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Professor
Appalachian State University
David Nieman is a professor in the Department of Biology, College of Arts and Sciences, at Appalachian State University, and director of the Human Performance Lab at the North Carolina Research Campus (NCRC) in Kannapolis, NC. Dr. Nieman is a pioneer in the research area of exercise and nutrition immunology, and helped establish that 1) regular moderate exercise lowers upper respiratory tract infection rates while improving immunosurveillance, 2) heavy exertion increases infection rates while causing transient changes in immune function, and 3) that carbohydrate and flavonoid ingestion by athletes attenuates exercise-induced inflammation.
Dr. Nieman’s current work is centered on investigating unique nutritional products as countermeasures to exercise- and obesity-induced immune dysfunction, inflammation, illness, and oxidative stress using a multi-omics approach. Dr. Nieman has received $13 million in research grants and published more than 380 peer-reviewed publications in journals and books. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the sports nutrition section of the journals Nutrients and Frontiers in Nutrition, and sits on 10 journal editorial boards including Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, and the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. Dr. Nieman’s Google Scholar h-index is 106, and his publications have been cited more than 47,200 times, ranking him among the top cited exercise science researchers in the world.
He is the author of nine books on health, exercise science, and nutrition, including Nutritional Assessment (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2019, now in its 7th edition). Dr. Nieman served as vice-president of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), president of SEACSM, and two terms as president of the International Society of Exercise and Immunology. Dr. Nieman received the “100 Scholars Faculty Research Award” from ASU in 1997, the Montoye Scholar Award from the Southeastern American College of Sports Medicine in 2006, the ASU College of Fine and Applied Arts researcher of the year award in 2006, ACSM’s Citation Award in 2013, and represented ASU four times as the Oliver Max Gardner nominee (ASU’s highest award). He was an acrobatic gymnast and coach for 10 years, and has run 58 marathons (PR 2:37) and ultramarathons.