St Mary’s Academics Present New Research Titles

The School of Sport, Health and Applied Science (SHAS) at St Mary’s University, Twickenham recently held an event showcasing the current and upcoming research to be undertaken by staff. The event aimed to display a ‘snap shot’ of current and planned research papers with themes in Sport and Exercise Sciences, Health and Physics. Some of the research will be conducted solely by academics at St Mary’s while some are joint efforts with national and international institutions. One of the research projects is to examine the effects of compression garments on recovery time. Entitled ‘A comparison of commercially available and clinical grade compression garments on recovery’, it aims to identify whether clinical grade garments are more effective in accelerating recovery from strenuous exercise. The Centre for Workplace and Community Health (CWCH) at St Mary’s also showcased its ‘Workplace Challenge Project’, in which workplaces across Britain are encouraged to increase physical activity in the workplace to boost productivity. Dr Charles Pedlar, Academic Director of SHAS at St Mary’s, said, “The unique feature of the event was the capturing of a considerable quantity of research activity currently going on within the School across subject areas in Sport, Health and Physics, which might otherwise not be obvious until the work is published sometime in the future. This will be useful in accelerating collaboration between researchers before the work is done or while it is in progress.” “There was a buzz in the room as 34 staff had only two minutes each to present their research plans, which left many people inspired and energised having been fed such a broad range of information from their colleagues.” Representatives from the Rugby Football Union and the National Physical Laboratory were present, strengthening their relationship with St Mary’s. Charles added, “After recently submitting to the Research Excellence Framework (REF)2014, there is a great opportunity to plan forwards with a somewhat 'clean slate', striving for high quality, high impact research work.”