TU/e has appointed Dr. Steven Vos part-time professor in the new ‘Design & Analysis of Intelligent Systems for Leisure Time Sports & Vitality’ chair. His focus is to promote public health by offering less experienced sportsman new, smart resources to stay healthy and exercise in a healthy way.
The lack of physical exercise is one of the world’s major public health challenges. It is well known that physical exercise can prevent a lot of health problems but there is still little we know about the sporting and exercise behavior of relatively inexperienced sportsmen because sports research tends to target elite sportsmen. The new TU/e chair, in the Industrial Design department, aims to close this gap by enabling people to participate in sport and exercise sustainably and responsibly throughout their lives.
"There are more and more inexperienced and fragile people taking up sport," Aarnout Brombacher, dean of the TU/e Industrial Design department, says. "It’s a good thing that they are doing sport but often they have little knowledge about their body and sports technique, which can lead to injury or dropout." At the same time, the possibilities to measure the body are increasing, such as the inexpensive heart rate meters and movement sensors in smartphones.
The new professor will work with other researchers on analyzing such data in order to acquire the knowledge that can help those new to sport to improve their performance. The focus lies initially on sports that people tend to do on an individual basis outside of sports clubs, like running, swimming and cycling. The research work intends ultimately to produce the design of effective, practical and affordable sports gadgets, devices or services based on solid knowledge of behavior regarding sport and movement.
The TU/e department of Industrial Design and Fontys Sports College want to use this chair to help boost the collaboration that is already emphatically expressed through the research into running in relation to the Eindhoven Marathon and the PhD study of Fontys lecturer Mark Janssen. Collaboration helps cluster the strengths of the more fundamental knowledge of TU/e and the applied expertise of Fontys in the sports domain.
Source: tue.nl
