Journeys into Sport Engineering

The evolution of sport makes athletes increasingly look for the small details that can make a difference. In that perspective, the role of engineering, already historically prominent, continues to grow. The next decades are poised to witness a technological revolution, driven by advancements in fields like nanotechnology, 3D printing and biomedical engineering. This impending transformation offers sport engineers a rich landscape for exploration and innovation. Positioned at the forefront, engineers are primed to assume a central role in leveraging these developments for the benefit of sports performance.

In this webinar, we will hear from two engineers at various stages in their career who will share with the audience their journey and motivations to inspire the next generation of sport engineers.

Thomas Allen
Chair

Caroline Adams
Performance Innovation Consultant
UK Sports Institute

Jordon Probst
Product Development Lead
New Balance

Hello everybody welcome to this imy webinar we’re going to be talking about sports Engineering in particular careers into sports engineering so earlier this year or at the end of last year the IMI published a policy report on Sports engineering one of the key recommendations from that report was to have a stronger Community

Within the UK and that’s partly what today’s about bringing people together and talking about sports engineering and see what we can do from there I encourage you to to look at the resources tab which has been provided in there there’s some links to some different resources all about sports

Engineering which you should find useful that includes the IMI policy report which I was just talking about on Sports engineering and also one which is really good for students and anyone just generally interested in sports engineering is the UK Sports engineering seminar day that’s a free event which

Anyone can attend in all the details are in that result sources Tab and there’s some other things in there as well another thing that came out of the imy report as a recommendation a sense of community was the IM has formed a sports Engineering Group so anyone who’s

Interested in that you can get in contact the information is provided you know in this webinar but you can always just email me or ask as well if you’re interested in that so moving on to the focus of today we’ve got two great speakers telling you about their their Journeys into sports

Engineering there’s going to be some really interesting discussion so if you have any questions you can write them into the questions Tab and then at the end we’ll take questions we have our two speakers first of questions at the end if you have a question you want to ask

You can write that in the side so we have Jordan he’s going to be speaking first and we have Caroline as well so Jordan work works at New Balance and he’s going to be talking all about that about the design of of football boots amongst other things and then Caroline

From from the UK Sports Institute so go over to Jordan and hope you enjoy it thanks Tom okay let me quickly share my screen Tom could you let me know if you see this okay good thanks y all good great okay guys so yeah my name’s Jordan propest um

I currently work at New Balance and um in the product development team particularly specifically on the global football Footwear team so yeah um I’m going to talk through uh a bit bit about myself uh my journey um how I kind of got into sports engineering um starting

From University um where I’ve been and how I’ve ended up at New Balance and then yeah day in the life of essentially what I do in product development what does that mean and how does engineering kind of fit into that and then I’ll probably talking toor about how how um

What the role of engineering is in New Balance and and and The Wider industry and then I’ll touch more on on product creation and how um we work across many different teams and how we bring a product to life and then finally um I’ll just share share some tips for any any

Students that could be interested in in going after a career in sports engineering particularly in a brand um so yeah so a bit about myself so I’m I’m around seven years working in in the sports goods industry um particularly specializing in sport and outdoor performance footware development I

Currently sit in the uh the New Balance product creation team um responsible for leading the endtoend product development for Global football uh Footwear um so that’s from uh Concepts uh development uh prototyping through to commercialization and production and I’ll I’ll talk more into that later on

Um for me um when I was asked to do this uh this webinar this uh this presentation I I kind of had to reflect reflect on why I do uh what I do essentially and thinking back to when I was a child when I was when I was

Growing up I was quite fortunate to uh my parents put me through many different sports and I was obsessed with sports and from a young age um um I loved the competitiveness but also the um yeah the sense of belonging in sport but with that with that I I loved product design

And maths and and being able to kind of marry those two together um always kind of fascinated me and I was quite lucky that I stumbled across Sports engineering Sports technology which is the main reason why I I wanted to kind of go after this as a career so that was

One of the main reasons why I kind of approached Sports engineering um before I got to University so just touching on on my my journey then so um I I went to lby University I I studied Sports technology um at 2012 um and I was there

For four years um I was then fortunate um after my second year um of of my studies to get an internship at Adidas um as a footwear developer um and then off the back of that I then came back to University to finish my fin of studies

Um and I was fortunate to um work with Adidas um as part of my final year project and then once finishing my my um undergraduate degree I wanted to learn a little bit more in depth about um engineering and so I took um another year at University studying mechanic at

Mechanical engineering a masters in mechanical engineering and this was more focused on computational engineering um I had a small stint with hawkey Innovations just after finishing my Master’s Degree which again I’ll talk more uh later on and then after that I then spent roughly around five years at

Pentland Brands where I was um a product developer working across berghouse can of New Zealand and Ura Brands and then most recently moving into my position now at New Balance where I’m um working in product development within the global football team um so I’ll talk a little

Bit more in detail about each one um so yes starting up with University I think many of the listeners today will be in a similar situation as an undergrad um for me it was that Synergy between sports science biome mechanics and engineering and it was it was exactly what I was

What I was looking for growing up um I was always fascinated by the technology in in many different sports and and this this undergraduate course gave me that um that sense of understanding from what goes into building or the engineering behind products but it was quite Broad

And I think going into into my second year I wanted to I was quite fortunate in a way to get a role at Adidas in internship to kind of understand a little bit more about what goes on in Industry so I’ll I’ll talk more into

Into this now so when I when I went to um Adidas this was in Germany and it was my first kind of insight into a global sports brand um understanding how the brand operates how different teams within an organization are set up to ensure to ensure the success so yeah

Fresh out of University I was exposed to the full endtoend product life cycle um from Styles being briefed through to testing and production Readiness I was given the opportunity to learn and understand Footwear product creation um the tra traditional Footwear making but also how engineering influences how

