In most professional sports, every physical attribute of an athlete that can be measured is tracked and recorded. There exists an abundance of (relatively) high quality data — in football, basketball, baseball, cricket, etc. — which makes sports an ideal testing ground for new analyses and algorithms. In this talk I will describe a few studies that lie at the intersection of sports and data. Topics may include: the origin of the increase in home runs in Major League Baseball; the public health impact of allowing fans in American football stadiums during the pandemic; the role of skill and chance in sports and other activities; measuring “court sense” i.e. an athlete’s decision-making ability in basketball; and the design of optimal running shoes.

Anette “Peko” Hosoi is a Neil and Jane Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Professor of Mathematics at MIT. Her research contributions lie at the junction of nonlinear hydrodynamics, biomechanics, and bio-inspired design. A common theme in her work is the fundamental study of shape, kinematic, and rheological optimization of biological systems with applications to the emergent field of soft robotics.  More recently, she has turned her attention to problems that lie intersection of biomechanics, applied mathematics, and sports. She is the co-founder of the MIT Sports Lab which connects the MIT community with pro-teams and industry partners to address data and engineering challenges that lie within the sports domain. She has received numerous awards including the APS Stanley Corrsin Award, the Bose Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Jacob P. Den Hartog Distinguished Educator Award. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), a Radcliffe Institute Fellow, and a MacVicar Faculty Fellow.