J.D. Adams will go to Rochester, Minnesota, this summer for a post-doctoral research fellowship at the Mayo Clinic after he walks in the May commencement at the University of Arkansas.

Adams is finishing his doctoral degree in exercise science. His adviser is Stavros Kavouras, associate professor. Adams also earned a master's degree in exercise science from the U of A, working with Matt Ganio, associate professor and director of the Human Performance Lab. His bachelor's degree is from Harding University.

After sending his resume to the Mayo Clinic, Adams was invited there for an interview. He visited the lab where he will be working and met Adrian Vella, a medical doctor and professor of medicine who studies the pathogenesis of Type 2 diabetes and will be Adams' adviser.

He will spend two to three years working in the Department of Endocrinology at Mayo on a training grant from the National Institutes of Health, studying Type 2 diabetes and bariatric surgery. His appointment will be 100 percent research, running clinical human studies, writing papers and grants.

"I've done research in a lot of areas here, and they have research there that I'm really interested in," Adams said. "There are some investigators there I've been following over the past year."

Adams' dissertation is on the physiological effects of mild dehydration on exercise performance. He is also involved in a variety of other projects on the effect of water intake on health. He has co-authored 14 papers while in graduate school at the U of A.

Adams has a pretty well-known face in the Human Performance Lab in the HPER Building. As part of his graduate assistantship, he works at the reception desk of the lab. He also is the narrator of a video that describes the work that faculty and students conduct in the lab.

After he completes the fellowship at Mayo, Adams plans to seek a faculty research position at a university. As a master's student in 2012, he won a research award from the Central States American College of Sports Medicine. Twice, he won a Star Award from the American Nephrology Society, paying for him to attend conferences in Philadelphia in 2014 and Chicago in 2016.