Products are designed and built um I was fortunate to shadow um colleagues in the team learning and understanding the role of of product development and supporting members in the development team on many different areas so slowly learning and understanding the expect of the role and

How I can add value um I was put through internal learning courses on footware development and then eventually I was given my own styles to to develop so an example here is is is rugby so I was actually part of the the tennis and heartbeat Sports business unit

Which um focus on essentially tennis and then all the Olympic sports um and rugby and handball and and and uh volleyball so some of the Specialty Sports which aren’t the major sports such as you know football um and running um so yeah I was fortunate to work on many different

Footwear styles from tennis rugby volleyball um which as a developer or as as an intern it was it was quite exciting really so I was able to help with material exploration um developing new material or new color projects and then leading the fit and wear testing

Which is really great it gave me an insight into how um prototypes of products are reviewed through each stage each um stage gate of the development process and then one of the exciting um other exciting areas was being able to um meet athletes I was quite fortunate

To meet many athletes and here on the left you’ll see I met ano Evanovich um one day when she came in to visit us in Germany um so yeah I mean the the internship gave me that that drive and passion to really see this as as a

Career that I really wanted to get into so it reinforced is definitely what I wanted to do so specifically within Footwear um and I think just kind of reflecting back on on my university studies it was although it was fantastic to learn about the engineering side side

Um going to going into industry really G gave me that sense of understanding of what happens in industry and because I think there’s quite a big difference between University and then in brand as well so um yeah it gave me insight to how many different teams kind of operate together within an

Organization so then yeah I came back and um as I said I did another year uh at lur University and and the reason behind this is because taking learnings from my time at Adidas um and working with many different teams um I was able to understand how different teams operated particularly

Their Innovation or engineering teams and one area that I really want to focus on was understand a little bit more um around the principles and practices of engineering and core mechanical engineering particularly FAA what finite analysis computational engineering because I felt like this could be a

Really um unique skill set that I could bring to a brand or an organization um so I spent another year at Luby University um and then um um like I said I I’d spent a small stint at hawkey and then I moved into my position at pentland Brands so pentland Brands if

Many people aren’t familiar a company that own many different Sports and Outdoor Brands um I was fortunate to originally um I was brought in as a product engineer and I quickly transitioned into a footwear Focus role so I was leading the Footwear product development for the Sports and Outdoor

Brands which are berghouse Canterbury of New Zealand and inur um the company is quite it’s a smaller brand so I covered many Brands as a as a footwear team so essentially it was a One-Stop shop for Footwear was quite unique in a way to cover such diverse

Portfolio of Brands um and projects so I was working on technical hiking Footwear trail shoes to high performance team sport rugby Footwear um and I was responsible also for um the Inception on the inura Footwear business which is a a cycling brand if people aren’t familiar

Um it was their first colle ction into the market so um my focus with imp pment Brands was was on new product development and new product Innovation projects which was yeah super exciting to be involved in um and then yeah finally to where I’m

Now I I was fortunate um to to get a role at New Balance um within the product development team so I’m I’m now um essentially leading um uh the product creation of product development for the inl product development team for Global footware so for Global football uh Footwear team so covering the full

Product hierarchy from elite elite level on Pitch stylos down to Junior and entry level price points um within my role my responsibility is to take a design and turn it into a physical tangible product um not just for elite level price points but over a number of different commercial price

Points um I’m quite fortunate to have worked across some quite fun projects so particular some athlete special edition special makeup projects like you see here on the right this was uh a style we did for Harvey Elliot um a few months ago um and yeah I’ve been with new bants

For close to a year and a half now um and it’s yeah particularly it’s an interesting Journey um to be with a brand that’s still relatively new to the football market so going up against the big names in the market is yeah is really interesting and

Exciting so that was a very quick run through of my my journey um and I wanted to give a go into the next Point around what is the day and life of a of a product developer or working in product development so product development essentially is another name for product

Engineer or product development engineer and we’re responsible for translating design ideas and Concepts into tangible 3D products and prototypes we do this through um a process of prototyping all our factories urance samples are engineered to required performance standards tested appropriately within the lab or on field with athletes um so

Here is I want here’s a collection of images that I want to kind of share hopefully convey some of the aspects that I work on day to-day um I must say every day is a different day and it’s a fast moving industry um so we’ll be working on material exploration um soil

Unit development so CAD development um upper pattern development even the last development um into digital testing be it through FAA or component testing um and into physical testing like you see here at the bottom so a bit more of a a summary into and a little bit more detail into what

What my role really consists of so yeah like I said um we translate design ideas and Concepts into tangible 3D products um through a process of prototyping with Factory Partners we oversee the entire product life cycle from initial concept development through testing into production so my role now at New Balance

Um I work anywhere between well essentially 24 months out from market so around two years from Market we’ll be working on on samples and Concepts and as a developer we’re responsible for the full product engineering so Building Product specifications optimizing how how the shoe is constructed um yeah working through different

Material makeups um material exploration material selection to meet performance requirements essentially we build the product from the inside out making sure designs and products are structurally sound but also actually meet the design intent that the designers and and the wi team expect from the product um the

Other side to my role is ensuring that the designs are actually manufacturable and scalable to cost as well um we have to ensure commerciality we have to ensure that we’re going to be making some money so part of that will part of this also includes element of costing so

Cost engineering making sure styles that we develop are feasible ensuring that we get a return on investment because at the end of the day working in a brand we need to be making money um and then the other side of of my role is testing and validating so

Yeah mechanical testing and um physical testing doing fit and wear testing with our athletes to ensure the fit is for purpose and we build a product that is going to last and it’s will be durable on the pitch um one of the other exciting parts of my role is that I work

Part of a cross functional team so I’ll be collaborating on the daily with teams such as design teams product management team and even our manufacturing Partners to ensure samples are constructed on time within budget um and yeah meets meets the requirements of the rwi team and then finally manufacturing

