National Biomechanics Day Website | 4th Family Website

TROY, N.Y. - National Biomechanics Day (NBD) is a science outreach event that was held April 11, providing biomechanics researchers around the world to host K-12 students on college campuses, including on the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), America's first technological research university.

At RPI's East Campus Athletic Village, Capital Region high school students were introduced to the field of biomechanics research and STEM careers through interactive demonstrations and activities centered on biomechanics and Kinesiology. Student-athletes from Rensselaer's basketball and soccer teams developed sport science based training programs for use in a sports clinic with students from Lansingburgh and Watervliet High Schools. Roughly 115 high schoolers joined approximately 40 individuals from Rensselaer for the event, which was a partnership between the biomedical engineering department, athletics and 4th Family, a regional not-for-profit organization. 

Rensselaer's soccer student-athletes participated in a voluntary eight-week program studying soccer performance using science and engineering. Each group researched the physiological background of an attribute, learned how to train to improve and then created an experiment to measure it. The work was then synthesized into a training/measurement activity used during the youth clinic.

The basketball student-athletes participated in an abridged version of the program on a voluntary basis. For four weeks, they identified attributes in basketball to study, research and measure with the goal of enhancing the development of youth clinic activities.

On Wednesday, both groups served as counselors during the clinic, which began at 9am and concluded at 1pm. 

There was also a poster session during the lunchtime period as a culmination of the day's events.