Feb 20. 2024 — In every era of human history, athletes have pushed their bodies and minds to the point of exhaustion, testing the limits of what is possible and seeking any opportunity to gain an advantage over their opponents. 

Thanks to generations of scientific advancements, there is now a better understanding of the human body and the essential elements of peak performance. Still, opportunities abound to discover new insights into the science of sport, the prevention and treatment of injuries, and the ecology of athletic performance – and to bring these findings to competitors across the spectrum of physical functions and abilities. This is especially true for para-athletes, whose athletic achievements and challenges are underrepresented in academic research.  

Now, thanks to $2.5 million in support, UF will provide new opportunities for these athletes and for sport science research as a whole. The UF & Sport Collaborative – one of UF President Ben Sasse’s Strategic Funding Initiatives, supported by the Florida Legislature – is helping propel UF to the global stage in sports performance, healthcare, and communication, while illuminating the university’s world-class sports facilities and partnerships.  

The College of Medicine’s Transforming Sport Science Research for Every Body project is one component of the five-part initiative, dedicated to researching the multiple dimensions of performance and health. The project will advance the analytic capacity of the UF Health Sports Performance Center, making it a centerpiece of research and testing for able-bodied and para-athletes of all ages and fitness levels. 

“We want this initiative to support our student-athletes in UF’s elite programs,” Sasse said. “Gators are committed to excellence on and off the field. We want to enhance our visibility as a world-renowned institution for sports research.” 

The project will be led by Heather Vincent, Ph.D., director of the UF Health Sports Performance Center, and Kevin Vincent, M.D., Ph.D., the John H. and Mary Lou Dasburg Chair of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and the medical director of the UF Health Sports Performance Center. College of Medicine faculty are uniquely positioned to lead this project, as the UF Health system is a national medical center within the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Medical Network, and able to comprehensively treat most medical issues for able-bodied and para-athletes nationwide, from children to adults. 

As a discipline, physical medicine strives to deliver care that provides physical function across the spectrum of abilities, investigating and promoting best practices to keep people active and exercising over a lifetime. However, sport science research is typically focused on able-bodied high school, collegiate, and professional athletes, and less attention is given to the general population or elite athletes with different physical abilities. Accordingly, this project aims to leverage the College of Medicine’s existing strengths, clinical expertise, AI resources, and intercollegiate research partnerships to transform the trajectory and methodology of sport science research. 

“Because so much attention has been given to elite athletes, the incredible tools, resources, and technologies in sport science have not always been leveraged for the greater good of the overall population,” Heather Vincent said. “Our goal is simple: to advance sport science for every body. We want to advance sports medicine for the whole public and bring this science from elite athletes to the level where everyone can access it, whether they are competitive athletes or just regular citizens being as active as they can.” 

The project has three primary components: a robust research program, an expansion of sport performance infrastructure, and the creation of new educational programs. In the research arm, the Vincents will lead investigations into performance optimization for para-athletes and able-bodied athletes, data acquisition and real-time performance assessments, biopsychosocial and epigenetic biomarkers, and the use of AI to predict injury and responsiveness to medical treatment.  

In the realm of performance optimization, the Vincents will seek to better understand performance and injury prevention for para-athletes by conducting studies using specialized treadmills, testing equipment, and force sensors that can accommodate wheelchairs and adaptive needs. The goal is to develop new training techniques, devices, and optimized nutrition guidance for the understudied population. 

The Vincents will also capture real-time movement and psychological responses through mobile technologies such as inertial movement sensors, physiological sensors, and markerless motion capture to assess athlete experiences and stress, identify performance decline, and develop preventive programs. They will partner with AI researchers across UF to develop algorithms that identify biomechanical movement deficiencies, combining them with a rich data set captured from performance to inform new rehabilitation programs and improve treatment precision.  

“There is a vast array of exciting research applications in physical medicine, rehabilitation, and sport science for elite para-athletes and differently-abled competitors,” Kevin Vincent said. “With UF’s incredible resources, expertise, and partnerships, we can become the national hub of this line of research that will benefit the entire population.” 

Funding will further allow the UF Health Performance Center to evolve into a core resource for sports-related research projects through an expansion of the performance testing infrastructure. Among the new equipment will be oversized treadmills that can accommodate wheelchairs, and bicycles with support harnesses and portable V02 systems, enabling athletes of all abilities to be aerobically tested. All research data from this initiative will form a repository, which will be stored on the HiPerGator supercomputer and open to UF collaborators. 

The project will also expand sports in the classroom by allowing two new doctoral students with affiliated research specialties to complete training with the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. These students will be immersed in testing methodology while training peers, residents, and undergraduates on topics related to the initiative’s research trajectories. Faculty will develop an innovative, semester-long course in the graduate medical sciences that will focus on sport participation and optimizing function across the lifespan. Course topics will include sports and healthy aging, physiological and psychological benefits, long-term impact on health outcomes, circadian rhythms, social engagement and cognition, the mental pressures of sports, social determinants, and trends in para-sports. 

“We are looking for that ripple effect in medicine and science, where we not only apply this research to our patients and athletes but also equip our trainees to bring it to the community,” Kevin Vincent said. “We want to make that impact outside of the traditional academic setting so that it reaches parents, coaches, and everyone in the wider public who needs it.”