Engineering we do have touch points with our manufacturing Partners to ensure all materials um so units um are within specs we’ll be working on injection molding compression molding specs as well so there’s a lot to to do as a product development engineer um and it’s yeah all encompassing from from testing

Through to yeah through to production so that’s a that’s a quick overview as a product developer what I wanted to share now is kind of the role of Engineering in New Balance uh particularly from a brand perspective and um this is kind of it will be slightly different depending on the

Brand the size of the brand and um yeah which brand you you know you’re a part of and I guess an example from New Balance um I wanted to prepare a slide on just how a business like new balance is set up and share the different functions within a brand and how

Engineering kind of um is touched on different roles because um I mean the role of an engineer isn’t just specific to my role engineering touches many different functions so not just the only one well not just the one I sit in So within an organization like newbalance

For example um there are many different functions working and contributing to the overall success of the business so imagine a machine um there many different cogs moving and working in tandem so um yeah as a basic overview um we can split the role of Engineering in New Balance into what we call inline

Product creation and then Innovation so I currently sit in product development which is in the inline section here um what we mean by inline is that we’re closer to the market we’re more commercial we’re more responsible for commercializing Concepts and Styles taking the design design and Concepts

And scaling them to be production ready so um usually around two years out from the market whereas if we go on the Innovation side um the teams working in the Innovation space usually work anywhere around four years or more out from the market so this is made up of

Many different teams and functions including designers and pro project managers The Innovation team is actually more focused on future f future um concepting less focus on Commercial Readiness more on technology technological about advancements so yeah focus on concepting more room to fail explore multiple work streams and ideas

Um and then yeah engineering touches many different teams across both inline and Innovation so um can touch on project management research and development uh material engineering um manufacturing engineering uh sustainability sustainable development um which is a big Focus for the brand at the moment so there’s there’s there’s

There’s a lot of different areas within within New Balance that I have engineering and I think with New Balance seeing themselves as a leader in sport Innovation and Technology it’s kind of important to have a good spread of engineering roles and responsibilities throughout the the hierarchy and product life

Cycle um next Point here I just wanted to share how um or show a schematic of how we’re set up um within our teams and how they Interlink so as I said before I sit in product development um and then our main points of contact are uh with

Our product management team and design team um we also work cross functioning with many different teams to ensure success of projects so our Asia counterparts working on manufacturing engineering our Factory partners and even we’ve got product development teams in Asia as well um as a quick overview the product management teams they set

The brief for the season they’re more marketing Le so they identify the customer need the larger business objectives that need to be or need the project to to be F to fulfill the design team as you as you probably can read it essentially responsible for the overall

Design um Creative Vision that is set out by the brief and then yeah as a development team we are responsible for translating the design and and the and the brief into that tangible physical product um and then the Innovation team as I SP spoke about before they’re more future focused new technology materials

Concept exploration but the PM team or the product management team and the design team will work closely with the Innovation team on um setting future briefs um um and future Concepts um and then yeah as well as us in product development we will work with the Innovation team on potential new

Material exploration um if there are any anything in the pipeline that we can potentially funnel through into a commercial Readiness we will do that as well um so that was a quick quick overview of of how we operate as a as a business um and New Balance and then

Finally I just wanted to share some tips um for students that could be interested interested in sports and Engineering more so if you want a career working within a brand particularly like other New Balance or pen and Brands where I’ve been to before um so yeah just some

Quick tips from my side that i’ I’ve kind of I’ve learned from over the past few years is is first is kind of build your build your network talk to people and learn from their experiences um I think LinkedIn is a great platform so make sure your page is up to date join

Relevant groups follow people in the industry you find have an interesting career um again with LinkedIn it’s great that can follow their career path understand what they’ve done and where they where they’ve been and how they got to where they are um if there’s an opportunity to visit conferences to meet

People from the industry i’ probably encourage you to do that as well the other thing to do is Embrace a nonline your career so um there’s no one pathway it’s where that you’ll fall into a perfect career so earlier I talked about that I had a short stint at Hawkeye I

Was there for four to six weeks I think it was and um you know I I if I’m being honest I was I was after my Master’s Degree I was struggling to find a role in the industry because um is is a competitive competitive Marketplace but

Um I took a role at Hawkeye and as a systems operator and personally it wasn’t for me I’m more of a product person and not not to say that other people don’t enjoy that role you know there’s some incredible teams within Hawkeye but for me it just wasn’t it

Wasn’t a good fit and I know from my background in product engineering that’s kind of the area that I want to pursue so for me I I was I I knew that I wanted to take the experiences that I learned at hawkey but I was able to apply that

Elsewhere so take experience of any job even if you don’t feel it being the right job at at the right time they always be opportunities to move on um and there’s always crossover skills you know um there’s transferable skills regardless of what job that you take um I would figure out what you

Value and where your interests and specialisms lie so for me it was it was yeah product engineering it was Building Products it was how how can I look at the final details and ensure that the a product that I’m building brings value to an organization so um like I said

There’s different Pathways try something if you don’t like it take the experience and learnings from it there’ll always be crossover and transferable skills um and then the other thing is how do you set yourself apart um internships are great um great way to get exposure and insight

Into a brand and business you know for me getting getting an opportunity Adidas really gave me exposure and insight into how I a business kind of operated I didn’t know how that how how a business like Adidas would work when I was at University and I was really fortunate to

Experience that and it allows you to work with many different teams and help you understand where you might want to work even if you’re in a different team at the time you might be able might be working with different teams I think actually I’d be quite interesting to

Explore that in in future um i’ demonstrate skill set you in your interview as well can you show practical examples just be clear with what you know and how you can add value to an organization um and that’s one of the reasons why I want to do a master’s

Degree for me I wanted to learn more about FAA and computational engineering that for me I could add extra value to an organization through that way an additional skill set so I’d encourage you to be detailed and and don’t afraid to kind of big yourself up as well um

