Collaborate with us
Work with us
Work with us
Work with us
Work with us
Work with us
Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Exeter is a dynamic, friendly and motivational discipline with an outstanding global reputation for research excellence. We use innovative approaches and technologies to create new knowledge and transform our scientific understanding.
Knowledge is transferred through the validation of new products, informing policies, adding value to partners and benefiting athletes, patients and the wider society.
- Elite performance
- Health and wellbeing
- Healthy ageing
- Physical activity for health
- Biomechanics
- Paediatric and exercise physiology
- Metabolism and nutrition
- Psychology and skill acquisition
- Improving performance
- Product innovation
- Bespoke training design and testing
- Activity informatics
- Cost-effective smart solutions to business problems
- Access to external funding
- Shared risk on new projects
- Using gold standard, robust scientific methodologies
- Being cutting edge through state of the art facilities
- Adopting flexible, tailored approaches to research
- Developing strategic partnerships; industry, academia, third and public sector
- Driving policy change
Our research specialisms
Children’s health and exercise
Integrative physiology, including:
- Bio actives and exercise
- Nutritional physiology
- Healthy muscles
- Applied physiology nutrition and metabolism
Human movement science, including:
Ways to work with us
Consultancy and smart R&D solutions
We work with organisations on collaborative R&D projects to improve product and service development, and keep you ahead of the competition.
We can help with:
- Cost-effective smart solutions to business problems
- Connected thinking across a wide range of sectors
- Access to external funding
- Sharing insights that will impact on your sector
- First mover advantage
- Shared risk on new projects
- Access to our world-class facilities
More about consultancy »
Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs)
A Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) is a collaborative project between a business and a university, which is facilitated by a high-calibre graduate.
KTP projects last between 1-3 years and are part-funded by the Government.
They focus on growing business capabilities and developing innovative solutions are an excellent way to embed knowledge and access new expertise.
More about KTPs »
Recruit our students
There are a wide range of ways to engage with our students, including:
- Hosting a visit to your organisation
- Giving a guest lecture or presentation on campus
- Offering a work placement
- Coming to a careers event
- Recruiting student and graduate interns
More about recruitment »
Specialist services
Activity Informatics is a collaboration between the University of Exeter and Activinsights.
We offer a complete service for public-funded research and clinical trials, including support in:
- Strategy
- Design and planning
- Management
- Data summary
- Interpretation and translation.
Who is it for?
The service is designed for health and population surveillance researchers and service providers, who currently use or would like to use wearable devices for the measurement of lifestyle, activity and sleep. Activity Informatics provides support in study design, data collection, processing, storage and analysis covering all 5 services outlined above.
Benefits of the Activity Informatics service:
- Peace of mind for successful study completion (robust, powerful, significant, impactful, publishable and ethical)
- Maximize outputs and outcomes from the data collected
- Completeness of data and defined outcomes
- Cost effective, pay-as-you-go service with low upfront investment in equipment and expertise
Find out more about Activity Informatics »
We use mobile eye tracking technology to provide solutions to problems related to how humans interact with the world around them.
Eye tracking technology allows us to 'see what someone is seeing', and provides insights into the processes underpinning their decisions and behaviours while completing a task (eg, perception, focus of attention, biases), as well as their momentary emotional and cognitive state. Mobile eye trackers are lightweight and unobtrusive and can be worn while performing tasks in natural settings.
We have employed this technology across a wide range of applications including motor skill learning, rehabilitation, sports training, website and software design, ergonomic design, simulation validation and image interpretation.
How we can help:
We offer a complete consultation service, including:
- design of appropriate studies to examine the issue
- capture and analysis of the eye tracking data
- development and instruction in evidence-based solutions, interventions or training.
As well as a range of mobile eye tracking systems, we also offer additional data collection tools to answer specific questions, including motion capture and analysis systems, psychophysiological monitoring systems, and synthetic testing environments (eg, sporting and driving simulation).
Find out more about eye-tracking solutions »
Our partners: case studies
Below are just a few examples of current projects we are working on with industry partners.
Our funders
We can make your resources go further by helping you access grants and funding from sources such as:
- Government grants
- Innovate UK
- Research Councils
- EU and international funding
- R&D Tax Credits
Examples of current funded projects
Meet the experts
Find out about some of our leading academics below.
Professor Jo Bowtell - Professor and Associate Dean for Global
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My specialisms include:
- Effect of natural antioxidant products containing polyphenols such as Montmorency cherry, blueberry and cacao on exercise performance, recovery and training adaptation and the underpinning mechanisms
- Effect of chronic polyphenol supplementation on peripheral and cerebro-vascular function and cognitive performance in healthy older adults
- Contribution of neuromuscular factors to fatigue development
- Exercise and nutrient-induced changes in peripheral metabolism and effects upon performance, neuromuscular function and motor control
- Osteogenic effects of exercise and whole body vibration
Professor Mark Wilson - Professor of Performance Psychology and Head of Department
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My applied research specialisms include:
- Performance improvement via gaze training (quiet eye/feed forward eye movement training)
- Neuro-rehabilitation
- Stress appraisals
- Youth sport development
- Simulation (Human factors)
My theoretical/fundamental research specialisms include:
- The anxiety-performance relationship
- The causal role of quiet eye
Professor Melvyn Hillsdon - Associate Professor
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My specialisms include:
- Physical activity epidemiology and public health
- Exercise promotion
- Evaluation of large community exercise interventions
- Understanding neighbourhood influences on physical activity with a view to better understanding inequalities in physical activity
Professor Anni Vanhatalo - Professor of Human Physiology
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My specialisms include:
- Nitric oxide biology, nitrate-reducing microbiota, and healthy ageing
- Skeletal muscle bioenergetics
- Dietary nitrate supplementation for therapeutic and ergogenic effects
- Pulmonary oxygen uptake kinetics and muscle oxygen delivery
- Power-duration relationship of high-intensity exercise
- Prediction of exercise tolerance
Professor Craig Williams - Professor of Paediatric Physiology and Health
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My specialisms include:
- Paediatric exercise physiology
- Healthy school aged children
- Children with chronic medical diseases
- Talented young athletes
- Physiological responses to high intensity exercise and fatigue in children and adolescents (6-18 years). This work is translated into clinical settings e.g., children with cystic fibrosis and congenital heart disease.
- Physiological responses of exercise testing and training in both clinical and sporting paediatric groups
- Physiological responses to the imposition of exercise stress in order to apply better prescription of exercise during testing and training of young people
- Determining factors of exercise tolerance (fatigue) and how these factors vary according to growth, maturation and sex
Professor Sharon Dixon - Associate Professor in Biomechanics
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My specialisms include:
- Lower extremity overuse injury mechanisms in sports and exercise
- Influence of footwear, insert and surface manipulations on lower limb biomechanics and injury risk