The theme of our first conference will be to provide attendees with the “Secret Sauce: Sharing how unique collaborations collide to cultivate human performance success.” By hearing from experts who have successfully managed the relationships necessary to grow mutually beneficial research relationships in human performance, attendees will learn:

• What ingredients are necessary for building an athlete engineering program,
• How to improve cross-collaboration among unique groups, and
• How to accelerate project productivity by including the right team members and skillsets.

This includes partnering strength and conditions coaches from sports teams, health and safety managers from industry, and human performance trainers from the military with engineers, data scientists, and wearable technology experts. Combining practitioner experience with applied research is the foundation from which athlete engineering was built.

“MSU is leading the movement to build a student pipeline of qualified athlete engineers who can examine the data retrieved from wearable technology used for training, health and safety. Our new niche of multi-disciplined students can then share this information with coaches, trainers and other human performance decision makers to help optimize work and training,” said Reuben Burch, associate director of human factors and athlete engineering at CAVS and associate professor of industrial and systems engineering. “We call this recipe our ‘secret sauce,’ and we want to showcase these collaborative partnership examples so that others looking to build similar programs can follow our lessons learned.”

The summit will feature discussions focusing on how to build effective collaborations between athletics and academics, and will explore how key elements affect the four athlete personas: sports, industry, tactical and at-risk athletes. In addition to nationally-recognized keynote speakers and panels of experts, attendees will have an opportunity to network with professionals, enjoy delicious food, and see human performance technology in action.