You know it is hard um but don’t give up um it’s hard to get that first step but and it took me a while I’m completely open about that but it’s a really um interesting industry and really rewarding so i’ encourage you to keep going um and yeah it it’s is a brilliant

Industry and really exciting what involved um and then yeah finally um industry is changing there’s always opportunities and then lastly well you’re not your title you’re the skill set that you bring so um yeah I think that that’s pretty much everything from my side I’m conscious I’m going slightly

Over time but um thank you for yeah allowing me to share kind of my journey and um being able to present to you guys and share any tips so hopefully there’s something that you can take from it so that’s uh everything from my side I’ll stop sharing now thanks Jordan good afternoon everyone

I’m Caroline and I’m similar to Jordan just going to talk through a little bit of my journey to sports engineering there’ll be some similarities that you’ll see along the way and yeah hopefully some different things and hopefully will’ll just inspire you wherever you are at uh in your journey

So I guess yeah every Journey has a beginning and this is me on the right hand side looking at my sister building gep play I think even from a young age I was kind of curious looking to what other people were doing but also trying

To work out how to build my own things or what I could do um and sport was also a massive passion of mine this is me kind of in third place uh at school sports day and even from kind of a young age I just knew that I wanted to be kind

Of outside active doing anything I could um I kind of yeah played a lot of football a lot of net ball and then that kind of transitioned as kind of I grew up and got really into tracking field and Athletics and so I guess for me Sports engineering was something I

Didn’t really know was a thing but actually they were my two passions as a kid and yeah I’m really privileged that it’s worked out as a career um this is me dressed up as a planet I think even again just showing that you know I was always curious about designing things

Painting things building things um at did DT in secondary school and this table is still in my parents house and uh this keying it’s quite hard to see but it was a it was supposed to be a snowboard but I actually chipped the end

Which is why I then got a little thin on it when I was trying to drill it so yeah I think I was even at that age in school I was kind of building things but also learning how to adapt and pivot um and as I got older I got really into

PV and and that kind of became my main passion I think I I would have loved to have made it as a professional athlete I never got that far and so that point at the end of school I thought well I’ve enjoyed maths and physics and product design what do I do

Next and where do I go and um that led me to L University which is you one of the kind of best reputations for sport as an for athletics particularly and there I studied product design engineering and when I went through ucast I applied all my other courses

Were kind of sport technology or Sports engineering but when I was in an interview and someone said actually why don’t you go broader first and maybe you could specialize later and kind of throughout my degree I was like always just waiting to do something sport related but none of the topics I did

Were and I was a bit frustrated I was like oh why did I take that advice like as was watching people doing Jordan scores for example and they were doing kind of sports specific things and I was doing much more generic things and in fact my funnier project was essentially

The biomechanics of horses so whil the measurement technology was sport related I was still doing an application that wasn’t Sport and I wasn’t necessarily that passionate about and but looking back now I think I learned a lot through that course was kind of a lot of problem solving kind of engineering fundamentals

How to think kind of mechanical design principles a lot of CAD that sort of thing and it’s really set me up for kind of where I am now um and during that in my third year I had the opportunity to do an internship I went to a little company called Tetra engineering and

They’re based over in France and uh I must have applied to like 20 old jobs I was going to the career center over time and I was I don’t understand what I have to do to get a placement and but I think it it’s just you know when

You’re that age you don’t really know how to write a CV you’ve never really gone through interviews before and it was almost just going through those rejections that actually helped me get better and put together better applications so I worked at Tetra and they were pretty heavy engineering so

They specialized in um heat recovery steam generators on power plants so I would literally go out measure the thickness of pipes to see if it had corroded and iide to by the end of the year I knew what I didn’t want to do as an engineer but it also again gave me

More skills I to understood what it meant to work in an office environment how to write engineering reports how to communicate so whilst it wasn’t what I wanted to I learned so much through that then I had a couple of summer jobs and so I spent a summer in Malaysia working

With hlp and they were insurance broker for sort of big engineering sites and boats and things like that so it kind of was close to engineering but again I learned loads but it wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life I then spent a summer as a research

Assistant in the sports Tech Institute of lraa and I was basically in an anac comic chamber which is an acoustic chamber it’s totally quiet and I was hitting tennis rackets for a whole summer you kind of in there 9 till 500 there’s no windows no outside and I was

Like oh it’s Sports engineering but this also isn’t what I want to do I don’t want to sit in a room all day by myself making a tennis racket vibrate so I think through all those experiences you just have to go through them and you you

Kind of think that you know what you want to do but actually even when I thought I was doing what was my dream it still wasn’t quite what I expected and then in my final year I had the opportunity to go an exchange so I went over to Charmers which is in gothenberg

In Sweden and uh my main motivation for going there was that I knew there was a really good P coach and so it was less about the academics at that point and I just thought I just want to go there and train and and that that was great from a

Pup perspective but probably less good from an academic perspective and and I finished that and then I was like right what do I do now um and I looked at the sports engineering website and and Tom Allen was recruiting for a PhD student at sheffeld Hen and so that was kind of

The Next Step I’d applied for a few different phds and different topics and that one yeah seemed like a good fit and so I moved back from Sweden went to Sheffield I never been there before and the PHD was looking at developing test methods for snowboarding so it was less

About sort of product design and more about test design and it’s very common injury in snowboarding to break your wrist and so they were after how can we develop a way to test risk yards that we can actually understand if they’re going to perform better so this is one of the

Tests I develops essentially just pull back s out of a hand and it’s connected here to an instro machine so just looking at Force displacement and what it takes to do that and even just to build what looks like a pretty simple rig and you’re still kind of going

Through different processes so I had to do 3D scanning to obtain the geometry of the arm and then manipulated that using C tool so cleaning up the mesh and then modified that to build this thing on the right so then I had to put Hing in and

