HALO would like to welcome Dr. Natasha Schranz and her family to Canada. They recently arrived all the way from Australia and will be in Ottawa for the next month.
Dr. Schranz began her affiliation with the University of South Australia in 2005 when she began her Bachelor of Applied Science in Human Movement Studies. At completion of her undergraduate degree she then went on with post graduate study and began her Honours degree with the School of Health Sciences in 2008. Her Honours thesis, titled “Anthropometric Determinants of Elite Rowing Performance”, examined which anthropometric measures were the best predictors of rowing performance using three-dimensional whole body scanning and recruiting athletes from both the 2007 and 2008 Australian Rowing Championships.
In 2009, Dr. Schranz began her PhD candidature with the Health and Use of Time Group, with her PhD thesis titled “Can resistance training change the strength, body composition and self-concept of overweight and obese adolescent males. A randomised controlled trial” conferred on June 20th 2013. This program of research examined the effect of a 6-month resistance training program on the strength, body composition and self-concept of overweight and obese adolescent males using a randomized controlled trial design.
Currently, Dr. Schranz is working as a Research Associate with the Health and Use of Time Group alongside Dr. Grant Tomkinson and Professor Tim Olds to produce the first Physical Activity Report Card for Australian Children and Youth. Dr. Schranz and her colleagues will present Australia’s report card findings at the Global Summit on Physical Activity of Children. Dr. Schranz has five peer-reviewed publications, one of which was published in the top ranked Sport Sciences journal, and has presented at a number of national and international conferences on both her honours and PhD work.
