein for Stimulating Muscle Protein Synthesis in Young Men’. I was a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at The University of Stirling before joining King’s in 2019.

I am a board member of The Nutrition Society and an elected member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Young Academy of Scotland. I helped develop the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) consensus statement 2019 on Nutrition for Athletes. In 2011, I was the recipient of the Young Investigator of the Year (First prize) at the European College of Sports Sciences (ECSS) and was nominated for the Rank Prize in Sport Nutrition.

Research Interests

My research focus is healthy ageing. I am interested in understanding the physiology that underpins why we lose muscle mass and quality with age. My research also explores the role of exercise and novel nutritional interventions – primarily protein nutrition – to offset age-related perturbations in muscle metabolism. I have extensive expertise in stable isotopic tracer methodology for measuring in vivo muscle protein turnover in humans. I also apply these techniques to athletic populations to optimise training adaptations, body composition and performance.