Use mixture of 3D printing and kind of more traditional methods for the finger rods so kind of all those things that I had learned during my degree and then had this opportunity to actually put together and then I was able to test the product and then I went on from that and

Devel something a little bit more advanced so this was kind of arm 2.0 and we had like some measurement techniques built in so there’s a potentiometer here to measure the wrist angle and a force plate so I guess all that kind of time through my undergrad and my

PhD I was just chipping away building up my tools my skill set and developing new things and then this s get then formed part of a bigger test so this is a impact test so this top bar comes down and it hits the wrist underneath and then I can take measurements to

Understand how there different products are performing and make a comparison and after that um did pulled all that together and that became a new international standard so now any product that goes into the market has to go through this test method so whilst it wasn’t conventional product design and

It gave me the opportunity to build a test method and start to understand what products do and after that I had the opportunity to go over to Adidas in Germany similar to Jordan although I was in The Innovation team so they’re sort of seven years out from product they’re much more

Sort of around Tech scouting and understanding different applications that can be used in sport but they’re not specific to a product I was doing a lot in um simulation so looking at how the human body moves how when we put equipment on them whe that be a sports

Bra or a shoe that can affect the movement of that and how we can then understand those things and influence the design of a product it was at the time that the first carbon mitol was coming out as well so you’re understanding how can you take this

Quite complex lat structure what can you do to tune that to affect a person’s movement and having spent pretty much all my life in learning in school or in Academia until that point suddenly my mind was like blown I was like wow there’s like this whole other world out there and

Where what you do actually can end up in a product eventually and there’s loads of passionate people out there and I guess Sports engineering is quite nice and that everyone you meet tends to have some kind of sporting interest so there had a good time out there and was there

For six months and then I came back to the UK and uh I didn’t have a job didn’t know what to do next and I ended up at the health and safety executive which is like a little office in boxon off the edge of the Peak District and it’s full

Of very clever scientists who were trying to make things safer and it wasn’t what I wanted to do but I was kind of like well as engineering I need a job so I was there similar to Jordan I only lasted eight weeks and while I was

There I was sort of blowing up batteries to as we exploring how things can go wrong in electric cars and uh doing a lot of filming of that and sort of still some analysis and whilst again it wasn’t what I was passionate about it was still using those tools that I’d learned I

Then joined pentland so Jord and I worked together for a little bit there and I sort of worked on anything that wasn’t closed in Footwear within that portfolio so spent a lot of time working with the brand Speedo and developing s protective equipment for canb and miter

So headguards and shinguards part of the portfolio and I guess my background in testing those was quite helpful and then swimmers and looking at things like goggles earplugs swim caps which all can influence a person’s kind of comfort experience of the sport a lot of people don’t swim

Because they get swimmers here so whil developing an air plug isn’t the most cool thing to do I think it actually made me realize that what you think of as a product that’s used for sport is actually a wider range and you’re still improving someone’s quality of life

Through that I then decided that I wanted to go back into Academia and really more in the Innovation I guess and research side of things rather than and pure product development so I went to Manchester met and again joined Tom so you can kind of see the sports engineering community in

The UK is quite small and there’s quite a lot of overlap and I was lecturing prod engineering there and it was just great to be able to kind of share with students that engineering can be related to loads of different things and sort of how to design and make and test

Something in that educative cycle that you go around and to to build the Next Generation and to give them a passion for it really and so I did that and then an opportunity came up at the UK Sports Institute and that’s where I am now and

I’m a guess I’m not really an engineer anymore I’m like a Innovation consultant so basically get paid to ask questions um so the UK Sports Institute we were formerly called the English Institute of sport and we changed the name last year but they’ve existed for over 20 years and they’re basically a National

Institute with regional sites and we exist to support British par Olympic and Olympic athletes in sort of pursuing their goals and so that can be through Sports Science medicine biomechanics psychology physiology strength and conditioning like a range of different services that we provide in The Institute and I sit within the

Performance Innovation team so we’re a team of about 17 people kind of from a range of backgrounds got Engineers physios psychology um Sports Science biomac and we kind of work together in this cross functional team and we go out and we speak to all the different Olympic and Par Olympic sports across

The UK trying to understand what their challenges are where there’s opportunities to enhance their performance within the roles so whether that’s through equipment whether that’s through training science or whether that’s through other adaptations and then we kind of information gather and then determine what the best way forward is and how we

Can enhance um their performance and we have this model in our team called the Innovation journey and we’ve stolen it from John sington but I think wherever you are at your career or in your studies you can probably relate to it you kind of start off on the top of

The mountain you can see a great view you’ve got this great idea and you’re really excited about it but then you sort of go on with it you start to unpick it things don’t always work out how you’d thought and you kind of go into this deep dark swamp and and then

You you kind of come out of that and I guess we see our job as Innovation Consultants not to let athletes and coaches go in this deep dark swamp and they need to focus on the fundamentals get their training right get their nutrition right stay injury free and if

There’s things that are the Cher on the top which is kind of what our team offers then we’ll seek to do that for them and kind of take them over the bridge as it were so they can come out on top so for me every day is different

Um every Olympics or par Olympics every four years so we cover summer and winter and they’re kind of two years apart but we kind of worked predominantly on a fouryear cycle so the first year after a games is a lot of asking questions understanding how we performed the last

Games where the opportunities are what other nations are doing that we can learn from and much more technology scouting so kind of going out more to research institutions or to other companies to understand what’s kind of up and coming that maybe the sports aren’t aware of but that we can develop

Inhouse to support them and then there’s a lot of Microsoft teams means a lot of days where I’m sat in my spare room trying to project manage um there’s days where I’m digging through data uh there’s days where I’m in the Wind Tunnel again I find myself

In a room with no windows H there’s days where you’re out on the track with the athletes with the coaches understanding their world understanding what you can measure how you can influence training and they’re probably some of the best days there’s also a lot of days where

