Dr Hayes joined UWS in 2020 as a lecturer. Since his appointment in 2020, Dr Hayes has been PI or Co-I on successful project grants from the NIHR and CSO to the tune of ~£865,000. He has published ~75 peer-reviewed articles.

Dr Hayes' recent research has focussed on people living with chronic conditions and how those conditions can be monitored and improved, often using an mHealth approach. Another area of Dr Hayes' research is to develop targeted exercise approaches to enhance health and prevent disease. Primarily, he is interested in how exercise influences health and has interests in endocrinology, exercise biochemistry, high intensity interval training (HIIT), meta-science, and nutrition.

In 2022, Dr Hayes' is directly involved in mentorship of three Post-Doctoral Research Fellows, two PhD students, and one MRes student. Dr Hayes has successfully supervised PhD students and welcomes applications from potential post-graduate students with interests aligned to his research agenda.

Previous rsearch students include: 

• 2017 - 2021: Z Yasar (PhD) University of Cumbria. Sprint Internal Training in Community Dwelling Older Adults. (F/T)
• 2020 - 2022: D Contiero (PhD) UWS. The Utility of Karate Training in Later Life for Healthy Ageing. (F/T)

Dr Hayes' previous research activities examined low frequency interval training in older adults.  A number of publications stemming from this work demonstrated improvements in cardiovascular risk, body composition, aerobic fitness, muscle power, and biochemical markers of biological age despite reduced time commitments. Dr Hayes' current research activities centre on ageing and exercise, long covid, and mHealth.

Dr Hayes will upon recent work by exploring the safety, feasibility, and efficacy of low volume exercise training in older adults, particularly those with, or at risk of, sarcopenia. Moreover, scalable means of delivering muscle-strengthening exercise in older adults will be explored.

Dr Hayes is module coordinator for:

• Sport and exercise nutrition (level 8).
• Research dissertation (level 10).

In addition to module coordination, Dr Hayes contributes to several modules aligned to exercise physiology and supervises final year research students.