Alberto Botter
Alberto Botter received the M.S. degree in Electronics Engineering and the Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Politecnico di Torino (Italy) in 2005 and 2010, respectively. He is currently associate professor of biomedical engineering at Politecnico di Torino. His primary research interests include the development and application of innovative methodologies to investigate the electrical, anatomical, and mechanical properties of skeletal muscles in vivo. His work spans areas such as high-density surface electromyography, ultrasound imaging, neuromuscular electrical stimulation, and innovative electrode technology. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology (Elsevier) and serves as Associate Editor for IEEE Access (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). He has authored over 100 peer-reviewed articles, four book chapters, and holds a patent on an electrode technology enabling the simultaneous acquisition of high-density surface EMG and ultrasound images.
András Hegyi
András Hegyi received his Kinesiology MSc degree from the Hungarian University of Sports Science (HUSS, Hungary) in 2013 and received his PhD degree from the Neuromuscular Research Centre of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland in 2020. Then, he worked as a post-doc researcher at the University of Nantes (France), where he worked with elite athletes, in close collaboration with the French Institute for Sports (INSEP). András has returned to the HUSS in 2023, where he currently works as a research fellow. He also acts as the head of biomechanics and sports science at the Brüll Alfréd Methodology and Research Centre, which aims provide evidence-based support for elite athletes. His main research interests include the neuromuscular, muscle morphological, and mechanical properties of skeletal muscles in relation to sports performance and injury prevention.
Anthony Blazevich
Tony Blazevich, PhD, is a Professor of Biomechanics and lecturer in clinical neurophysiology in the School of Medical and Health Sciences, Edith Cowan University, Australia. His research aims to determine: (1) the relative influence of musculo-tendinous and neural factors on human movement performance; and (2) the adaptive responses of these factors to exercise training and detraining in both healthy, sports, aged, and clinical populations. His research uses a broad range of techniques in the areas of biomechanics, neurophysiology and strength & conditioning. He has published over 240 peer-reviewed research papers, gaining ~20,000 citations, and is the author of Sports Biomechanics: The Basics (3rd edition, Bloomsbury, UK). Professor Blazevich has also worked with athletes for >30 years, from development programs to Olympic Gold medallists, with a specific focus on rugby union, athletics (track & field), and field sports.
Anton Arndt
Toni Arndt performed his undergraduate studies in New Zealand and Australia in biology and Human Movement Sciences before receiving a scholarship for a PhD at the German Sport University, Köln. His PhD involved studies concerning asymmetrical loading of the Achilles tendon. This line of study continued at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden as a post-doc, together with unique invasive techniques for determining intrinsic foot kinematics. At present Toni Arndt is a professor in biomechanics, specializing in lower extremity muscle-tendon function, athletic footwear, parasports and sports biomechanics at The Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences (GIH) in Stockholm. He was Dean of Research and Doctoral Education at GIH for six years and Pro Vice-Chancellor between 2022-2024. He has published over 90 peer reviewed scientific articles and has supervised 13 PhD students to completion. In 2020 Toni was awarded the national Swedish senior prize for sport science research. He is a previous President of the International Society of Biomechanics. Toni is a consultant for World Athletics responsible for investigating compliance of athletic shoes for use in elite competition.
Bas van Hooren
Bas Van Hooren, PhD is an assistant professor, sport science consultant, strength and conditioning specialist and elite athlete. He obtained his PhD on injury prevention and performance enhancement in running-based sports at Maastricht university in 2024. Bas has been involved as a sport science consultant for various professional organizations and has been active as a strength and conditioning coach at the Dutch Olympic committee. As an athlete he has won several medals at the Dutch national championships between 2011-2025, and he became Dutch National champion in 2017. He is currently working as an assistant Professor at Maastricht University.
Bas combines his theoretical knowledge as a sport scientist/researcher with practical experiences from being an athlete and coach to translate complex theoretical concepts into useful and evidence-based practical applications. He has published over 60 journal articles on topics ranging from biomechanics to exercise physiology and has given multiple workshops on sport science related topics for a variety of audiences throughout Europe.
