The vision of the University of Brighton’s Environmental Extremes Lab is that, through our research, knowledge exchange and education we will be an international authority that advocates for greater awareness of and mitigation against the challenges that environmental extremes have upon human health, wellbeing and performance. Our basic and applied scientific methodologies will translate our work further into occupational, health and clinical domains where tangible impact is evidenced across the 4Ps – policy, products, practitioners and people.
We aim to be inclusive and target diverse populations (see Figure below) in recognition that environmental extremes do not discriminate who can suffer from their consequences. Our considerable body of research around appropriate heat mitigation strategies on sporting populations provides us with a strong platform to translate and expand our growing body of research and knowledge exchange activity further towards occupational settings and to protect the healthy and clinically symptomatic. There is an imperative to prioritise research in our workforce to reduce presenteeism alongside absenteeism, there is an urgency with the impact of climate change for those with already compromised thermoregulation, via autonomic and/or behavioural pathways, to reduce morbidity and mortality rates. The figure below highlights that our research themes aim to develop methodologies that identify susceptible populations to differing environmental extremes to connect risk stratification with targeting illness mitigation and therapeutic strategies. Figure 1 recognises the importance we place on ensuring impact from our research across multiple sectors and users. Collectively, this will help us to maintain a firm commitment as we pivot between tackling two global challenges with a common denominator of climate change.
We have a broad and highly active PhD programme that aims to advance knowledge and understanding through the study of applied problems that athletes, coaches, practitioners and a range of special populations encounter when exercising in extreme environments. In EEL, we see a primary goal is to educate talented young researchers in a variety of research skills relevant to the study of humans in extreme environments and provide experiences that expand their research expertise and improve their employability.
Our Priorities
- Translate and expand our high-quality research into broader scientific fields, increase output from existing research and develop new collaborations.
- Production of scientific work with clear impact, benefitting the academic community and general public.
- Create an outstanding research, teaching and learning environment that provides a pipeline for a generation of new scientists investigating human responses to climate change.
Volunteers
If you are interested in volunteering to become a participant for a research study, please email Dr Neil Maxwell, who will make members of the EEL team who are carrying out research studies aware of your interest. Sometimes there are restrictions on who we can recruit (i.e. males or females, trained or untrained, young or elderly) that may not make it possible to be a participant in all research studies. The benefits of taking part in these research studies can be varied, from understanding how you respond to a specific environment, whether at rest or during exercise, to what advice might be helpful for you to cope better in that environment. There is the added element of what we do may be very interesting to you and of course the knowledge, by being a participant you can help develop further knowledge and how this is communicated to help others in the future.