Professor Anna Whittaker
Institution: University of Birmingham, UK
Biography:
Professor Anna C. Whittaker (was Phillips) is an internationally renowned researcher and Health Psychologist working in Psychoneuroimmunology and Psychophysiology. She has conducted award winning work on stress and vaccination response across the life course.
Professor Anna Whittaker was appointed as a research associate during her PhD at the University of Birmingham which she completed in 2005, and then undertook post-doctoral research for one year. She then went on to win a prestigious 5-year Research Councils UK Fellowship. On completion of the fellowship in 2011 she was promoted to Senior Research Fellow, in 2012 to Reader in Behavioural Medicine, and to Professor in 2016.
Professor Whittaker's current research interests include:
1) Cardiovascular stress reactivity, where she is developing a new theory of the negative health and behavioural correlates of blunted reactivity, and is engaged in several collaborations on large datasets, particularly showing the importance of the impact of anxiety on health outcomes including mortality and the metabolic syndrome; and
2) Ageing, stress, physical activity, nutrition and effects on health and wellbeing, particularly immunity, where she has been engaged in large grant funded projects to examine the synergistic impact of ageing and psychological and behavioural factors such as stress, depression, and physical activity on indices of immunity and physical frailty.
Contact: A.C.Whittaker@bham.ac.uk
Supervisor to: Paul Doody and Keenan Ramsay