3rd Sports Engineering Seminar Day – 31st January 2019, Loughborough University
This January, the Sports Technology Insitute at Loughborough University, hosted the 3rd “Sports Engineering Seminar Day”. The seminar day is a free, student-led, one day event, which brings together the community of sports engineers in order to communicate the latest work being conducted in the field. The day also provides opportunities for networking and potential future sports engineering collaborations and careers, for both current and prospective sports engineers. The event was possible through the generous funding contributions from ISEA’s Engaging Sports Engineering Grant and the Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering at Loughborough Univeristy.
The 3rd installment of the event consisted of a tour of the laboratories at the Sports Technology Institute and oral presentations devivered by researchers and academics from Loughborough, Manchester Metropolitan, Sheffield Hallam and Nottingham Trent universities as well industrial speakers from Adidas, the ECB, Gunn & Moore and NURVV. The event and presentations were segmented across four main research themes: 1) Human movement and measurement 2) Prevention and mechanisms of injury 3) Materials, apparel and equipment 4) Modern technologies. Prizes kindly donated by Adidas were awarded for the best student presentation and the two most engaging audience members.
In total, 120 delegates across 11 universities and 7 industrial companies attended the event, continuing the trend of increased attendance year on year. This year there were a mixture of new and familiar faces from previous seminar days in attendance, therefore continuing to expand the UK hub of sports engineers built via the seminar events.
Feedback from the event was all positive, with 65% of respondants rating the day as “very good”, with the remaining 35% rating it as “good”. The attendees praised the range of presentations, both in terms of academic/indsustry and the topics covered, with the quality of the presentations also being highlighted as a positive from the event. The feedback gathered from the 3rd hosting of the event has been passed on to Sheffield Hallam university, who will be hosting the 4th seminar day next year and we at Loughborough wish them all the best and are sure they will host a great event.
On behalf of the 3rd Sports Engineering Seminar day committee, we would like to reiterate our thanks to ISEA, the Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering and Adidas, who’s support enabled us to make this day possible. We would also like to thank all the speakers who gave up their time to present high quality content to the attendees, and all the attendees themselves, for supporting the event and being engaing and proactive during the day.