Fresh off Australia’s best Olympic performance ever, researchers in our Next Generation Graduates Program (NGGP) are keen to make sure the ‘Green and Gold’ continue to bring home the gold (and silver & bronze).
QUT’s Centre for Data Science (CDS), the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) and Queensland Academy of Sport (QAS) are leading a consortium of government and industry organisations in sports, sports and biomedical technology, CSIRO and four universities to develop pioneering sports data science capability.
The NGGP grants are funding a first cohort of more than two-dozen higher degree research (HDR) student placements. The 2024 Paris Olympics have injected excitement into this program as these unique research projects get off the ground.
Professor Divya Mehta is the co-lead of the Sports Systems Domain for CDS.
“In my line of research, I’m always interested to observe how different athletes perform under stress,” says Divya.
“I especially enjoyed watching some of the team sports like basketball and cycling, where there were added team dynamics and the unpredictability of person-to-person contact.”
NGGP projects cover a wide range of team and individual sports, as well as focus on athletic performance and wellbeing.
Mackenzie Parker is a PhD candidate in the NGGP program at CDS. The NGGP program is allowing him to combine two of his passions, swimming and data science. He’s working with partner organisation, Queensland Academy of Sport.
“Swimming is such a dominant sport in Queensland. The athletes we’re working with are really at the top of the sport. They led the charge on the medal tally and record books at Paris,” says Mackenzie.
At Paris, swimmers accounted for seven of Australia’s 18 gold medals, and 18 of the 53 total medals won.
Mackenzie’s PhD project will focus on swimming race profiling and the different elements that go into competitive racing.
“We all see how some of the winning margins are razor thin. I hope that this research will give our swimmers a competitive edge in the years to come,” says Mackenzie.
Jono Sebban is a NGGP PhD Candidate at the UNSW Data Science Hub. His research is with partner organisation Surfing Australia.
“I was definitely keeping an eye on the Olympic surfing over in Tahiti,” said Jono.
Jono’s project is aimed at forecasting surf conditions and predicting wave-riding opportunities for Olympic surfing heats.
“It was very interesting to see how the final day of competition played out. The conditions were very inconsistent with long lulls between wave-riding opportunities,” says Jono.
“This was particularly evident in the men’s gold medal match, where there were only three wave-riding opportunities in the whole heat, all within the first 5 minutes. If surfers know that in advance, they will be in a much better position to grab those opportunities.”
With advances in technology and AI, the NGGP students will be at the forefront of some very exciting research.
“These advances will revolutionise the amount and type of data we can collect and improve our analysis and interpretation of that data to guide coaches and help athletes,” said Divya.
Of course, winning is only one part of what the NGGP students will be working on.
“Health and wellbeing are integral to this research. We want our athletes to win, but we want them to be and stay healthy,” said Divya.
If some of this sounds exciting to you and you’d like to be a part of it, there are still NGGP scholarships available. To find out more, head to our website and find out more about the Next Generation Graduates Program, the partner organisations involved, and the projects you could be working on!