Damien Callahan is interested in the role of muscle plasticity on clinical rehabilitation outcomes and the links between intracellular metabolic function and muscle contractile performance. He uses a range of techniques to characterize the effects of age on metabolic and contractile performance at the cellular and whole tissue level. Insights gained from these studies will be used to test interventions which improve clinical rehabilitation outcomes in older adults.

Dr. Callahan completed his Ph.D. in Kinesiology at The University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2011 where he studied age-related differences in muscle fatigability. Thereafter, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, studying the effects of age and disuse on muscle contractile function. He began a tenure track faculty position at the University of Oregon in 2017.