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Scott was born in Storm Lake, Iowa in 1963.  He liked sports a lot (wrestling and long-distance running) and that is what made him want to learn about science and then physiology.  He was always trying to find out what made some people better runners or jumpers than others.  He read a lot on ways to work out and what to eat and then would test those ways and food on himself.  While his reading and testing were not always a result of the best science, they did make him even more interested in science and made him want to study the physiology of exercise. 

Sports and School
Scott went to a small college in Iowa called Northwestern College.  He went there because the school had good classes and he was able to keep on running in track and cross-country.  While he was there he met a teacher who was very interested in exercise studies. That teacher got Scott even more interested in physiology and exercise and even took him to his very first big meeting with other scientists.  He also helped Scott out when he was sending in his forms to go to other schools to go on with his classes. Scott finished college having studied both biology and PE (physical education). 

He wanted to go to school next at the University of Northern Iowa, since it was in his home town of Cedar Falls, Iowa and he knew some of the teachers. One of the teachers there was interested in doing studies on long-distance running. Scott felt the teacher would be a good person to help him begin to learn what research was all about. He wanted to finish there and then go on for his Ph.D. degree at yet another school.  While he was at that school, Scott had the chance to spend a lot of time in a “real” lab.  Since all of the research done in that lab was on people, the students were able to try out new ways of doing things using each other. 

Scott ended up going to the University of Missouri for his Ph.D. because one of the teachers there had done lots of studies on how fast people can run for long distances. During his first two years there, he helped with studies that looked at how fast runners and bicycle riders could go for how long a time. As Scott tried to figure out what problems he wanted to study, it was clear that it was going to be hard to do them on humans.  At about that time, he went to a talk where the person showed ways he used to figure out how rats exercised.  He was willing to let Scott work in his lab to learn these ways too. Scott ended up working on his research in that lab. During his time working in that lab he learned a lot of other physiology that was not just about exercise.

After getting his Ph.D. degree, Dr. Mittelstadt wanted to learn more about how the heart works during exercise. He went to another lab at the Medical College of Wisconsin to do more research with other people. That was a great learning time for him because it let him learn how to do research in dogs and let him keep doing his studies on cross-country skiers.

Right now, he works with a group of other scientists to see if there are bad effects of some drugs on how a person’s body works. They look at how the drug works on the heart, lungs, brain, and nerves.  He also helps to figure out how to make sure drugs are safe so that they can be used for sick people. He has to worry about the drugs working for a few weeks, months, or years, as well as many years, without hurting the person who took them or is still taking them.