The Ray Ewry Sports Engineering Center (RESEC) is named in honor of a record-setting Olympian and College of Engineering graduate, Ray Ewry. As a joint effort between Purdue University College of Engineering and Intercollegiate Athletics, the center reflects Ewry's passion for both sports and engineering and advances research and learning opportunities for athletes and students alike. To accomplish this, RESEC brings together the three elements of a successful university program: Research, Education, and Industry Engagement.

Our Vision

To be a world class, multi-disciplinary organization driven to sustain Excitement, Safety, and Integrity in sports.

Our Mission

To operate a global hub and exchange of knowledge, driven to address the most pressing challenges in sports.

Our Objectives

To provide exceptional research & educational opportunities for students and sports focused organizations to create advancement & innovation in meaningful sporting activities

Our Priorities

At RESEC, we've identified Excitement, Integrity, and Health as our most important priorities within sports and sports engineering. These priorities can be found in every sport, and often conflict. For example, we can make American Football completely safe... by eliminating tackles! But then we sacrifice the excitement of the game, so protective gear is engineered to balance these two priorities. Through the application of engineering principles, RESEC facilitates innovative and ground-breaking research across Purdue relating to these concepts.

We believe in the unifying, instructive, and transformative power of sports. With a profound understanding of sports' societal influence and a passion for the game, we seek to harness today’s advanced technology to reimagine how to train athletes, organize events, and engage with fans.

RESEC Priorities Diagram
Engineering at the Center
When examining the relationship between our priorities, we can use technology at the intersection of each and find engineering and innovation at the center of them all.

What is Sports Engineering?

Sports Engineering is a multidisciplinary field that uses engineering principles to create solutions to the greatest challenges and opportunities facing sports today.

The field of sports engineering utilizes scientific theory, technical tools, and practical application, in a problem-solving strategy uniquely tailored for the specific requirements of sports-related challenges. Similar to how Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering emerged to address the new challenges of emerging industries, Sports Engineering is positioned to support the increasing significance that sports, physical activity, and wellness plays in our daily lives.

Sports Engineering serves as a bridge uniting various engineering disciplines, welcoming participants from diverse backgrounds. Besides offering a comprehensive Professional Master's Concentration in Sports Engineering, RESEC fosters collaboration between our internal affiliates and industry partners, effectively connecting Purdue's academic expertise with the industry's needs. Through these efforts, we strive to drive innovation, engineer the future of sports, and create a positive impact on the sporting community.

Research Overview

Sports Engineering research can span broad areas of fundamental and applied topics. As an industry driven sector, much of the work in sports engineering is motivated by outcomes with a direct benefit to our partners. However, sports can be a great "proving ground" for technologies and fundamental concepts being explored in other sectors. At RESEC we've identified research topics with immediate practical applications in the sports industry and translatable outcomes to other sectors. Utilizing our network of faculty and student expertise, RESEC facilitates this innovative and ground-breaking research across Purdue.

Excitement - Smart Performance and Fan Experience

Following trends in other industries, sensor technology is rapidly expanding our ability to collect and analyze data about sports performance. RESEC is developing novel sensor-integrated versions of sports equipment to help athletes and coaches improve performance and training. Expanding these technologies to the event and venue scales offers extensive opportunities for enhancing the fan experience. The RESEC team is developing low-risk, high-return methods for optimizing athletes’ performance, increasing fan engagement, and enhancing overall viewer excitement.

Integrity - Fairness, Accessibility & Social Integration

As every athlete knows, sports are far more than just physical activity— they build self-esteem, stimulate mental and emotional growth, relieve stress, enhance a person’s sense of accomplishment and increase social well-being. But in order to reap these benefits, it’s critical that a level playing field is maintained. Significant new research addresses issues in the merging interfaces of sports integrity, fairness, and social integration.

Health - Injury Reduction & Rehabilitation, Lifestyle Integration

Purdue is uniquely positioned to engineer solutions to keep players on the field, consistently playing injury-free. The center’s commitment to injury reduction and advanced rehabilitation serves as a valuable recruitment tool as Purdue continues to draw the most competitive student-athletes in the nation. RESEC is working on new ways to utilize data analytics for injury prediction and prevention as well as developing injury prevention and rehabilitation equipment to ensure every player at every level of competition can perform their best.



Learn more about specific research projects by visiting our Research Page.

Education Overview

To be ready to contribute to the rapid-pace of the sports engineering industry, students must learn how to quickly recognize opportunities and develop effective solutions, which can only be done with practice. RESEC offers opportunities for students to participate in experiential learning opportunities at both the graduate and undergraduate level.

Professional Master's Concentration in Sports Engineering

The Professional Master's Concentration in Sports Engineering in the Graduate Program of Interdisciplinary Engineering (IDE) provides students with an opportunity to specialize their studies in the area of sports engineering. As one of the few educational programs specific to sports engineering in the United States, participation in this program is advantageous for those with aspirations to work in the sports industry. RESEC facilitates experiential learning opportunities for students in this program to apply their classroom concepts to real-world problems.

Learn more about RESEC's Involvement in the Master's Program

Undergraduate Opportunities

RESEC offers engaging, undergraduate-led projects in a diverse range of topics within sports engineering. We are looking for undergraduate engineering students with a passion for sports and engineering to join our team and further our contributions to the field. Projects can include working with a graduate researcher, independent work, or collaborative projects and may be given the opportunity to publish work in relevant journals.

