Visit to the University of Calgary and attendance to the Footwear Biomechanics Symposium
Aim of the visit:
To engage with academics from the University of Calgary, in order to gather suggestions and expertise for the upcoming studies of my PhD as well as to present the outcomes of the first studyon the 14th biennial Footwear Biomechanics Symposium in Kananaskis, Canada.
Summary of the visit:
The first part of the trip was oriented at attending the Footwear Biomechanics Symposium in Kananaskis. The three-day conference was highly useful. Some topics of the conference presentations gave ideas on how to capture kinematic data when testing different footwear interventions. Other topics showed the wide array of career paths available in this field.
During the visit I promoted the ISEA, CSER and our research on Twitter through the hashtag fbs2019 and tagged using @CSER_SHU and @Isportsengineer. All the Tweets can be found on my account manupautrejo
In the thematic bloc of “Traction” of the conference, I had the opportunity to present the results of the first study of my PhD titled “Evaluation of the effects of traction on ankle kinematics during a side cut using bfPCA”. I received very positive comments of my research and I’m looking forward to
elaborate further on them on a full-length paper for the Footwear Science Journal.
At the end of the conference, I had the chance to engage with Dr. Darren Stephanyshyn for theHuman Performance Laboratory of the University of Calgary. Although for ISB conference preparations Dr. Stephanyshyn didn’t had the chance to show me their lab, we had a discussion of different topics, mainly he shared his experiences on implemented footwear based markersets as well as artificial turf on force platforms. The main outcome was that he is willing to aid my PhD by reviewing draft papers and engage with my supervisory team on sharing his viws during meetings.
Overall this experience was highly satisfactory and will enrich my PhD studies with knowledge and connections that will aid to complete my studies. Also this experience opened my eyes to wider industry/academic opportunities available in my field for my future professional life.
I’m highly thankful to the ISEA for the support given and I’m looking forward to continue engaging with the global Sports Engineering scientific community.