Benedicte Vanwanseele
Prof. Vanwanseele is a full professor and the head of the Human Movement Biomechanics research group at the Department of Movement Sciences, KU Leuven. She is also the director of the Leuven Institute of Sports Science. She is an international recognized expert in muscle and tendon biomechanics covering highly specialized biomechanical modelling techniques including musculoskeletal modelling and finite element modelling, with medical imaging. She has published more than 100 full papers in peer-reviewed international journal, attracted research grants, supervised 15 PhD students to completion and is currently supervising 10 PhD students. She has presented her research at several national and international conferences. Prof. Vanwanseele focuses her research on developing insights and innovative methodologies to achieve personalized rehabilitation and training regimes to enable each of us to perform optimally. Prof. Vanwanseele is also involved in the implementation of evidence-based methods to improve training programs for elite athletes such as the Belgian national hockey team and is the co-founder of a Spin-off company RunEasi.
Gaël Guilhem
As the head of the Sport, Expertise and Performance Lab at the French Institute of Sport (INSEP), Dr Gaël Guilhem leads a scientific team of +30 researchers, engineers and PhD candidates involved in research and expertise projects applied to elite sport performance. His research strives to better understand the role neuromuscular system properties in motor performance and injury risk in elite athletes. Conducted in close collaboration with Olympic and Paralympic sport federations, these projects aim to enlighten staffs decision-making processes to better individualize training contents for athletic and preventive purposes. Dr Guilhem was the principal investigator of the FULGUR project funded by the French Research Agency (2.1 M€, 10 universities research institutes, 3 sport federations) aiming to improve sprint running performance and better understand injury risk exposure of elite athletes in the perspective of the Paris 2024 Games. Dr Guilhem was the Local Chair President of the European Congress of Sport Science 2023 hosted in Paris prior to the Olympic and Paralympic Games. As a member of the French-Speaking Olympic Sports Medicine Research Network (ReFORM), Dr Guilhem contribute to the objectives of the IOC Research Centres for the Prevention of Injury and Illness, by establishing long-term research programmes on injury prevention, fostering collaborative relationships with sport institutions and setting up knowledge translation mechanisms to share scientific research results towards sport stakeholders.
Gaspar Epro
Gaspar Epro is a Senior Lecturer at London South Bank University specializing in biomechanics. He earned his PhD from the German Sport University Cologne in 2017.
His main research areas are the adaptability of the human musculoskeletal system in response to mechanical loading (exercise), as well as the interaction between neural and motor system during human locomotion and sports performance. He has conducted extensive research on the plasticity of muscle-tendon units and human locomotor stability across the human lifespan from health young adults (incl. high-performance athletes) up to elderly population (incl. master athletes).
Apart of his academic career, he is an athletics coach and biomechanical diagnostician at elite performance level, with experience from various major international competitions (i.e. Olympic Games, World Championships) as a personal / team coach or team leader representing different countries (Estonia, Puerto Rico, Germany).
Giacinto Luigi Cerone
Giacinto Luigi Cerone obtained the M.Sc. degree and the Ph.D in Biomedical Engineering, summa cum laude, from Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy, in 2014 and 2019 respectively. Currently he is an Assistant Professor at the Laboratory for Engineering of the Neuromuscular System – Politecnico di Torino, Italy. In 2020 he was awarded as Innovative Engineer of the Year by the Turin Engineering Association. Since 2025, he has been professor of the Programmable Biomedical Devices course at Politecnico di Torino. His main activity concerns the hardware, firmware, software design and certification of biomedical instrumentation. His research activity is mainly focused on the design of modular, wireless and embedded systems for the acquisition of HD-sEMG and EEG signals, the neuromuscular electrical stimulation and the tele-monitoring of vital parameters. He holds eight patents, and he is author/co-author of more than forty papers related to the design of biomedical instrumentation for the neuromuscular field research.
Jason R. Franz
Dr. Franz received his B.S. (2004) and M.S. (2006) degrees in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Tech and, after serving as a staff scientist in PM&R at the University of Virginia, received his Ph.D. (2012) in Integrative Physiology from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He then completed an NIH Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2015, Dr. Franz joined the Lampe Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University and is now a Full Professor and Director of the UNC Applied Biomechanics Laboratory. His research takes a mechanisms-based approach in rehabilitation engineering to develop solutions to help people age gracefully. He is the author of over 150 publications and currently serves as Principal Investigator on multiple NIH-funded research projects, all predominantly focused on rehabilitation engineering strategies to mitigate age- and disease-related mobility impairment and falls risk. He also serves as Faculty Director for Postdoctoral Success, where he supports the success, recruitment, and workforce development of postdoctoral trainees across the UNC School of Medicine.