Interested in getting involved? Contact us at resec@purdue.edu with your resume and let us know why you'd be a good fit for our team.

Education and Outreach Goals

  • Demonstrate the close interplay between the development of emerging technologies and their rapid implementation in competition sports
  • Emphasize the impact of equipment, apparel, and facilities on performance, safety, physiology, and biomechanics
  • Manage the technology and principles relating to the ruling and approval of equipment and facilities
  • Trigger innovative ideas for next-generation sports technology and entrepreneurship
Ray Ewry

Who Was Ray Ewry?

A Boilermaker track and field athlete, Ewry (1873-1937) was a Lafayette native who won eight gold medals in three Olympic Games from 1900 to 1908, plus an additional two golds at the 1906 Olympic Intercalated Games in Athens. Even as one of the most successful Olympic athletes, his story is relatively unknown. At the age of five he became an orphan, and at the age of seven he contracted polio and was confined to a wheelchair. Doctors had little hope he would be able to walk, but Ewry, a determined and driven individual even at a young age, refused to believe that was his fate. As part of his rehabilitation, he would force himself to stand and walk until he was eventually able to jump.

In 1890, Ewry enrolled as a Purdue Mechanical Engineering undergraduate and matriculated as a graduate student before teaching at Purdue. It was during Purdue’s first Field Day in 1891 that Ewry discovered a passion for track and field. He dedicated himself to the sport, eventually becoming a team captain, and in 1900, Ewry became the first Big Ten athlete in history to win an Olympic gold medal.

Nicknamed “The Human Frog,” Ewry won gold in the standing long and high jumps and standing triple jump. By the end of the 1908 Games, Ewry had won eight gold medals, setting a medal count record that would last more than 100 years.

While in Athens for the 1906 Intercalated Games, Ewry collected some soil and brought it back to the US, where it was untouched until 1928 when he sprinkled it onto the turf at the inauguration of the Ross-Ade Football Stadium. This meaningful gesture exemplified Ewry’s dedication to both Purdue and the Olympic spirit.

Purdue University's Olympic Athletes

Baseball

  • Mike Duursma (2008) Netherlands Flag

Basketball

  • Howie Williams (1952) USA Flag – 1 gold medal
  • Terry Dischinger (1960) USA Flag – 1 gold medal

Diving

  • David Boudia (2008, 2012, 2016) USA Flag – 1 gold medal, 1 silver medal, 2 bronze medals
  • Steele Johnson (2016) USA Flag – 1 silver medal
  • Mary Beth Dunnichay (2008) USA Flag
  • Tyler Downs (2020) USA Flag
  • Brandon Loschiavo (2020) USA Flag

Four-man Bobsled

  • Douglas Sharp (2002) USA Flag – 1 bronze medal

Handball

  • Carol “Coke” Lindsey (1984) USA Flag

Rowing

  • Amanda Elmore (2016) USA Flag – 1 gold medal

Soccer

  • Lauren Sesselmann (2012) Canada Flag - 1 bronze medal

Swimming

  • Nicola Aćin (2020) Serbia Flag
  • Betty Brey (1956) USA Flag
  • Keith Carter (1948) USA Flag – 1 silver medal
  • Javier Diaz (2004) Mexico Flag
  • Jinq En Phee (2016, 2020) Malaysia Flag
  • Gerald Koh (1996) Singapore Flag
  • Gyongyver Lakos (2000) Hungary Flag
  • Coralie O’Conner (1952) USA Flag – 1 silver medal
  • Joan Rosazza (1956) USA Flag
  • Beth Whittal (1956) Canada Flag

Track & Field

  • Larry Burton (1972) USA Flag
  • Camille Buscomb (2020) New Zealand Flag
  • Devynne Charlton (2020) Bahamas flag
  • Samson Colebrooke (2020) Bahamas flag
  • Chukwuebuka Enekwechi (2020) Nigeria Flag
  • Cliff Furnas (1920-22) USA Flag – 1 bronze medal
  • Ray Ewry (1900, 1904, 1906, 1908) USA Flag – 8 gold medals
  • Ed Glover (1906) USA Flag – 1 bronze medal
  • Lacy Hearn (1904) USA Flag – 1 silver medal; 1 bronze medal
  • Chris Huffins (2000) USA Flag – 1 bronze medal
  • Nedzad Mulabegovic (2004, 2008, 2012) Croatia Flag
  • Bill Verner (1903-1906) USA Flag
  • Kara (Patterson) Winger (2008, 2012, 2016, 2020) USA Flag

Volleyball

  • Annie Drews (2020) USA Flag - 1 gold medal

Wrestling

  • Joe Corso (1976) USA Flag

Purdue University's Paralympic Athletes

Para Rowing

  • Emma Preuschl (2008, 2012) USA Flag - 1 silver medal

Swimming

  • Evan Austin (2012, 2016, 2020) USA Flag - 1 gold medal; 1 bronze medal
  • Makayla Nietzel (2020) USA Flag

Track and Field

  • Joel Gomez (2020) USA Flag

Contact Us

General Inquiries

resec@purdue.edu

Indiana Manufacturing Institute
1105 Endeavour Dr., Suite 200
West Lafayette, IN 47906

Executive Director

Jan-Anders Mansson
jmansson@purdue.edu
Purdue University
Distinguished Professor of Materials and Chemical Engineering

Media contact

Brian Huchel – bhuchel@purdue.edu