Dr Mia Schaumberg joined the School of Health and Behavioural Sciences as a Lecturer in Physiology in 2018. Mia was previously appointed as a Research Fellow at the Queensland Brain Institute and School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences (2016-2018) and an Associate Lecturer in Exercise Physiology (2012-2015) at the University of Queensland, where she continues to hold honorary adjunct positions.

Mia’s research passion is exercise physiology and healthy ageing, particularly in relation to endocrine function, cognition, bone health and falls risk. Mia’s PhD research investigated the influence of female hormone status and exogenous hormone use on exercise and training adaptation and how exercise training influenced hormone status for health benefits. She believes that exercise is the ideal catalyst for investigating fitness, metabolism, biochemistry, health and disease. Her interest in exercise endocrinology led to her postdoctoral work in exercise, ageing and cognitive decline. In collaboration with the Bartlett Laboratory at the Queensland Brain Institute, Mia established the UQ Centre for Exercise and Healthy Brain Ageing, which facilitates ongoing research into the effect of exercise on cognitive health in older adults. By combining measures of physiological and functional fitness, cognitive function, blood biochemistry, epigenetics, and multimodal magnetic resonance imaging of the brain, she investigates exercise related neurophysiological changes that are invaluable in guiding understanding of how to improve health and slow, prevent, or even reverse cognitive disease progression in older adults.