Who is Karen Mittleman?
From Exercise Researcher to Writer
Karen Mittleman was born in Newark, New Jersey. She
was always very active and played sports (prior to Title IX). That
interest in being active outdoors has been a theme throughout her life.
During her years in school, she realized that she was drawn more to
disciplines that had some sense of order. She liked mathematics and
enjoyed physics, but biology was much more interesting because she could
relate it better to her life.
Studying Sports
Karen selected as her undergraduate school
Pennsylvania State University because it had a good sports program, it was
in a beautiful setting, and it was close, but not too close, to home. As
an undergraduate, she studied therapeutic recreation. She received her BSc
degree in the winter of 1975. The summer after graduation, Karen got a job
as program director at a camp for overweight boys and girls. At the camp
she met an exercise physiologist from San Diego who was assessing body
composition and fitness in the campers. That was when she realized that
she could study how the body responds to exercise as a scientific
discipline. She was hooked.
Job and More School
That autumn, even as she started working full time as
a recreation therapist at a local hospital, Karen also started classes at
San Diego State University, which has an excellent reputation in exercise
physiology. She received her Master’s degree from San Diego State
University in 1982. She decided to continue on and get a Ph.D. in exercise
and environmental physiology so that she could establish her own research
program. Again Karen looked for a school that had a good reputation in
that field and was in a beautiful place. She selected Simon Fraser
University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her doctoral research
focused on developing a model to determine thermosensitivity of heat
production in the cold in humans.
Diving Research
After she graduated in 1987, Dr. Mittleman took a
postdoctoral fellowship at the Naval Medical Research Institute in
Bethesda, MD, in the Diving Medicine Department. There she studied ways to
improve exercise performance in the cold in the Navy divers, which
included carbohydrate loading and hypnosis. After 1.5 years in that
position, she accepted a second postdoctoral position at Rutgers
University in New Brunswick, NJ, where she studied the influence of taking
nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) during exercise in the heat.
First Position
In 1990 Dr. Mittleman became an assistant professor
in the Department of Exercise Science and Sport Studies, where she
continued to study temperature regulation and performance. She also did
research on the role of the reproductive hormones (estrogen and
progesterone) on responses to prolonged exercise and cold. They just
completed a study of carbohydrate loading during the follicular (days 1-8)
and luteal (days 19-24) phases of the menstrual cycle and its impact on
time to exhaustion. They found that, in trained women, CHO loading helped
equally well in both phases and that there were no differences in
performance between the phases.
A New Career
In 1997, Dr. Mittleman decided to leave academia to
follow a new career path and became a medical writer. She had always
enjoyed writing and the position called for someone with experience in
reproductive hormones. She accepted a job with an independent company in
Princeton, NJ, primarily writing up clinical research for pharmaceutical
companies. After 6 years she decided to pursue a position with a
pharmaceutical company, because it offered different career possibilities
for the future.
Currently, Dr. Mittleman is a Senior Manager in
Global Medical Publications at Aventis, a pharmaceutical company located
in Bridgewater, NJ. Her primary responsibilities are strategic
publications planning for different brands within the company and to
ensure that the scientific content in the publications is accurate and
presented in a manner that will ensure publication (e.g., clear,
organized, fair and balanced, meets the requirements of the journal
selected). She also ensures that these publications are approved by key
members of the project team, including legal and regulatory personnel. She
works with a team to determine the best time and place to publish clinical
data for a particular drug therapy.
For Fun
Dr. Mittleman still enjoys being active outdoors.
Currently, she scuba dives, hikes, and plays softball during her free
time.
Advice for Graduate Students
Visit laboratories of collaborators/fellow students
in different colleges to see what additional skills you might need to
advance yourself. Begin to network at scientific meetings and present your
data.
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