Dr. Madden Brewster

Supervisor

Prof. Phil Ainslie

Current Program

Education

Madden completed both her BA (2018) and PhD (2022) at the University of Colorado Boulder and has carried her love of the outdoors from her Appalachian hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, on to Colorado and BC.

Awards

WorkSafe BC Ralph McGinn Postdoctoral Fellowship, Mitacs Accelerate Program

Biography

Madden can be found “enjoying” type-2 fun activities such as: boot packing up couloirs, runout slab climbing, and white knuckling technical rock gardens on her mountain bike.

Current Research

Madden’s research focuses on the regulation and adaptations of the human body when exposed to both natural and human-driven environmental stressors (e.g. pollution, high altitude, diving). Her current postdoctoral fellowship project, supported by WorkSafe BC, aims to assess the effects of wildfire smoke on cardiorespiratory health. She is working alongside the BC Wildfire Service to detect potential cardiorespiratory changes in their crew members across two seasons of wildland firefighting.  As global climate change is predicted to exacerbate future wildfire activity, she hopes to continue this work to develop effective intervention strategies from both an occupational and public health perspective. Madden’s other research interests include high altitude physiology and the mechanisms which contribute to vascular dysfunction and disease in low- and highlander populations as well as the physiology of breath hold diving in elite free divers. Madden is also a research sub-team lead involved in the Lululemon FURTHER project, an all-female ultra-marathon with various physiology-related research initiatives.

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