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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 subjects 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
When it came time for college, Karen chose to go to 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. In college, she studied therapeutic recreation, which is using sports and other recreational activities to help people regain their fitness and mobility after injury or surgery. She received her B.Sc. degree in the winter of 1975. That summer she worked as a program director at a camp for overweight boys and girls. At the camp Karen met an exercise physiologist from San Diego who was comparing body composition (amount of fat compared to muscle) and fitness in the campers. That was when she realized that she could study how the body responds to exercise as a career path. She was hooked.  

Work 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 liked research so much that she decided to continue on and get a Ph.D. in exercise physiology. Once again Karen looked for a school that had a good reputation in that area and was in a beautiful place. She ended up choosing Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her research focused on developing a model to determine how sensitive the human thermostat is for heat production when a person is in the cold.

Diving Research
After she graduated in 1987, Dr. Mittleman went on for more research experience (called 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. She studied both carbohydrate loading (having them eat things like pasta and bread before their dives) and hypnosis (putting them in a sleep-like state where it could be suggested to them that were actually warmer than they might feel. After 1.5 years there, she did a second postdoctoral fellowship at Rutgers University to be closer to her family in New Jersey. There she worked with Dr. Edward Zambraski who was interested in the influence of prostaglandins and their blockade during exercise.

Teaching and Research
In 1990 Dr. Mittleman got a job as an assistant professor in the Department of Exercise Science and Sport Studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. There she continued her research on temperature regulation and performance. She also studied the role of the reproductive hormones (estrogen and progesterone) on responses to prolonged exercise and cold.

Changing Careers
In 1997, Dr. Mittleman decided to leave her job at the college 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 got a job for an independent company in Princeton, NJ, where she mainly wrote up clinical research for drug companies. After 6 years she decided to look for a position with a drug company, because it would offer her greater career possibilities for the future. 

Currently, Dr. Mittleman is a Senior Manager in Global Medical Publications at Aventis, a drug company located in Bridgewater, NJ. Her mail duties are to figure out which are the best places to publish information on the company’s different products and to make sure that that the scientific content they send to be published is accurate and presented in such a way that there won’t be any problems with getting it published (for example, the writing is clear, organized, fair and balanced, and meets the requirements of the journal selected). She also makes sure that what is being published has been approved by key members of the project team, including legal and regulatory people.

For Fun
Dr. Mittleman still enjoys being active outdoors. Currently, she spends her free time scuba diving, hiking, and playing softball. 

Advice for High School Students
Read about what types of research physiologists do and see if you can visit a lab of a physiologist. Learn to write in a concise, organized manner. Practice writing up laboratory exercises and read nonfiction and fiction books about science.