OPRL Team
Brad Wilkins, Ph.D.
Director
Professor Brad Wilkins is the founder and director of the Oregon Performance Research Laboratory. Dr. Wilkins is a leading expert in exercise and sport physiology with a passion for dissecting the physiological limits underlying human performance.
Jake Hudgins, Ph.D., CSCS
Research Associate & Lab Manager
Dr. Jake Hudgins is an experienced researcher and practitioner of applied exercise physiology and sport performance. In addition to the execution of research projects, Dr. Hudgins manages research operations and services.
Emma Richardson, M.S.
Laboratory Technician
Emma Richardson supports lab operations, data collection and research initiatives at OPRL, with an interest in optimizing athlete health and performance.
Mira Schoeberlein, B.S.
Ph.D. Student
Mira Schoeberlein is a second year Ph.D student for the OPRL. Her current research aims to understand the link between fluctuating sex hormones and the maximal metabolic steady state.
Hannah Young, M.S.
Ph.D. Student
Hannah Young is a first year Ph.D student for the OPRL. Her research interests include sex differences in athletic performance and the impacts of RED-S / LEA on various physiological measures.
Kristina Binder, B.S.
Ph.D. Student
Kristina Binder is a first year Ph.D student for the OPRL. Her research interests include the role of the gut microbiome and inflammation in exercise performance, with an emphasis on how these factors change throughout the human lifespan.
Undergraduate Research Assistants
Olivia DeVelasco
Letycia Lynch
Louis Hunter
Kyleigh Jeung
Why We're Different
Passion for Performance
The context, population of interest, or research approach may vary, but ultimately our research is in pursuit of one thing:
PERFORMANCE.
Encouraging Environment
Our standards and expectations are high, but critical to our mission is maintaining a lab environment that encourages creativity, curiosity, and freedom to independently think.
Collaborative Culture
This is a team effort. We want our collaborators and projects to extend outside our lab to other labs, agencies, or companies with similar missions for elevating human performance.
Diverse Experience
Our team is joined by diverse experiences in the area of performance from academic, to industry, to applied settings. This is vital for the growth of our lab and applying our research findings.