Organisation profile

The Physical Activity, Sport and Health (PASH) research group aims to improve knowledge on the beneficial effects of physical activity on individuals’ health with and without disease and of any age, as well as on the mechanisms leading to the development of sports injury.

Its activities include:

* Prediction and prevention of sport injuries (e.g. running-related injuries)

* Measurement of physical activity, sedentary behaviour, sleep and fitness in the general population, as well as in different therapeutic contexts (e.g. cancer)

* Identification of metrics derived from wearable physical activity monitors as digital biomarkers of individuals health

With its research, the Physical Activity, Sport and Health group aims to:

* Bring the lab to the field through the identification of promising wearable devices and meaningful metrics for human movement analysis and physical activity monitoring in real world conditions.

* Improve the understanding of the etiology of sports injuries, a prerequisite for the development of innovative evidence-based preventive measures.

* Make use of innovative Machine Learning methods and combine them with expert knowledge towards meaningful applications to analyze sports activity and prevent injuries.

* Develop new methods to describe the 24-hour physical activity patterns using raw accelerometry data and define multidimensional profiles constructed across the key physical activity dimensions.

* Investigate the dose-response relationships between physical activity dimensions and the progression of some diseases, their symptoms and the risk of relapse in specific population of patients (e.g. people with multiple sclerosis, diabetes, cancer).