Dr. Luna Rizzo is a biomedical and sports scientist Phd with research experience in environmental human physiology with particular emphases within human temperature regulation; cardiovascular disease prevention; sedentary behaviour related risks; and human health and well-being in general. To date, she worked in three different research areas: investigations of possible changes in cardiovascular and metabolic response (CVD-MS) stimulated by sedentary behaviours in population providing further insight as to the mechanisms by which metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease occurs due to paradigm of inactivity physiology; factors influencing thermoregulation and exercise performance in different environment conditions including the optimization of hydration status by the use of fluid replacement in elite athletes-marathon runners; the effect of circulating sclerostin and preadipocyte factor-1 levels on bone mineral density in prepubertal athletes practicing high impact weight-bearing exercise and its correlation with body composition and adipocytokine values. During her Phd in Biomedical Science, she investigated the “Effect of circulating hormones on bone mineral density in athletes practicing foot-ground reaction force during exercise and its correlation with physiological and body composition parameters”. During her pre-doctoral training program, in the physiological field, she implemented a new method (ActivPALTM professional physical activity monitor) to observe changes in cardiometabolic risk biomarkers with increased sedentary behaviour that is associated to reduced PA levels. During her master’s degree in Sports Science addressed to exercise physiology she worked on the effects of thermoregulatory and circulatory responses to prolonged exercise in the heat. She was part of a team contributing to the development of experimental protocol and health screening procedure. She worked on the effect of hypohydration and simulated hyperhydration on RE and CVDs, and on the effect of diuretic-induced dehydration on prolonged exercise in hot and cool condition as well as on he effect of simulating bodyweight gain associated with a hyperhydrated state. She is interested in not only developing work methods to assess knowledge sharing in teams and its effects on outcome factors, but also in examining interventions designed to improve these processes. Beside these activities, during her proposed research work she is supposed and would like to explore a research on topics that span across the area of exercise and physical activity in the prevention and treatment of CVDs.

Dr. Luna Rizzo research interests are specifically on the investigation of cause-effect-relationships in different fields of physiology, primarily applied exercise physiology. She is also particularly interested in analyzing how different kinds of “daily lifestyle practices and habits/sedentary behaviour” can affect health in mid-life population provoking cardiometabolic diseases as a consequence of inactivity physiology – and she is attracted by the behavioral interventions to prevent CVDs or reduce cardiovascular risk.