Dr Martin Whitham PhD

• BSc (Hons) Physiology & Sports Science (University of Glasgow)
• PhD Exercise Physiology (University of Birmingham)

Martin joined The Unibversity of Birmingham in September 2018 as Senior Lecturer in Exercise Metabolism.  This was somewhat of a return to familiarity having completed his PhD in the school in 2002. Subsequently, Martin held a post as Lecturer in Exercise Physiology at Bangor University, during which he developed an interest in the study of exercise to identify novel treatments for metabolic disease. In 2009 he took an appointment as Senior Research Officer at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia to work in full time medical research. In 2015 he was appointed Group Leader of Myokine Biology at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney. During this time, he developed expertise in the use of mass spectrometry based quantitative proteomics, specifically to investigate nanovesicles as a means to implement signalling between tissues in health and disease. Martin has presented invited talks on this subject at the Experimental Biology Conference (USA), the SCWD  Cachexia Conference (Netherlands), the Queenstown Molecular Biology Conference (China) the Endocrine Society of Australia Conference and most notably, at the 2019 “Rising Stars in Physiology” August Krogh Symposium in Copenhagen, alongside the world leading early and mid-career physiologists. He now heads the Tissue Cross Talk laboratory, a research group interested in the biological relevance of small vesicle and exosome release into circulation during exercise in both performance and clinical contexts.

Exercise Biochemistry

Metabolic Perspectives in Exercise and Nutrition

The Tissue Crosstalk laboratory supports the following post-doc and post graduate researchers: -

Dr Alex Seabright – Wellcome Trust ISSF Accelerator Fellow

Dr Luke McIlvenna – Postdoctoral researcher

Hannah-Jade Parker – MRC-Versus Arthritis (CMAR) PhD student

Evie Angilheri – MSc Student

Benedict Sale – MSc Student

If you have an interest in the endocrinology and physiology of exercise, with particular respect to extracellular vesicles and have a potential funding source, please contact m.whitham@bham.ac.uk to discuss an opportunity to join the team

• Extracellular Vesicles
• Quantitative Proteomics
• Endocrinology during exercise
• Myokines
• Metabolic Phenotyping
• Diabetes and Metabolic Disease

Secondary affiliations

• Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, Australia
• Institute of Metabolic and Systems Research (IMSR) UoB
• MRC-AR UK Centre for Musculoskeletal and Arthritis Research, UoB

Editorial appointments

• Editorial board, European Journal of Extracellular Vesicles
• Editorial board, Cell Stress & Chaperones 

Professional Memberships

• American Physiological Society
• UK Extracellular Vesicle Society
• Endocrinology Society, UK