My background is unique in that I have had a 20+ year career as a Sports Physical Therapist specializing in human performance optimization, working with amateur to elite athletes, and military special operators. So the question that's now probably brewing in your mind is "How do you jump from sports physical therapy to AI and data science?"  

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“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” -- Lao Tzu

 

My love for artificial intelligence and machine learning began with a desire to apply the data that we were collecting within a human performance program.  We were collecting tons of data related to injuries and rehabilitation, readiness, physical performance testing, and wearable technologies.  

 

Over time, I came to the unfortunate conclusion that we were "collecting data for the sake of collecting data." We had no data analyst or data scientist to organize and make sense of the data we were collecting, and therefore we were not using and applying the data in any meaningful way.  I, therefore, took it upon myself to start learning about data science.  

Unexpectedly, the more I learned, the more I realized that I enjoyed working with data.  It also opened my eyes to the various subsets of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and sports science so I decided to enroll in a formal master's degree in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.  I find AI fascinating, and have a great interest in the areas of computer vision and natural language processing. 

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