William Fountain Ph.D., ACSM-EP

Phone:

317-274-0280

Email:

wfounta@iu.edu

Department:

Health Sciences

Personnel type:

Faculty

Campus:

IU Indianapolis

Biography

William A. Fountain, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of health sciences within the IU School of Health & Human Sciences. Fountain also holds an adjunct appointment within the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at the IU School of Medicine.

Fountain earned his doctorate in Human Bioenergetics from Ball State University before completing his postdoctoral training in the Translational Aging Research T32 program in the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His research investigates how aging alters skeletal muscle metabolism, inflammatory signaling, and bioenergetic limitations, with the goal of identifying molecular mechanisms that drive physical frailty and reduced resilience in older adults.

Fountain’s work integrates human exercise physiology, translational aging biology, and multi-omics approaches in clinical and pre-clinical studies. He has experience working within large-scale investigations—including the Health, Aging & Body Composition (Health ABC) study, Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC), Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA), and Study of Physical Resilience and Aging (SPRING)—where he has examined metabolic and inflammatory biomarkers such as GDF15 and their relationship to muscle function, mobility, and recovery. His studies span acute exercise testing, training interventions, ex vivo skeletal muscle analyses, and clinical epidemiology, collectively advancing understanding of the metabolic factors that influence late-life physical function.

He is the recipient of several early-career honors, including the Gerontological Society of America’s Biological Sciences Minority Investigator Award, the NIA/AGS Rising Star Junior Investigator Award, and the Johns Hopkins Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center (OAIC) Early Career Faculty Scholar Award. His growing research program is supported by a K22 Career Transition Award from the National Institute on Aging and aims to develop dynamic molecular screening tools to identify therapeutic targets that may mitigate age-related declines in muscle health and functional capacity.

Publications: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=fountain+wa&sort=date