Real-Time Sports Analysis With Dr. Antonia Zaferiou

Not all biomedical researchers spend their days moving fungal samples into test tubes with pipettes and Petri dishes. Some are out in the field, strapping sensors onto sweaty baseball players or pasting instruments onto pirouetting ballerinas. That’s where you can find Dr. Antonia Zaferiou, director of a growing research lab at Rush University Medical Center that uses cutting-edge sensor technology to answer questions in biomechanics.

- Ashlyn Stewart

Her team is currently working on “developing biofeedback to reduce the risk of injury while improving performance,” studying activity that ranges from shoulder movement before and after replacement surgery to how baseball players move while swinging a bat.

Research like Zaferiou’s can help train athletes to adjust their movements by even fractions of an inch to avoid repetitive strain or larger injuries. She explains that athletes are so aware of their bodies that they can make these tiny adjustments – so long as they can see them and understand why the adjustment improves their movement techniques. “Instead of showing graphs, maybe you show a force arrow overlaid on top of their body,” Zaferiou says. Bar graphs don’t help most people understand results, but “having athletes stand up and try different things with real-time feedback is more exciting, and potentially more useful for them.”