Professors win prestigious international PhD studentship
Cardiorespiratory research in the CSMHP received a boost this week with the news that Professors Alison McConnell and José González-Alonso have secured a prestigious Portuguese Government-funded studentship from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT - www.fct.pt/fct), an equivalent body to the UK Research Councils. The project epitomises cardiorespiratory physiology, as it will examine interactions between breathing pattern and autonomic nervous system control of the cardiovascular system.
"The potent influence of breathing pattern upon heart rate is a fundamental physiological phenomenon first described by Josef Breuer and Ewald Hering reported in 1868. Most recently, breathing retraining to a deeper, slower pattern has been shown to induce a chronic reduction in arterial blood pressure in people with hypertension. Our project will examine the characteristics of the stimulus for this phenomenon that derives from breathing, in an effort to optimise this for blood pressure reduction", explained Professor McConnell.
The PhD student who will take up this position is Mr Pedro Vargas, who worked closely with Professors McConnell and González-Alonso and will join the CSMHP in January 2013. "Pedro contacted me expressing interest in joining the CSMHP as a PhD student early in 2012. His interests and background were an excellent fit for a project I had in mind, so we worked with Pedro to identify potential funding sources, and to prepare a high-quality application to win the funding", said Professor McConnell.
If you are interested in working with the CSMHP to identify and win an externally funded PhD studentship in any of our areas of expertise, please contact us.