You’re on the road and we’re a national team we’re based across the UK so we just go wherever we have to go so this morning I was on dm1 at 6:00 a.m. and there’s a fair few days like that but when you get to meet the athletes and do

Everything it’s quite rewarding but I think the thing that resonates through all of these days is just asking questions understanding someone’s context particularly with a par Olympian I don’t understand what they’ve been through often you know a spinal cord athlete they’ll have limited Sensation from partway down so they can interact

With equipment but they can’t feel it so I always want to try and understand them understand the user and take this sort of user cented design approach to any project that we work on and I guess in terms of where your journey could take you I can remember

Back in high school we we had to write an essay in French about the future and I said I want to work for Adidas and I want to design shoes and I guess for six months I came close to that that’s not where I am now and and I think everyone

Always has a plan which is a nice straight line but it’s never like that there’s always Wiggles there’s always things that don’t work out but I think as Engineers we know how to problem solve we know how to ask questions we see things in a certain way and

Sometimes mates are just like you just ask so many questions like I’ll go out for a bike C on the weekend and they’ll tell me something and I’ll ask loads of questions they’re like I don’t know it was just a news story but I think that’s an attribute of Engineers that you can

Either love where you can find really annoying but I think it’s a skill that you should definitely learn to leverage and I think Albert Einstein put it really well you have no special talents but you’re passionately curious and I think whatever you do should just always

Be curious always try to learn to skill up understand things how they’re working what they’re doing because a lot of times you’re just applying something from a different sector or a different application to what you’re doing or to sport or to something else so there’s loads of crossover and loads of

Interesting things that you can learn and so yeah that’s kind of a bit of an overview to my journey into sports engineering hopefully you found that helpful Thank You Caroline thank you Jordan that was that was great so we’ve got plenty of opportunity now to have have a chat on

Some of the some of the questions and delve into some of the things that you were you were talking about so if anyone wants to ask questions don’t forget you can you can put them into the into the questions type them in we’ve got plenty already so we’re gonna we’re gonna have

A nice chat and we’ll we’ll get going so the first question we’ve got here is this from from Matthew so what advice would you have for someone that’s already an engineer but wants the transition across into into sports engineering it’s very competitive to get in what what would you say to

That do you want to go first Caroline yeah sure I think um it’s just never be afraid to sort of explore your network I think Jordan mentioned it in LinkedIn there’s loads of different companies out there and actually there’s Engineers that can fit in any Institution or any organization and you

Just need to learn how to almost sell your skill set and what you can add I think as the world moves faster and faster and Innovation and Technology grows like if you’re into computer science there’s great opportunities in sports there’s so much data measuring and Tech going on and there’s so many

Companies for Less in the UK but the world over I think there’s loads of opportunities I guess you just got to step out and put yourself out there and you might not get the first hit but I think if you just keep exploring it and and also there’s things like the

Conference like Tom is heavily involved in the international sport Sports engineering Association this summer they’ve got a conference at lafra and it’s just another great place to meet people in the network as well yeah I can add to that as well I think K has made some really good points

There I think with with your skill set in engineering you’re already kind of there right and I think as a as particularly speaking from a brand perspective it’s kind of showing what your skill set is and at the end of the day you are the skill set you’re not the

Title doesn’t matter that you’re not Sports engineer but you can apply the skills that you’ve learned into a sports domain so um yeah like Network show um speak to people who are in that industry or an area that you want to go into and um and talk with talk talk to them how

They go into it but I think from a skill set perspective you’re already there and it’s just how do you how do you bring those skills and um add that to an organization to add value how do you bring value to an organization because ultimately if I speak from a brand

Perspective we’ve got people sitting in engineering roles with not NE so engineering background or got Engineers working in a slightly different role and it’s it’s kind of how they bring their value and expertise into a role and add value so I like to think that the title doesn’t really mean much it’s actually

What you bring to the table so I think you yeah as an engineer you’re already kind of there it’s just yeah the next step is bringing that to an industry bringing that to an organization in some form thank you yeah we’ve got we’ve got a few questions actually on on that

Topic so it’s it’s a common theme I think there’s lots of people who you know are already Engineers that are Keen to getting this industry which is which is great to see I I would also recommend that you you look at the resources which we shared that’s what most of those

Resources are about there lots of events you can come along to um other resources is telling you more about sports engineering and how to get involved also as well one things I know we I say something it is a very small industry it’s it’s a small yeah and and people

Know a lot of so a lot of people know each other if that makes sense so um does a lot of crossover so if you network really well speak to somebody opportunities will be there and like you say go to comper use the resources speak to people on LinkedIn and I think part

Of that is just networking and because the industry is so small there will be something that will come eventually exactly def we definitely saw common themes between you know where you and Caroline have both been and you say you get get in somewhere and then and then and then go from there that’s

That’s how it works I think one of the things I which I thought was interesting was Jordan you sort of started specialist and then went broader and Caroline kind of went the other way around so what are you what are your thoughts on that like specifically what degree you study whether you go

Postgraduate all these things does it matter or is the industry just looking for good people I I’ll get first this one I think it doesn’t matter uh I did it the unconventional way I’d say um yeah like I say sports and sports technology first and then going into mechanical

Engineering um I it was a big learning care for me doing it that way I must say um like especially in Mass mechanical engineering it was it was quite brutal actually that year was was quite tough but I I really wanted to apply myself to learn more in- depth engineering just

Because I I wanted that on on my belt so I could bring that asset bring that skill set to an organization or bring it as a as a yeah another skill set essentially and I don’t think it really matters as long as you have the skills

That you can bring to the table um it probably would be easier for me if I did it the other way around but um at the end of the day I think you said said it right I don’t think it really matters I think it’s it’s just what you have to bring

