Speakers

2021 Speakers

This page contains the list of speakers who will participate in our industry panels and research flash talks.
More speakers coming soon!

Audrey Bosquet
Freelance Designer, MIT Sports Lab Alumnus

SPEAKER bIO

Audrey recently completed her mechanical engineering master's in the Sports Lab with Professor Peko Hosoi and in collaboration with adidas. Her research created analytical tools to better understand how design properties of sports bras affected their performance in terms of breast movement and pressure. Now, Audrey works as a multi-disciplinary freelance designer in Santa Barbara, CA.

Rich Cho
Vice President of Basketball Strategy, Memphis Grizzlies

SPEAKER bIO

Rich Cho enters his second season with the Memphis Grizzlies as Vice President of Basketball Strategy after joining the organization on April 17, 2019. Cho assists Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations Zachary Z. Kleiman in various aspects of basketball operations, including salary cap matters, basketball analytics, player contracts and player acquisitions.

A native of Myanmar who immigrated to the United States with his family in 1968 when he was three years old, Cho became the first Asian-American general manager in American major league sports when he served as General Manager of the Portland Trail Blazers in 2010-11. He then worked seven seasons (2011-18) as General Manager of the Charlotte Hornets, where he served as the franchise’s lead basketball operations executive.

Prior to his stint in Portland, Cho spent 10 seasons (2000-10) as Assistant General Manager of the Seattle SuperSonics/Oklahoma City Thunder. He entered the NBA in 1995 as an intern with the SuperSonics while earning a law degree from Pepperdine University School of Law. After serving as a part-time consultant for the SuperSonics in 1997, Cho was hired as the team’s Director of Basketball Affairs in 1998 before being promoted to Assistant General Manager in 2000.

A member of the Washington State Bar, Cho also served as Vice President of Legal for the SuperSonics from 2005-07 in addition to his duties as Assistant GM. Following the team’s move to Oklahoma City, Cho also oversaw the Thunder’s NBA G League affiliate, the Tulsa 66ers, and their run to the championship game in 2009-10.

Cho earned an engineering degree from Washington State University and worked as an engineer at Boeing in Seattle from 198994 before leaving to enroll at Pepperdine in order to pursue his passion in professional sports. His law degree from Pepperdine includes an emphasis in sports law, contract negotiations and dispute resolution.
During his internship with the SuperSonics, Cho, along with two Microsoft programmers, helped design and implement one of the NBA’s most advanced and comprehensive college and professional player evaluation systems that integrates player statistics, scouting information and contract details.

An avid explorer of restaurants and cuisine, Cho founded an interactive food blog site called Bigtime (bigtimebites.com) to bring basketball fans and food lovers across the country together. Cho also enjoys staying active by playing basketball, tennis, ping pong and pickleball in his spare time. During the 2017 NBA Summer League in Las Vegas, Cho won the NBA Summer League Table Tennis Challenge Benefitting St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital for the second time (previously won in 2013). As a competitive pickleball player, Cho is sponsored by Onix Pickleball. In 2018, Cho won the Thailand Open and U.S. Mid-Atlantic Regional Pickleball Championships and has played in both the U.S. Open and U.S. National Pickleball Championships. Cho and his wife, Julie, have two daughters, Miranda (15) and Annika (13).

Nicolas Evans
Head of Football Research & Standards, FIFA

SPEAKER bIO

Nicolas is the Head of Football Research & Standards within FIFA’s Technical Innovation Department. In this role he oversees the entire standards creation process from definition of needs, research design and execution to implementation as global standards for football stakeholders. He leads a multi-disciplinary team consisting of engineers, data scientists and industry experts that works with more than 150 stakeholders on a daily basis.

Nicolas has championed the role of science in sport following two Master’s degrees in International Affairs and Governance from the University of St. Gallen and a summa cum laude degree in Finance & Strategy at the Institut d’Etudes Politique de Paris. Applying research methods and his understanding of institutional dynamics has been key to forging successful partnerships with industry, research and football stakeholders to improve the game of football using data-driven decision-making processes.

