My research career has been focussed on understanding integrated systems-level responses – particularly cardiorespiratory and metabolic responses – to hypoxia, to exercise and, more recently, to variations in iron status. After completing my doctorate in physiology and a qualification in clinical medicine, I joined the Department in 1985 where I have worked ever since.

During my early career I developed the technique of dynamic end-tidal forcing, and built upon that research by developing a chamber in which the levels of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the arterial blood could be kept constant in humans for days at a time. This allowed me to study acclimatization to hypoxia, and in particular show that it did not require an associated respiratory alkalosis to develop – thus discrediting an almost century-old hypothesis.