Ultimately yeah I D care that I think it yeah if you’re hungry and you’re passionate you you’ll get there either way but it doesn’t matter what you do but it’s just learning the skills along the way either way yeah I would I would agree with that and then you talked about sort of

Placements the importance of of placements and getting experience as well so nice to hear a little bit more about that and also are there opportunities within within your organizations for these do you want to go first Ken I think it’s funny that Jordan and I did a lot of similar things we didn’t

Meet until pentland but I think our paths are quite similar and Adidas is great and they have a very big internship program I think if you yeah if you follow them like every year twice a year they’re recruiting interns and I actually did what they call a postgraduate intern where you couldn’t

Intern unless you had already got a degree but they also do undergraduate on so I think looking at companies like that and they they give you a lot of responsibility but they’ve got very well established program and we don’t currently offer internships within our organization just because of how we work

Olympic cyes isn’t always much so if if someone wanted to work for your organization what is the root end you you advertise or yeah exactly so and whenever rols become available we advertise scanners through our website and it doesn’t necessarily need to be in the Innovation team there’s

People in our team who started in a admin role like they were Excell athletes they’d love what the Institute did they started in an admin role and then after a few years they moved into Innovation team and I guess just be humble like I think you can you can

Think oh you know I’ve already got a PhD like why would I want to be an intern but actually if it’s a short time of six months and you’re in a place in life where you can do that I think you’d actually learn a lot through that and

Just because like Jordan said the title doesn’t match what you think you can bring once you’re in a role you can often carve out your Niche yeah I I found internships um I don’t say there’s stigma with internships previously but like the inter internships add us was really

Rewarding they gave you an opportunity to grow learn on the job because when I was at University I had no clue what Adidas did I I wanted to go and be part of Adidas because I love the brand I love the technology but I didn’t really know what went into it and the

Internship gives you the opportunity to really understand how the business operates because there’s so many big teams working together it’s not just one person one team doing all of it it’s so many different teams working to Collective collectively together to build this this shoe um so as an intern

You get to really understand how all these teams work what each team does and like you can you can around like ultimately you could be be in for me I was in a development role but I would work with the Innovation team I work with the testing team and I thought it

Was really interesting to learn about what they do and you know it could be that you get into a role that you’re not particularly enjoying but that’s fine you know it’s an experience you’re an intern you you want to understand how the teams operate and it could be that

You you see a different team and go yeah I really want to be a part of that let me let’s talk to that team and understand what what skill sets I need to get involved in that team so um like yeah like I I’d probably say from from a

New balance perspective we also offer internships um not to the size that Adidas do they have quite a substantial internship program but New Balance do offer internships um they offer a a year internships at the moment for undergrad students so any student that are doing a sage course

Um frustratingly the the next cohort has I think the deadline has has come now so um but we will be I think Harry and our team um who’s the kind of the um who’s heading that up will be looking for Ates by the back end of this year for next

Year’s um internship program but um yeah so I I guess I guess that’s kind of summarizing but I think internships are a great way to get I was always told to get the foot in the door and when I learned that when I was growing up at

University I was like what does that even mean how do I get my foot in the door but it’s so true and I can give my experience of how I got my internship Adidas and it’s probably not the most conventional way but I did it through

Networking so I was lucky to speak to somebody who was on my course at lra who knew somebody who did an internship Adidas and um although I had to apply traditionally I actually spoke through with that that person and then I was able to speak to the hiring manager

Directly so that’s an example of networking I was quite lucky to speak to the right people and um get an interview so um another example of how networking can can help in these situations Jordan I was interested that you were talking about of computational engineering say that’s I guess like a

Broader field as sort of within Sports engineering what can you tell a b more about what that is and how that sort of influences your your role at the moment yeah I guess uh well to speak about I don’t actually do it now in my

Role at New Balance um so I did a little bit more of that when I was at pentland Brand so computational engineering mainly so CAE so CAD essentially computational engineering or computer AED computer AED engineering so um using 3D card um and then useing finite element analysis to basically do

Structural analysis so for example when we’re opening new outs we would just run a simple static analysis to understand potential stress concentrations where there might be any durability issues in the long run um I know other teams for example in Speedo they’ve used cfd to measure um the hydrodynamics of the

Swimsuits and stuff like that um I think when I was at Adidas for example they use it a lot more I think some of the bigger Brands they tend to use that skill set a little bit more the issue that comes with it is the resource the

Time and the expense with these sorts of things and I’m just being being quite honest about it and a lot of Brands will actually rely on external agencies to help support with that and that was I kind of knew that quite quickly after my time Adidas and and that’s why I wanted

To learn a bit about it at University to add it to my skill set so applying for a role I just thought it might be a good addition that might bring additional value to an organization ation or brand but typically because it it is quite a heavy

Investment um a lot of brands do look external for that resource so having that skill set does help I think um if they want to bring that in house but like I said for New Balance we don’t tend to do much of that and a lot of

That is probably owned by either our strict manufacturing engineering teams out in Asia or we do partner with our suppliers who have that skill set that do that every day um so not really doing that much at the moment but again I think it’s a valuable skill set if you

Do have it because just understand the results if you ever get shared a presentation on it is really valuable as well thank you very much I’ll just add I guess in our industry we do a lot with par Olympic athletes and so no one athlete well no athlete is ever the same

But particularly in their case I guess their body shapes are often different and different times of the season so we we don’t do it in-house but again we consult out to universities or experts in that field around making specific equipment adaptions and OB say don’t know how many of you follow track

Cycling but um there was a bike released earlier this year last year that is used then for lightweighting and for things like that and for I guess Bes spoking your component or a piece of equipment in a very specific way in a very specific area then things like

Algorithmic design or end topology those types of things can be really useful and I think we’ll only see more of that in sports equipment as I guess the technology trickles down um typically these things start really high cost as Jordan said but as licenses go down and

