Dr. Reuben Burch, Associate Vice President of Research at Mississippi State University, will be sharing the story of how he and his team built the Athlete Engineering Institute. Based on guidance from strength coaches at the collegiate and professional level of sports and founded on human factors principles, Athlete Engineering is now aiding workforce preservation in advanced manufacturing across Mississippi. Attendees of this discussion will learn how the Athlete Engineering Institute supports the predictive and preventative maintenance of the human machine, the industrial athlete.
 

Reuben F. Burch V, Ph.D. is the Associate Vice President for Research in the Office of Research and Economic Development at Mississippi State University. He is the Executive Director and founder of the Athlete Engineering Institute which headquarters the statewide workforce training program, AiM UP: Advancements in Manufacturing Upskilling Program. Burch continues to serve as an associate professor in the Industrial & Systems Engineering department, holds the Jack Hatcher Endowed Chair for Engineering Entrepreneurship, and is a civic leader to the U.S. Air Force and Space Force. Prior to returning to academia in the Fall of 2016, Dr. Burch spent 14 years working for and with global Fortune 500 companies in research and development areas such as virtual reality design, weapons systems and training, satellite systems and geospatial data, high-value financial software systems, logistics technology and management, autonomous vehicle design, wearables, and human performance. He has served as a logistics and technology advisor for numerous universities and multiple Fortune 100 companies around the world and currently serves as an advisor for elite wearable technology companies. In serving in his advisory council member roles, he has influenced the design of existing and future industrial tools, specifically ruggedized handheld, tablet, and wearable form factors. He also presently serves as a consultant to the world’s largest venture capital firms due to his entrepreneurial experience. His ever-growing intellectual property and patents can be found here: https://patents.justia.com/inventor/reuben-f-burch.

Since moving to academia, Burch has been awarded $35M in funding, published over 100 journal articles, and been awarded nearly 50 patents. His primary research interests presently center around human factors and ergonomics, cognitive engineering, macroergonomics, and human-technology interactions with different athlete personas including: sports, industrial (repetitive motion tasks), tactical (warfighters and emergency first responders), and at-risk (tele-health and rehabilitation) athlete populations. A brief video describing Athlete Engineering can be found here: https://www.weringtrue.msstate.edu/athleteengineering/index.html