Nicolas PLACE

 Nicolas Place got his PhD (neuromuscular adaptations to fatigue in humans) in 2006 at the faculty of sport sciences, University of Burgundy, France. He then completed a post doc in 2007-2008 at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm (Prof. Westerblad’s laboratory) to work on the intramuscular determinants of skeletal muscle weakness (force and Ca²⁺ signaling) using the mouse intact single fibre model. After five years spent at the institute of sport sciences at the University of Geneva, he joined in 2013 the institute of sport sciences at the University of Lausanne as a senior lecturer. His research focuses on the development of a translational approach, combining mechanistic and integrative experiments, to assess neuromuscular plasticity to exercise. Techniques such as transcutaneous electrical stimulation, transcranial magnetic stimulation, surface electromyography and force recordings are routinely used to distinguish central (neural) from peripheral (muscular) adaptations. In vitro models (e.g. cell culture, isolated mouse fibres / muscles, human muscle biopsy analysis) are also adopted to determine the cellular/molecular mechanisms underlying skeletal muscle adaptations to disease (e.g. myopathy) / exercise (e.g. HIIT).