
- Nicole Culos-Reed, PhD
Nicole Culos-Reed is a professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology at the University of Calgary. Nicole is the director of the Health and Wellness Lab and the Thrive Centre, a dedicated fitness facility for individuals living with and beyond cancer. Nicole's expertise is in health and exercise psychology, with a focus on health behaviour change. Nicole’s research focuses on developing, implementing, and evaluating sustainable community-based exercise oncology programs, building exercise into standard cancer care. Dr. Culos-Reed is a Professor of Health and Exercise Psychology in the Faculty of Kinesiology and a UCalgary Research Excellence Chair. Dr. Culos-Reed is currently the Associate Dean Research for the Faculty of Kinesiology. She holds an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Oncology in the Cumming School of Medicine; and is Director of the Health and Wellness Lab and Thrive Centre. She holds a Research Associate appointment with the Department of Psychosocial Resources at the AE Child Comprehensive Cancer Centre, Cancer Care, Alberta Health Services, and is a Killam Laureate. Dr. Culos-Reed’s research takes a transdisciplinary approach to understanding and improving the quality of life of individuals living with and beyond cancer, developing, delivering, and evaluating physical activity programs to address the physical and psychological challenges experienced throughout treatment and into survivorship. This research includes national and international collaborations, working with populations from pediatric to adult, including those with advanced cancer, and most recently includes a Canadian Institute of Health Research-Canadian Cancer Society (CIHR-CCS) Cancer Survivorship Team Grant (2020-26), with additional support from Alberta Cancer Foundation (ACF), to bring her team’s exercise oncology program to underserved rural and remote populations across Canada. Dr. Culos-Reed is the co-founder of Thrive Health, an online educational company building capacity in health and fitness professionals to deliver safe and effective exercise oncology resources. As a health behaviour change researcher, Dr. Culos-Reed is passionate about building capacity within the fitness industry to safely and effectively support individuals with cancer to live well and move more.