My primary interest is investigating the effects of aging and exercise on human skeletal muscle in males and females at the whole body, tissue, single fiber and molecular levels. The goal is to understand how alterations at the molecular and single fiber levels affect whole muscle contraction in order to find potential sex-specific countermeasures to prevent the age-related loss of muscle performance. The laboratory combines the use of advanced engineering methods to measure muscle function at the molecular and single fiber levels with imaging techniques to examine muscle structure from the myofibril to the tissue level, biochemical techniques to quantify proteins as well as techniques to analyze the whole body skeletal muscle contractile performance.