SPIN Summit 2017 - Winners - Cameron Gee & Sam Blades

Gord Sleivert Young Investigator Award Winners (L to R):
CSI Pacific grad student Sam Blades (2nd), Tara Whitten (3rd), Jon Kolb (presenter; Director, Sport Science, Medicine & Innovation, Own the Podium), Cameron Gee (repeat 1st place finish), Anne Merklinger (presenter; CEO, Own The Podium)

The Canadian Sport Institute Pacific is extremely pleased to announce that two grad students with whom we work closely won first and second place in this year’s Dr. Gord Sleivert Young Investigators Awards at the Own The Podium SPIN Summit.

Cameron Gee took home first prize for his project “A 20×20 Metre Repeated Sprint Field Test Replicates the Physiological Demands of Wheelchair Rugby Game Play”. Gee is a CSI Pacific MITACS-sponsored grad student who is currently completing his PhD at ICORD, a spinal cord research institute within UBC Faculty of Medicine. He is mentored by one of CSI Pacific’s new research consultants, Dr. Chris West.

Second place also went to a CSI Pacific grad student, Sam Blades. His project was “Moving Out of the Lab: A Pilot Comparison of Different Gait Event Detection Algorithms During Running Using a Field Based Plantar Pressure Measurement System”. Blades is a PhD student at the University of Victoria. His research is on the use of sensors which allow for field based measurement of athletes. In particular, his research is focused on the development of a sensor platform that can evaluate running gait while athletes are training or competing.

The award is named after our former colleague, Dr. Gord Sleivert, former vice president of the Canadian Sport Institute Pacific, who passed away suddenly in 2012 while working at a training camp with the National Swimming Team in Montreal.

Own The Podium‘s SPort INnovation (SPIN) Summit is Canada’s leading edge symposium for professional development and networking in the areas of applied sport science, sports medicine, and innovation. This annual conference combines experts from around the globe to build knowledge and tools, for future Olympic and Paralympic sport success through technological and scientific research. The 12th annual SPIN Summit was held 4-6 October 2017 in Richmond, British Columbia.

Out of the hundreds of attendees at this year’s Summit, 45 either work as employees at Canadian Sport Institute Pacific, or work with us as grad students and/or collaborators. Out of the event’s 45 presenters, 27 of them were ours – an impressive 60%, further reinforcing that we truly do have the brightest sports minds in Canada working with us.

Topics our speakers presented ranged through all sport science & medicine disciplines, from studies on altitude training, to the psychology of rehabilitation, to using data to optimize performance, and many, many topics in between.

View the full list of topics that were presented here.