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Steve Haake is Professor of Sports Engineering at Sheffield Hallam University.  He was awarded an OBE for services to sport in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in October 2020.  Between 2019 and 2022 he was Chair of the Active Travel Advisory Board for the Sheffield City Region, previously working with the Active Travel Commissioner, Dame Sarah Storey and Programme Director Pete Zanzottera on setting up and promoting walking, running and cycling in the region.

He is Chair of the parkrun Research Board, the research arm of the organisation that puts on free, weekly, timed runs every Saturday morning at 9 am (slightly different times in some countries and on a Sunday for junior parkrun).

He sits on the Technical Commission of the International Tennis Federation which helps set the technical rules of tennis worldwide.

Some two decades ago he established sports engineering as a global discipline, becoming the founding editor of its first journal and building up at the University of Sheffield the world’s largest academic research group in the field, working with companies such as Adidas, Puma, Callaway Golf and Ping, as well as the governing bodies of sport such as FIFA, the International Tennis Federation and UK Sport. Since 2008, his team has developed over 100 performance-analysis systems for the UK’s Olympic teams, supporting them to over 100 medals at London 2012, Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020. He has published six edited books of conference proceedings, authored around 240 journal, conference and other articles for magazines such as New Scientist and Physics World. He gives regular popular talks and has appeared frequently on television and radio. In 2021, he appeared on Radio 4’s The Life Scientific, hosted by Jim al-Khalili.

In 2014, Research Councils UK identified him as one of the 10 most inspirational scientists in the UK.

Steve’s first solo book was published by Arena Sport in September 2018 to popular acclaim within his family.  It is called Advantage Play: Technologies that changed Sporting History.

Read more of Steve’s biography here.