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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
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 Postdoctoral Fellows
In addition to fine-tuning your laboratory skills,
write grants and develop a research plan for the future when you are
independent.
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