Rate My Professor Louise Naylor

Louise Naylor is an Associate Professor in the School of Human Sciences within the Faculty of Science at the University of Western Australia. She is an accredited exercise physiologist whose research examines the use of exercise as a therapeutic intervention, focusing on cardiovascular and metabolic adaptations to exercise training. Her studies encompass populations ranging from elite athletes to individuals with chronic conditions, including advanced heart failure, cancer survivors, and adolescents with type 2 diabetes. Naylor develops insights into cardiac and vascular exercise physiology through basic science investigations and leads a research team studying swimming-induced pulmonary edema affecting athletes during immersion exercise. She contributes to clinical applications as an exercise physiologist at Fiona Stanley Hospital and Healthy Hearts, and as part of the Move to Improve Exercise Research Group at Perth Children's Hospital, optimizing exercise-based interventions.

Naylor holds a PhD and has authored 131 research outputs, attaining an h-index of 34 and 3,665 citations. Her research has attracted substantial funding, including National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grants for projects such as 'Identifying the Optimal Age to Apply Physical Activity Interventions to Improve Heart Health' (2021-2024) and equipment funding, as well as National Heart Foundation support for 'Heat therapy in patients with heart failure' (2024-2025). Key publications include 'Exercise training improves vascular function in adolescents with type 2 diabetes' (Diabetes Care, 2016), 'Cardiac functional adaptation to resistance and endurance exercise training in middle-aged monozygotic twin pairs' (American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology, 2024), 'Impact of resistance and endurance exercise training on femoral artery function: sex differences in humans' (Journal of Physiology, 2025), and 'A prospective randomized longitudinal study involving 6 months of endurance or resistance exercise training' (Journal of Physiology, 2013). She supervises doctoral students and datasets on topics like body composition and cerebral blood flow. In 2017, Naylor received the Philippa Maddern Award for her positive influences on colleagues and students at UWA.