Besides family, Nicolas’ hobbies include a variety of sports and long-distance running.

Seung Kyun (SK) Ha
Graduate Researcher, Chemical Engineering

SPEAKER bIO

SK is a Ph.D. candidate studying Chemical Engineering at MIT. Originally from South Korea, he holds a B.S. in Chemical and Biological Engineering (with a minor in Physics) from Seoul National University and M.S. in Chemical Engineering Practice from MIT. Alongside his graduate research, SK enjoys working on sports data analytics projects, including a recent project on developing a mathematical model that describes the soccer dribble dynamics and enables the quantification of players’ relevant cognitive/physical attributes. SK loves playing and watching all sports, and is a co-captain of a local amateur soccer team.

Amy Huchthausen
Commissioner, America East Conference

SPEAKER bIO

Amy Huchthausen serves as Commissioner of the America East Conference where she has increased the conference’s profile through progressive media partnerships and a robust social and digital media strategy.

Under her leadership, America East unveiled a comprehensive rebranding platform that led to new programs such as the #3Pillars Academy, Alumni Network, Academic Consortium and the league’s Health & Safety initiative. Additionally, the conference is a diversity and inclusion leader through its groundbreaking partnerships with the You Can Play Project, LGBT SportSafe and RISE that are the foundation of its Spread Respect campaign.

She has served on the Women Leaders in College Sports Board of Directors and numerous NCAA committees during her career. She is currently active in the Stadia Ventures community. Notably, she was recognized as a 2016 Forty Under 40 honoree by the Sports Business Journal.

Huchthausen has worked at the NCAA, ACC, Missouri Valley and Big East. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse where she played softball. In 2018, she received her MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, where she was recognized by Poets & Quants as one of the Class of 2018’s Best & Brightest Executive MBAs in the country.

Sarah Fay
Former Graduate Researcher, MIT Sports Lab

SPEAKER bIO

Sarah was previously a graduate student working with Peko Hosoi. Her current project focused on the modeling the biomechanics of running for designing running shoes (in collaboration with adidas). In the past, she's worked on optimizing racket weight distribution for power hitting. She played field hockey and squash at MIT as an undergraduate and has served as an assistant coach of the MIT field hockey team.

Ivan Jutamulia
Graduate Researcher, MIT Sports Lab

SPEAKER bIO

Ivan is a first-year Master’s student studying computer science and artificial intelligence. He is currently doing research supervised by Professor Peko Hosoi surrounding the decision making capabilities of NBA players and developing a framework to evaluate them. Ivan is passionate about the application of machine learning and data analysis tools in sports, much like his research. He is a lifelong sports fan and soccer player, captaining the varsity team at MIT and now serving as an assistant coach.

Ben Peterson
Head of Player Health & Performance, San Francisco 49ers

SPEAKER bIO

Ben Peterson is in his second season with the 49ers as head of player health & performance, overseeing athletic training, functional performance, nutrition and strength & conditioning. In his role, he manages and orchestrates all available resources to ensure 49ers players are provided the best standard of care, with the goal of maximizing their availability. He joined the 49ers after spending more than two years as the director of sports science with the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League. In his role with the Flyers, he helped integrate strength and conditioning, sports medicine, physical therapy and nutrition.

Ferran Vidal-Codina
Research Scientist and Instructor, MIT Sports Lab

SPEAKER bIO

Ferran is a research scientist at the MIT Sports Lab and the Aero Astro department. His research involves numerical simulation of plasmonic phenomena, as well as sports modeling and analytics. He is currently developing a model to automate event detection in soccer using tracking data in partnership with FIFA, and has worked on building a mathematical model to simulate elite soccer dribbling. In addition, he is an instructor of the MIT class 2.98, where he supervises data-centric projects at the intersection of sports, technology and innovation. Ferran is an avid soccer fan who loves playing and watching multiple sports in his spare time.