High Performance Sport Summer Seminar Series 2025

Date: Wednesday 5 February to Friday 7 February 2025
Time: 9am - 12pm
Where: Online

This is a FREE event.

Register to the days you want to attend (you will need to register to each day separately)

Schedule

The schedule will be updated as speakers and sessions are confirmed.

Speakers

Dr Joshua Ruddy
Essendon Football Club AFL | Sports Science Analyst

Josh completed his PhD in conjunction with ACU and the Melbourne Football Club. His research focused on modelling the risk of lower limb soft-tissue injuries in elite Australian footballers. Following the completion of his PhD, Josh spent two years working at VALD as a sports and data scientist, where he consulted with clients on how best to analyse, interpret and report on data collected using the VALD systems. Josh then made the transition back to elite sport and has held the position of sports scientist at the Essendon Football Club for the past three years. Additionally, he continues to collaborate with the SPRINT Research Centre and supervises a number of higher degree research students across ACU and La Trobe University.

Dr Patrick Laucey
Stats Perform | Chief Scientist

Patrick is the chief scientist at sports data company Stats Perform, leading the artificial intelligence (AI) team. He studied and worked in the AI field for 20 years, holding positions at Disney Research and the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, as well as spending time at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center while pursuing a PhD. Originally from Australia, he received a Bachelor of Engineering (EE) from the University of Southern Queensland, and a doctorate from Queensland University of Technology, which focused on multimodal speech modelling. Patrick has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and have been a co-author on papers in the MIT Sloan Best Research Paper Track 11 of the last 13 years, winning best paper in 2016 and runner-up in 2017 and 2018. His main research interests are in AI and interactive machine learning in sporting domains, as well as AI education. He recently piloted a course on 'AI in Sport', which aims to give students the intuition behind AI methods using the interactive and visual nature of sports data.

Dr Paul Devlin
Amazon | Global sports business development

Paul is a leader in sports for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and has more than 20 years' experience in the sports industry. Paul spent 10 years as a professional rugby player across Europe before pivoting into high performance coaching where he managed staff in sports science, sports medicine, medical, and strength and conditioning departments. Paul has consulted with many sports technology companies in the past decade, has extensive conference speaking experience, and has spent time as an executive wellness coach. His credentials include a Master of Science in strength and conditioning science, a Master of Business Administration, a Master of Laws in international sports law, and a Doctorate in Business Administration.

Sam Gardner
US Olympic and Paralympic Sport | Lead Para Applied Performance Sciences

Sam currently serves as a Lead of Applied Performance Sciences for US Paralympic Sport where he is tasked with directing their collaborations on strength and condition, physiology, dietetics, performance innovation and applied performance research initiatives. He has also served his thirteenth summer season and his eleventh winter season supporting Team USA as a strength and conditioning coach and has had the pleasure of serving medallists from the London, Sochi, Rio, Tokyo and Beijing Olympic and/or Paralympic Games. Sam has also acted as an athletic development coach in professional basketball supporting the Golden State and Santa Cruz Warriors and as a strength and conditioning coach with the Marine Special Forces Operators (MARSOC).

Eric Waters
Chicago Bulls NBA | Director of Player Health and Performance

Eric has 22 years' experience in the NBA as an athletic trainer, director of medical services and director of player health and performance. He holds degrees in exercise science, psychology and athletic training.

Dr Paolo Menaspa
Australian Sports Commission, Australian Institute of Sport | Chief Science Officer

Paolo is the Chief Science Officer at the Australian Institute of Sport, where he leads teams responsible for research and development, quality assurance, athlete performance health, and REST (recovery, environment, sleep, travel). He completed his PhD at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia, and is an active researcher. Over two decades, he has worked across Olympic, Paralympic, and professional sports both domestically and internationally, gaining extensive experience in service delivery and managing multi-disciplinary performance support teams. Earlier in his career, he developed and managed MAPEI Sport's organisational Quality Management System. From 2013 to 2018, he collaborated with the World Tour professional cycling team GreenEDGE as a coach, sport scientist and performance manager. During his tenure with the Australian Cycling Team (2018 -2021), he supported national coaches and performance support teams to identify and implement performance-enhancing solutions across multiple disciplines. He has been embedded in national teams in preparation for the Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio 2016, and Tokyo 2020 Games.

Associate Professor Rich Johnston
ACU | SPRINT Research Centre

Rich has worked as a strength and conditioning coach and sport scientist across several sports in both the UK and Australia. He completed his PhD from Australian Catholic University in 2015 where he investigated fatigue, recovery and physical performance in rugby league players. Since his PhD, Rich has conducted research across various team sports including rugby league, rugby union, soccer and Australian football. His main skills are around data analysis and modelling, as such, he is involved in a wide range of projects. His main areas of interest are how technology can be used and integrated to support athletes in understanding and managing performance, sleep and recovery from sports-related concussions.

Dr Jill Leckey
South Australian Sports Institute | Performance Support Manager

Jill has a passion for nutrition and working collaboratively with sports science and performance health disciplines to optimise athlete health and performance. She completed a PhD in exercise metabolism before spending seven years with Australian Cycling.

Associate Professor Grant Duthie
ACU | SPRINT Research Centre

Grant has been a faculty member at Australian Catholic University Strathfield since 2016, following a distinguished 15-year career in elite sport. With extensive experience across multiple sports, he continues to consult with various national and international sporting organisations. He is an expert in the analysis of team sport player tracking data and has led key projects in this field.

At ACU, he is the lead of the Graduate Certificate in Sports Analytics and coordinates postgraduate units on data analysis, interpretation and visualisation in sport. His career in elite sport includes serving as a strength and conditioning coach at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and working with professional rugby league and rugby union teams at both national and international levels. Recently, he has provided athletic performance consulting for the Japan Rugby Union and is the lead data analyst for FIFA's Electronic Player Tracking System validation project. His expertise in data-driven performance analysis continues to benefit several high-profile sporting organisations globally.

Master of High Performance Sport
at Australian Catholic University

If you are applying for ACU's Master of High Performance Sport (MHPS) or are a student already enrolled in the program, please note that the 2025 MHPS intensive program for the unit (ESXC652, Term 1, Online), is running as part of the online High Performance Sport Seminar Series, February 5 -7. The content delivered above is included as part of this MHPS intensive program.

Term 1 2025 applications for ACU's Master of High Performance Sport are open now. For more information, head to our course page, or email the high performance sport course coordinator, Dr Paul Tofari at Paul.Tofari@acu.edu.au