Mary Nevill

Biography

Professor Mary Nevill is Head of Department of Sport Science in the School of Science and Technology here at NTU. Together with a talented academic staff she strives for the highest possible standards in teaching, research and enterprise and thus an enhanced position for Sport Science at NTU in the national subject league tables. Professor Nevill is research active in the physiology of high intensity exercise in sport and in health. She has 70 full peer-reviewed academic journal papers, 200 other publications and over 3,000 citations.

Research Interest

Professor Nevill has had a career interest in the physiology of maximal and high intensity exercise. Her PhD was on the 'Effect of training on muscle metabolism during treadmill sprinting.' She followed this with several papers on the aetiology of fatigue during sprinting, a number of which have been cited more than 100 times, including two Journal of Physiology papers. This interest in the physiology of sprinting, together with her own sporting career as an international hockey player, developed into an examination of the physiological demands and limitations of performance during high intensity intermittent exercise, such as the activity patterns found in field hockey and football, including intermittent exercise performance in the heat. Some key findings were that: enhanced sprint performance following training is accompanied by an increase in energy provision from anaerobic metabolism without a further decline in muscle pH and; that performance during intermittent exercise including maximal sprints seems to be limited by phosphocreatine availability due to limited recovery time between sprints, together with the gradual decline in muscle glycogen over the duration of the event, except during exercise in the heat where the rise in deep body temperature is the key limiting factor. Professor Nevill spent 12 years as the Director of the Institute of Youth Sport at Loughborough University. Here her interest in intermittent exercise was focused on children and young people, including substantive work on talent identification and development for young elite performers, particularly in football, and on the impact of intermittent exercise on health and quality of life in the school age population. Some key findings were that after controlling for age and maturity sprint performance is an important physiological variable contributing to progression to senior professional football and in the school aged population participation in intermittent exercise, such as that found in the major team games, can reduce blood lipids following meals contributing to enhanced health.