More people become familiar with it I think it’s definitely an area of growth yeah I guess I guess that for my side on that one as well like you mentioned about the expense and because we’re doing moldings like injection molding compression molding open and tooling with with our factories is quite

Expensive so especially when you think of Footwear full size one you open the tooling not just for one size but you doing across the spread of the full size one and typically when you open a mold you do it size quarter size but essentially do it size by size it can

Add up quite a lot so it can be particularly for a smaller brand it can be quite a significant investment um when we’re talking about from a business perspective um just for one part of a shoe so I think it’s critical that particularly if we’re talking about football cleats here

We’re talking about injection molding hard plastics making sure that you the design is actually structurally sound we want to just make sure we test it so we don’t have to reopen tooling so it’s almost like a safety net to make sure we we touch all the boxes it’s sound um

Before we go into production because the last thing we want to do is open something and then we have a load of failures because then it’s a big cost of the business so we do yeah we do use it in in small areas so similar to kind of

What Carolina was saying um so yeah thank you very much we we’re coming to the end of the time so just a couple more sort of final questions but what about sort of big societal challenges that you kind of maybe related to sports engineering so I’m thinking now about

What might be the challenges in the next five 10 years that you know the next generation of sports Engineers coming through should sort of prepare their skills for I think a nice place to see that is in the IM key report so the one that on put

Together you can see quite a lot of the themes in there but I think sustainability is massive and like you think about the number like short carbon footprint of Footwear or clothing with dyes you already see brand kind of trying to make a shoe which is can be

Broken down and reusable or don’t use dyes I think yeah that’s a huge opportunity I guess in high performance sport we’re probably a little step behind that because we’re still pushing performance perhaps at the compromise of that at the moment and but I think yeah that’s going to be something that’s only

Going to increase I think athletes particularly that travel a lot like after Paris the next Olympics is in LA and actually if we want to cut our carbon footprint then we’re not going to be traveling out to places so how do we simulate the competition environment or

Think about that in a different way which reduces our carbon Footprints it’s not only at an equipment level but it’s also at whole training and environment level as well so I think yes sustainability is a huge challenge yep agree with that and uh we have a from from our brand perspective a

New balance sustainability is is a huge driver at the moment it’s a real big Focus um like I said we touching it both on the Innovation space and inline so we’ve got teams working for my materials on sustainable development I think the challenge that we have is actually making it commercial

So typically these materials are more expensive um which impact our margins and it’s not great as an engineer to say that but at the end of the day as a as a business we do need to make money and it’s it’s difficult when we having to balance something uh that’s a little less

Commercial but it’s better for the environment so that’s that’s the challenge is finding um environmentally preferred materials um or reducing our carbon footprint but also making something that’s commercial commercially viable so that’s the kind of the challenge for us yeah great thanks we’ got clear agreement there around sustainability

Say you would suggest any opportunities to to learn about study do projects or experience related to sustainability regardless whether that’s in sport or not as you were saying before Jordan you can have something that you can then bring to the brand in an area which which is growing so anyone that’s

Thinking about their future creation be thinking about areas which are expanding and that’s the areas where there will be future opportunities so just quickly to finish up then just hopefully very quickly each what what are the what are the main perks of your jobs then being a sports

Engineer uh from my side uh there’s many I think when I when I grew up um a bit like Caroline I was obsessed with sport I didn’t many sport when I was you Sports when I was younger um for me it’s bringing that excitement to the consumer it’s having being able to engineer

Something that I can be proud of um almost put a stamp on things and said I did that um you know I’m quite fortunate that I get to work with many incredible te incredible people in different teams and different people are incredibly creative and for me as an engineer it’s

About collaborating it’s not just you’re an individual you are working in the team with many different ideas and it’s just coming to the table with those ideas and putting putting it on paper and doing it essentially as an engineer we’re creative we’re able to explore different things and I’m very fortunate

To be in a position where I get to explore these Avenues explore these ideas with our factories and build something that I’m truly excited about and hopefully at one stage can then put it through a commercial Pipeline and put it out into the market so for me it’s

Building a product and yeah and being proud of it and I think when I was reflecting on this when I was building my presentation I was thinking about to when I was a child and I always wanted to be an inventor and it’s a it’s a

Crazy term or crazy thing to say but um at the time it now makes sense because as an engineer we are inventors we we build things and we want to create new things for the market or people to enjoy and um that’s kind of the the the big

Thing for me is just building something or making something that can bring happiness or you know something to somebody’s life so and then the other perk for me is I I because I’m working across with many different teams many different people in across different countries I’m speaking to different

People on different time zones in the US in Asia um so I’m quite fortunate to be able to travel with my role as well so go to factories and explore and see what’s going on how things are made um and actually learning from different cultures as well so there’s other

Avenues other other aspects of my role which I definitely take pride in yeah S I think for me it’s the people whether that’s the athletes that you’re supporting the contractors who are building stuff or the people in your team like you want to wake up and every

Morning know that you know it’s not a grind that you have to spend time with these people and I think it’s probably not unique to sports ENT doing but the fact that we are all so driven and passionate in our sport as well as in our professional life I think really

Helps I think you know when the Paris Paralympics come around like there’s athletes that have spent a lot of time with and just to see them on the start line and to know that you know they’ve got the best kit and they’ve G the best process possible I think it’s just yeah

Be super rewarding thank you very much some common themes there around working together you know multidisiplinary teams sense of achievement in in what you’re doing and I think for both of you seeing those products or seeing that result going out and people actually using and and benefit from that so that’s great I

Think that applies across all different areas of engineering so that’s a great note to to finish on just anyone that you know is really interested in becoming Sports engineer check out the resources that we’ve shared they’re in the side if you come along to the events hopefully we’ll see you there join the

IM group all these different opportunities are available so just reiterate is a competitive field but you need to get your foot in the jaw as Jordan was saying a good way to do that is to come along to the events Network and and meet people so thank you very

Much and we’ll see you later bye than guys