Presenters

Professor Allan Hahn is a part-time Strategic Advisor to the Research & Innovation unit of the Queensland Academy of Sport and has held Adjunct Professorial positions at several Australian universities. He is a former Chief Scientist of the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), where he worked for 27 years. He has a long history of involvement in research and the application of findings to practical work with sports. His research activities have included areas such as talent identification, preparation of athletes for competition in the heat, altitude training, doping detection, and development of technologies aimed at effective athlete monitoring in laboratory and field situations.

Highlights of Allan’s career have included a leading role in initiation of a rowing talent identification program that involved recruiting young people into the sport based on their physical and physiological characteristics and culminated in a women’s pair winning an Olympic gold medal in a boat named in his honour. He contributed to development of cooling vests that were used by Australian athletes at Olympic and Paralympic Games and in many other situations where there was a requirement to train and/or compete in hot conditions. He was a member of a team that developed a blood test for the banned drug erythropoietin in time for its introduction at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. He was the Project Champion for the Sport project of the Cooperative Research Centre for Microtechnology, where he assisted the development and field evaluation of athlete monitoring devices that combined GPS capabilities with inertial navigation technologies. These devices found use in numerous sports and eventually provided the basis for establishment (by others) of a successful commercial venture. He was also instrumental in establishing and overseeing a productive 5-year research partnership between the AIS and CSIRO (Australia’s premier Government-funded research institution).

While at the AIS, Allan conceived and implemented a ‘sport-based’ PhD program that entailed embedding of scholars and research activities within high-performance sport programs and came to involve numerous Australian universities. He later supported development of a modified form of boxing aimed at minimising injury risk through use of novel automated scoring technology and employment of gloves specially designed to reduce impact forces. In recent years he has become greatly interested in the role that community sport can play in achieving positive social change. He was a member of a team that established a fruitful ‘sport-for-development’ project in northern India. Through involvement in supervising a PhD scholar whose work had a strong sociological element, and through continuing interaction with that scholar after graduation, he now sees immense value in the conduct of qualitative research in the sport sector.

Allan’s efforts in the interests of Australian sport and sport science have been acknowledged through the award of an Order of Australia Medal and an Australian Sports Medal. In 2003, he was identified by The Bulletin magazine as one of the ‘Smart 100 Australians’ and received the magazine’s inaugural prize for innovation and creativity in the Sport category. In 2013, RMIT University awarded him a second doctorate (Doctorate of Applied Science - Honoris Causa) in recognition of his contribution to sport research.

Tim Matthews is a 3-time Paralympian competing in Athletics sprints and relays at the 1996, 2000 and 2004 Paralympic Games. Across these Games he won three gold and two bronze medals. In the lead-up to the Sydney Paralympics, he ran what was the second-fastest 100m by any Paralympic athlete, clocking 10.86 seconds.

Despite being born with one arm and competing in multiple sports, he was not aware that he was eligible for Paralympic sport until he was 21, whilst studying 3^rd year of University at La Trobe in Bendigo. 

Tim also went on to coach three athletes to the Paralympic Games, including Paralympic long jump gold medallist at the 2012 London Games, Kelly Cartwright. 

Since 2005, Tim has played a key role within Paralympics Australia, supporting talent identification and performance pathway development initiatives. It was in 2005 when Paralympics Australia initiated a Paralympic Talent Search program which saw 27 athletes identified going on to compete at the next Summer Games in Beijing, with 15 of these winning medals. He has worked through multiple iterations of Talent Initiatives within PA and the broader Para sport sector.

Steve is an internationally recognised researcher and teacher. His research interests examine individual and developmental factors affecting sporting engagement, skill acquisition, and athlete development. Steve has published extensively in leading peer reviewed journals. He's also co-edited three books in talent identification and athlete development and written multiple independent book chapters. His research and applied work have led to the evaluation, modification, and writing of policy and programs with sporting organisations. Steve has an extensive supervisory record, having mentored many post-graduates into applied sport scientist and academic positions.

Dr Emma Beckman is a Teaching and Research academic at the University of Queensland. Emma is passionate about engaging in research to improve the lives of people with a disability through sports, physical activity, and exercise. Following a master’s degree in Adapted physical activity, Emma completed her PhD in strength assessment for classification in Para Sport. She is currently a co-investigator in the UQ IPC Classification Research Partnership, and an internationally accredited classifier in Para Athletics. She is currently in a joint role with UQ, and The Queensland Academy of Sport (QAS) and Paralympics Australia where she acts as the Para Sport High Performance Manager and helps identify, develop and support Para athletes in the High-performance sport system.