Every two years, the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) awards the DOSB Science Prize for outstanding sports science qualification work. With this award, the DOSB continues the tradition of the Carl-Diem-Competition, which the German Sports Federation has been holding since 1953. The DOSB award is considered the most prestigious prize for sports science in Germany. Crucial criteria for the evaluation of the submitted works are their scientific quality, originality and social relevance.
We are, therefore, particularly pleased that Dr. Philipp Baumert, PostDoc at the Chair of Sports Biology, has received the DOSB Science Prize in silver for his doctoral thesis. The topic of his dissertation was "The Physiological and Genetic Factors Underpinning the Response to Muscle Damaging Exercise" (DOI: 10.24377/LJMU.T.00010325). So far, he has published five articles from his PhD as first author in various scientific, international peer-reviewed journals (Baumert et al., 2016b, a; Baumert et al., 2017; Baumert et al., 2018; Baumert & Erskine, 2019). Furthermore, a book chapter has been developed from this PhD thesis (Baumert et al., 2019), and three further key publications are currently under review, either published as preprints on biorxiv (doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/740266) or in preparation.
Dr. Philipp Baumert received his bachelor's degree at the Sports University of Cologne and his master's degree at the Goethe University Frankfurt/Main. In his master's thesis (supervised by Prof. Schmidtbleicher and Prof. Morano), he investigated the influence of a myosin mutation on cardiac muscle performance at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association in Berlin. Thereupon, supported by a fully-funded LJMU PhD scholarship, he performed his PhD under the supervision of Dr. Robert Erskine (together with Prof Claire Stewart, Dr Mark Lake, and Prof Barry Drust) at Liverpool John Moores University from 2015 to early 2019, investigating the individual muscular adaptation reactions after intensive athletic activity. Using an interdisciplinary approach, he systematically analysed individual differences at the genetic, cellular, physiological and biomechanical levels. The results of his PhD project show how in particular individual (genetic) differences in muscle connective tissue influence the risk of muscle damage or even muscle injury during strenuous physical activity and how stem cells of the muscle connective tissue are a crucial factor in muscle regeneration.
As a EuroTech postdoc fellow (Marie Curie fellowship) at the Chair of Sports Biology (Prof. Henning Wackerhage) at the TUM, he has now been analyzing the metabolic pathways in the area of muscle growth using mass spectrometric methods in collaboration with Dr. Karin Kleigrewe from the Bavarian Center for Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry (BayBioMS) and with Prof. Lars Keld Nielsen from the Technical University of Denmark since the beginning of 2019.
The prize will be awarded by the DOSB President in Frankfurt/Main on April 23rd 2021. We congratulate Dr. Philipp Baumert for the science award and we wish him continued success in research.
Further information on the science prize can be found at https://www.dosb.de/ueber-uns/auszeichnungen.
Relevant publications of Dr. Baumert
- Baumert P & Erskine RM. (2019). Commentaries on Viewpoint: Distinct modalities of eccentric exercise: different recipes, not the same dish. J Appl Physiol 127, 884-891.
- Baumert P, Hall EC & Erskine RM. (2019). The genetic association with exercise-induced muscle damage and muscle injury risk. In Sports, Exercise, and Nutritional Genomics, pp. 375-407. Elsevier.
- Baumert P, Lake MJ, Drust B, Stewart C & Erskine RM. (2017). TRIM63 (MuRF-1) Gene Polymorphism is Associated with Biomarkers of Exercise-Induced Muscle Damage. Physiol Genomics 50, 142-143.
- Baumert P, Lake MJ, Stewart CE, Drust B & Erskine RM. (2016a). Genetic variation and exercise-induced muscle damage: implications for athletic performance, injury and ageing. Eur J Appl Physiol 116, 1595-1625.
- Baumert P, Lake MJ, Stewart CE, Drust B & Erskine RM. (2016b). Inter-individual variability in the response to maximal eccentric exercise. Eur J Appl Physiol 116, 2055-2056.
- Baumert P, Lake MJ, Stewart CE, Drust B & Erskine RM. (2018). Variations of Collagen-Encoding Genes are Associated with Exercise-Induced Muscle Damage. Physiol Genomics 50, 691-693.