Postdoctoral Position, University of Calgary
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A 2-year fully funded Postdoctoral position is available within the Faculty of Kinesiology at the University of Calgary under the supervision of Pr Guillaume MILLET.
Applicants should have (or anticipate having) a Ph.D. and research background in sleep research and previous experience with polysomnography. Knowledge in either biology or (exercise) physiology and clinical experience will be valued.
Applicants should also possess strong interpersonal skills and be able to work independently with minimal supervision. The postdoctoral fellow will be responsible for (i) conducting polysomnography at patients’ homes as well as scoring and interpretation and (ii) planning exercise training interventions. Duties will also include manuscript and grant preparation. The most successful applicants will have a demonstrated interest in pursuing publication and grant opportunities. The successful applicant will become part of a unique training and research environment, the Neuromuscular Fatigue Group within the multidisciplinary Human Performance Laboratory.
There are no citizenship restrictions.
PROJECT SUMMARY
Cancer-Related Fatigue (CRF) is the most common persistent and distressing symptom reported by survivors, yet often unrecognized and undertreated by health care professionals because of a lack of knowledge of mechanism-targeted interventions. Currently, most clinicians and scientists use subjective questionnaires to assess CRF so that the real causes are unknown. Part I of the present postdoctoral position will focus on the evaluation of sleep disorders in cancer survivors. In part II, evaluation of sleep will be used in a larger and more comprehensive study (involving fatigue resistance to exercise, biomarkers, body composition evaluation, etc.) to assess the objective causes of CRF. The effects of an exercise intervention designed to specifically counteract the main cause of fatigue found in Part I for a particular subject, will be conducted to assess the impact of exercise training, a successful treatment, on objective measures of fatigue.
Findings from this study will generate new knowledge and provide clinicians with a deeper understanding of the patient fatigue. Understanding CRF etiology will allow us to better tailor training interventions to reduce this symptom. This is important because the lack of understanding of objective causes of fatigue lead clinicians to inadequately treat this debilitating symptom. The growing number of cancer survivors makes this an important area of scientific development. This interdisciplinary project has close ties with researchers in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Hotchkiss Brain Institute (HBI) and Tom Baker Cancer Centre.
CONTACT:
Guillaume MILLET
Neuromuscular Fatigue Laboratory, Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Calgary, Canada
gmillet@ucalgary.ca
T: +1.403.220.3649
www.ucalgary.ca/nmfl
