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Scott was born in Storm Lake, Iowa on May 6, 1963. His participation in sports (wrestling and long-distance running) was what drove his interest in science and his final decision to study physiology.  He was always trying to understand what made some athletes perform better than others.  He read a lot on training methods and diets and then would try the new training methods and diets on himself.  Although his reading and experimentation were not always backed by the best science, they did increase his interest in science and eventually led him to his career choice of studying physiology as it relates to exercise. 

Sports and School
Scott attended a small college in Iowa called Northwestern College.  He chose to go there because the school had excellent academics and allowed him to continue running track and cross-country.  While there he met a teacher, Dr. Beach, who was very interested in sports research and reinforced Scott’s interest in that subject.  Dr. Beach took Scott to his first scientific meeting and also helped him apply to a number of graduate schools for a Master’s degree. At Northwestern Scott earned a Bachelor’s degree in Biology with a minor in Physical Education.   

He decided to go to the University of Northern Iowa for his Master’s degree, mainly because it was in his home town of Cedar Falls, Iowa and he knew some of the teachers.  He knew that one teacher, Dr. Forrest Dolgener, was interested in doing research on long-distance running. Scott felt Dr. Dolgener would be a good person to help him begin to understand the research process.  Scott’s goal was always to finish his Master’s and continue his graduate education at another school.  At the University of Northern Iowa he was given the chance to spend a large amount of time in a “real” laboratory.  Since all of the research done in that lab was on human subjects, the graduate students were able to try out new techniques using each other as subjects.

Scott chose to go to the University of Missouri for his Ph.D. degree because Dr. Ben Londeree had conducted a number of studies on distance running performance that Scott found interesting.  During his first two years in Missouri, Scott was involved in a number of studies looking into performance in distance runners and cyclists.  As he began to develop some of his research questions, it became clear that it was going to be hard to answer those questions in humans.  At about that time, Scott attended a seminar by Dr. Harold Laughlin (also at the University of Missouri) where Dr. Laughlin described techniques he used to study the exercise response in rats.  He was willing to let Scott work in his lab to learn those techniques. Scott ended up doing the research for his Ph.D. in that lab.  During his time working in Dr. Laughlin’s lab, Scott also was exposed to a lot of basic research that was not related to exercise.   

After finishing his Ph.D., Dr. Mittelstadt wanted to continue his training as a postdoctoral fellow to learn more about the control of the cardiovascular (heart and blood) system.  He went to the Medical College of Wisconsin for that training.  His time there was a great learning experience because it let him continue learning about research, only using dogs this time, and it let him continue doing research on exercise performance in endurance athletes (cross-country skiers).   

Currently Dr. Mittelstadt works with a group of other scientists to conduct Safety Pharmacology studies.  Safety Pharmacology studies are studies that investigate the potential bad pharmacological effects of a drug on physiological function.  The major organ systems they study are the cardiovascular, respiratory, and central nervous systems.  In addition, Dr. Mittelstadt designs safety programs to support the development of drugs for use in humans. The studies he helps plan include short-term, long-term, reproductive, and genetic toxicity studies.  The physiology that he learned working on exercise studies involved many organ systems. That ended up being very helpful to him as he now tries to take data from many types of studies and work them into a single integrated conclusion. 

Advice for High School Students
Dr. Mittelstadt encourages high school students to get a good basic science background. He also says that it is important to set goals for yourself, but it is also important to be flexible.  There are many opportunities out there that you will not know about when you are setting your original goals. You need to be able to change to take advantage of those opportunities.