Dr. James Carson, PhD, Dept. of Kinesiology and Sport Management, Texas A&M University.

Dr. Carson currently serves as the Director of the Sydney and JL Huffines Institute for Sports Medicine and Human Performance at Texas A&M University. James Carson previosly served as a Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy and Senior Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Health Professions at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) in Memphis. He also served as the Director of the Tennessee Institute of Regenerative Medicine (TennIRM) and administers the Regenerative and Rehabilitation Sciences PhD track of Biomedical Sciences program at UTHSC.

Dr. Carson is a physiologist with training in molecular and cell biology. His research employs molecular biology techniques with in vivo and in vitro models to examine skeletal muscle mass and metabolic regulation with cancer, regeneration from injury, and chronic inflammation conditions.

His research training includes a National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded post-doctoral fellowship in physiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center-Houston and cell biology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, funded through the Huffington Center on Aging. Following his post-doctoral work, Dr. Carson was appointed to the faculty at the University of South Carolina and established a program of muscle biology research for 19 years.

He received his B.S. in Business Administration and Ph.D. in Education with an emphasis in Exercise Physiology from The Ohio State University. At Ohio State, he was a 3-year Varsity letterman in football and a Graduate Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach with the Ohio State Athletic Department, where he worked with football, men’s and women’s basketball, and ice hockey teams.

Dr. Carson has substantial experience supervising and mentoring trainees and junior faculty at the department, college, and research center levels. He served as Associate Director for the Center for Colon Cancer Research at the University of South Carolina, funded by the NIH, intending to develop junior faculty for more significant grant funding in colon cancer. In addition, he served as a steering committee member for an NIH-funded T32 Training Grant at the University of South Carolina, an innovative interdisciplinary Behavioral Biomedical Interphase Program. He also served as Department Chair for the Exercise Science Department at the University of South Carolina, with over 35 faculty and 1800 students ranging from undergraduate to PhD level, and a top NIH-funded research department in the University and discipline. As the department's Graduate Director, he grew the Exercise Science PhD Program to the #1 ranked PhD program in Kinesiology for ten years (National Academy of Kinesiology 2010 – 2020). As Department Chair, Associate Cancer Center Director, and Associate Dean for Research, he has extensively mentored faculty in research and their career progression.

The NIH has and continues to fund his research through several mechanisms serving as PI and co-PI. as PI and co-PI. Additionally, he has served as Co-I on many funded projects with junior investigators. He has over 125 peer-reviewed publications related to muscle physiology/biology, and his research has received over 11,000 citations. While on the University of South Carolina faculty, he received the Arnold School of Public Health Faculty Research Award for excellence in health research and the campus-wide USC Educational Foundation Award for Research in the Health Sciences. He was a regular grant review panel member for the NIH/CSR Cancer Cell Biology (CCB) study section and currently serves as chair of the Veterans Affairs (VA) Cellular and Molecular Medicine (CAMM) study section. He is an Associate Editor for Medicine Science and Sports Exercise and the Journal of Sarcopenia Cachexia and Muscle. Student mentorship in research has also been a cornerstone of Dr. Carson’s career. He has been heavily involved in mentoring students at all levels, spanning high school through the Ph.D. level. He has mentored more than 35 high school students in research and graduated 16 Ph.D. students, and currently mentors 2 Ph.D. students and is a member of four additional doctoral committees.

Dr. Carson will bring his proven record of organization and productivity to the Huffines Institute for Sports Medicine Director role. He looks forward to applying his leadership experience with departments, colleges, research centers, and institutes to provide faculty and student mentorship and grow the Huffines Institute as a resource for faculty-driven research, cross- college collaborative opportunities, and scholarship. Furthermore, he brings extensive experience and a strong interest in disseminating and applying exercise physiology knowledge to performance-based areas such as athletics and rehabilitation. Dr. Carson and his wife Margaret have been married for 36 years and have four children, two daughters-in-law and one grandchild.