Jessica Piasecki
Jessica Piasecki is an Associate Professor of Female Physiology whom has relevant expertise with research across the female lifespan. Her current work strives to understand the mechanisms of the sex hormones at the central and peripheral nervous system, how this impacts functionality and symptomology and how this translates into later life (ill)health. JP has extensive methodological experience in hormone analysis, electromyography (HD-EMG), trans cranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), MRI as well as qualitative data collection through questionnaires, focus groups/interviews and subsequent thematic analysis. Prior to this her work revolved around building a fundamental understanding of the role of exercise on musculoskeletal health and the mechanistic connections between muscle and bone through ageing. She built a large data set of masters athletes and a body of work surrounding this cohort that stemmed from training age, bone health, type of training and the role of the nerve with age associated deterioration. She was also a former international athlete and competed in the marathon at the Tokyo Olympic Games. Her virtual presentation will cover the latter body of work and hopefully provide some insight into the influence of exercise on musculoskeletal health through ageing.
Johan Lahti
Johan Lahti is a Doctor of Sport Sciences and a strength and conditioning coach (CSCS). He is one of the owners of R5 Athletics & Health gym in Helsinki, and is currently the Director of Physical Development for Jokerit hockey club's junior program. In this role, he also leads an eight-year research project on youth development in ice-hockey. On the private sector he works with numerous sports, including footballers, golfers and badminton players. He has published numerous works on biomechanics, including analyses of common strength training exercises and the biomechanics of sprinting. His PhD focused on hamstring injury risk reduction in professional football, which he defended in 2021. His supervisors included Jean-Benoit Morin, Pascal Edouard and Jurdan Mendiguchia. He regurlarly holds hamstring lectures and workshops for private clinics and football clubs in different countries.
Lauri Stenroth
Lauri Stenroth is an associate professor of rehabilitation engineering at the Department of Technical Physics, University of Eastern Finland, and leads the Human Movement Biomechanics research group – a subgroup of the Biophysics research group. His research focuses on musculoskeletal health and performance, especially joint health and age-related impairments. In his research, he utilizes a wide range of experimental and investigational techniques such as medical imaging, motion capture, musculoskeletal simulations, and biosignal measurements.
Stenroth holds the title of docent in biomechanics, especially human movement biomechanics. He received a PhD in Sport Sciences with biomechanics specialization from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, in 2016, before joining the Biophysics of Bone and Cartilage Research group at the University of Eastern Finland as a postdoctoral researcher. He has played an integral role in the development of the Human Measurement and Analysis (HUMEA) laboratory at the Department of Technical Physics. Stenroth has also worked as a visiting researcher at the University of Copenhagen and Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark, researching patients with a traumatic knee injury. The majority of his current research is related to osteoarthritis, with ongoing projects on joint load modifications and monitoring in relation to joint health.
Martino Franchi
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Particio Pincheira
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Taija Juutinen
Taija Finni is a professor and vice dean at the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She received a PhD in biomechanics in 2001, has worked as a full professor of since 2010, is a docent in exercise physiology, and a biomechanist with broad expertise (https://staff.jyu.fi/Members/finni). Regarding the tendon, she has utilized in vivo force transducers to assess forces in humans, published critical reviews related to methodology, and examined internal tendon movement in rats and in humans. Her recent research examines patients with Achilles tendon rupture and tendinopathy.
Uroš Marušič
Dr. Uroš Marušič is Senior Research Associate at the Science and Research Centre Koper, and Full Professor at Alma Mater Europaea University. With more than 14 years of experience in neuroscience, human movement science, and translational research, he bridges academic excellence with applied innovation in the fields of health and technology. His interdisciplinary work focuses on neuroplasticity, sensorimotor function, neurorehabilitation, and the use of mobile brain/body imaging (MoBI). He has more than 80 publications listed on PubMed alone. Dr. Marušič has led and participated in numerous national and EU-funded projects and actively contributes to international research networks.
Urs Granacher
Urs Granacher is a Full Professor of Exercise and Human Movement Science at the Department of Sport and Sport Science, University of Freiburg, Germany. He holds a degree in Sport Science and earned both his PhD and habilitation (post-doctoral thesis) in Exercise and Human Movement Science.
His research focuses on strength and conditioning across the lifespan, with particular emphasis on the development and evaluation of targeted intervention programs, including neuromuscular training, resistance training, and balance training, to enhance physical fitness, improve mobility, and reduce fall risk.
Dr. Granacher serves on the editorial boards of ten scientific journals, including Sports Medicine and the British Journal of Sports Medicine. He was appointed by the German Federal Minister of the Interior as Chairman of the PotAS Commission, tasked with reforming the German elite sport system (PotAS Commission).
