Buckeye engineers helping Buckeye athletes excel

What happens when world-class research combines with elite athletics? At The Ohio State University, it’s called the Human Performance Collaborative (HPC).

Launched in 2019, the HPC is a multi-disciplinary team of researchers, sports scientists, data scientists, and practitioners with the unified goal of optimizing human performance. A strategic initiative out of Ohio State’s Office of Research, the HPC is led by Director Josh Hagan, a research professor in the Department of Integrated Systems Engineering (ISE).

HPC researchers can rapidly assess hundreds of athletes within just a couple of hours using devices that measure internal and external load, fatigue, sleep, recovery, and more, according to Hagan. Coaches and athletic trainers can then use the information to determine what adjustments Buckeye athletes need to make in the weight room, on the field, or with additional recovery outside of training.

The impact of the HPC isn’t limited to athletics. Hagan and his team are also collaborating with the Department of Defense to discover ways to augment human performance within the military. Regardless of the challenge or the client, engineers play a critical role on the HPC team.

“Engineering is absolutely integral to what we do from a data collection standpoint, a data analysis standpoint, and then ultimately the most important part being the data interpretation and translating it back to the athletes and the coaches,” said HPC’s Jason Stone, a performance science researcher.

“I think engineers have a very powerful place in sports science these days,” added Hagan. “It's really just the ability to learn, understand problems and solve problems as quickly as possible.”

To see and learn more, watch the video below about HPC’s work with several Ohio State teams.