Weston Titus – PhD Candidate
16 December 2025
Weston is an AUT PhD candidate living in California, United States of America and has been working on his PhD for the past 4.5 years.
For his PhD, he focused on the impact that Cannabidiol (CBD) use in Athletic Humans has on effecting exercise and recovery, supervised by Professor Andrew Kilding (AUT) and Professor Matthew Schubert (Cal State San Marcos).
Across four studies, Weston explored the effect of CBD from multiple angles: an international survey on usage habits for athletes, a muscle-damage recovery trial using CBD and placebos, an endurance cycling protocol, and a functional fitness-style repeated workout test.
While his findings “mostly agree with all the published literature in the field, oral supplementation of CBD at a considered standard dosage in the low hundred milligrams isn’t finding any results”.
He believes the future of this research will involve “larger doses”, potentially up to 15 hundred milligrams. “At the clinical level, they are finding pain reduction, anti-anxiety, sleep, and anti-inflammatory benefits, which are all things that are theoretically good for athletes”. He sees huge potential for future work.
Choosing AUT
Weston explained that his motivation for choosing AUT’s Sports Performance Research Institute New Zealand (SPRINZ) to pursue his PhD studies stemmed through his interest in sports performance, particularly pushing athletes to better results.
“I like sports performance, so the idea of pushing athletes from 2nd place to 1st place, breaking a new world record, or even just the local people at the gym and how can we get them to perform a little bit better or see better results? I like that and part of the reason why I went to AUT was for that”.
A remote PhD experience
Weston’s PhD experience was 100% remote, although he had initially planned to start his PhD remotely and then move to New Zealand due the COVID lockdown, his job, and finances, the move “just never happened”.
At time working remotely was difficult due to the time zone difference, however, he was very grateful for the support he had from his supervisors when navigating this PhD and his research project. “Andy was great to work with. He and my local mentor here spent a lot of hours with me to make my project better”.
Advice for other students
Weston, who is coming to the end of his PhD, has some great advice for other students who are in a similar situation to him considering a remote PhD, he stressed the necessity of internal motivation.
“I think you need to have a ton of internal motivation to get your PhD done because no one is going to come knocking on your door either literally or metaphorically."
Future work
Weston plans to focus on career advancement
“The largest thing for me is moving up from a Community College to a four-year university, and then I’m also really excited as I will be able to possibly work with grad students, mentoring them and working through their thesis or depending on the school their PhD program."
Job Title: Adjunct Professor of Health and Kinesiology at Palomar College
PhD Title: Cannabidiol (CBD) Use in Athletic Humans: EAects on Exercise and Recovery