Dr. Gordon Mitchell: How Intermittent Hypoxia or Low Oxygen Affects Neuroplasticity. Hypoxia for Spinal Cord Injuries, ALS and Disorders That Compromise Movement. The Potential Benefits of Hypoxia for Athletic Performance.

Dr. Mitchell joined the University of Florida in 2015 as a Preeminence Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Physical Therapy and McKnight Brain Institute. He founded and directs the UF Center for Breathing Research and Therapeutics (BREATHE) and the NIH-funded graduate and postdoctoral training program of the same name. A major focus of BREATHE is to understand and treat impaired breathing and airway defense (swallowing/cough) caused by neuromuscular injury or disease. Dr. Mitchell also serves as Deputy Director of the UF McKnight Brain Institute. For the past three decades, Dr. Mitchell pioneered studies of neuroplasticity in the neural system controlling breathing. Areas of active investigation include: intracellular and intercellular mechanisms of long-lasting respiratory motor plasticity triggered by repeated exposure to brief episodes of low oxygen (intermittent hypoxia), the ability to harness that intermittent hypoxia-induced spinal plasticity to treat respiratory and non-respiratory paralysis following spinal injury and during motor neuron disease (ALS), cell-based strategies to treat breathing deficits, and the impact of systemic inflammation on breathing and its control. Investigations span intracellular, intercellular and physiological systems level mechanisms, and translation to humans with acquired or neurodegenerative neurological disorders (SCI and ALS). Dr. Mitchell grew up in California where he received his B.S. (Biological Sciences) and PhD (Developmental and Cell Biology) degrees from the University of California at Irvine. After two years of post-doctoral training at the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine in Goettingen, Germany, he moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After one year as a postdoc, Dr. Mitchell became an Assistant Professor in 1981, and then the ranks to become Professor and Chair of the Department of Comparative Biosciences (17 years) and director of the NIH funded Respiratory Neurobiology Training Program (14 years). He chose to leave the University of Wisconsin for the opportunity to join the University of Florida and create the BREATHE Center. Dr. Mitchell has been recognized for his research and teaching accomplishments, including a National Institutes of Health MERIT Award, the Norden Distinguished Teacher Award, the Pfizer Research Award on multiple occasions, the Steenbock Professorship for Behavioral and Neural Science, and distinguished lectureships from the Society for Neuroscience (SFN), American Physiological Society (APS), Association of Chairs of Departments of Physiology (ACDP), American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA), and the Oxford Conference for Modeling and the Control of Breathing.