Notre Dame Research, Athletics address challenges of ACL tears, sleep loss, and stress in new joint research projects
Notre Dame Research and Athletics have awarded three research teams the first-ever Human Performance & Wellness Research Grants. The grants will provide funding to support exceptional research projects that contribute meaningfully to fields related to the health, well-being, and performance of human subjects.
Jeffrey F. Rhoads, vice president for research and professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, said, “Notre Dame Research is proud of our research relationship with Notre Dame Athletics. Through this collaborative partnership, Notre Dame will officially connect the lab to the playing field for the first time ever. We are excited to witness the potential of what it means to marry Notre Dame’s research excellence with its long-standing preeminence in Athletics — all for the good of our collective well-being.”
“We congratulate the researchers and practitioners who, through these projects, will help athletes train effectively, cope with difficult conditions, and perform safely,” said John P. Wagle, the Pat & Jana Eilers Sr. Associate Athletics Director for Sports Performance. “We look forward not just to these results but also to our continued collaboration with Notre Dame Research and the role it will have in fostering high performance and overall well-being, both at Notre Dame and beyond.”
The 2025 awardees of the Human Performance & Wellness Research Grant are below.
Helping athletes return after ACL injuries
Edgar Bolívar-Nieto, assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and principal investigator at the Wearable Robotics Laboratory, will lead a project titled “Towards Functional Return-to-Sport Assessment after Anterior-Cruciate-Ligament Reconstruction: A Wearable Framework to Estimate Muscle Strength.” He will be joined by co-principal investigator Mandy Merritt, DPT, the senior associate athletic trainer and physical therapist for the Notre Dame Men’s Lacrosse Team.
Bolívar-Nieto and Merritt will work to develop an instrumented functional test to help determine when an athlete who has suffered an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury is ready to return to their sport. ACL injuries are common in young athletes. Although ACL surgeries can be effective, about 20% of athletes who experience a torn ACL reinjure the same or opposite knee. Better measures of an athlete's readiness to return will reduce the risk of repeated injury and ensure athletes are able to perform effectively and safely.
Reducing the “sports travel disadvantage”
Gerald Haeffel and Ivan Vargas will lead a project titled “The Sports Travel Disadvantage: Untangling the Effects of Circadian Rhythm Disruption and Sleep Loss on Athletic and Cognitive Performance.” Haeffel, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology, leads the Cognition & Emotion Lab, and Vargas, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, leads the Sleep and Health Research Lab. Haeffel and Vargas will be joined by co-principal investigators Matthew Robison, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, and Carlie McGregor, a staff psychologist in the University Counseling Center and Notre Dame Athletics.
The researchers will explore the “travel disadvantage” — the well-documented phenomenon that teams that travel across multiple time zones before a competition are about 20% less likely to win than teams that do not have to travel. This disadvantage holds true regardless of the direction the team travels or what sport the team plays. By exploring the underlying causes related to sleep and circadian rhythm, the researchers will identify the best ways to intervene and enable teams to compete at their best, even when traveling long distances.
Building stress-resilience in student-athletes
Zhi Zheng, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, will lead a project titled “Smart Textile Sensors for Mental Stress Sensing During Daily Activities.” She will work with Yiyu Shi, a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and Ying (“Alison”) Cheng, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Associate Director of the Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society.
Their project looks at mental stress, a significant challenge for college students as they encounter new academic responsibilities, unfamiliar social dynamics, and heightened expectations. The problem is especially difficult for college athletes, who face the additional pressure of athletic commitments. The research team will develop smart textile sensors to detect mental stress as students go about their daily activities. The textile sensors will detect electrodermal activity. Unlike existing sensors, they will be discreet, integrated into socks and other clothing, and they will use advanced AI computations modeling to overcome the signal challenges that arise due to movement. The researchers’ goal is to help students become more aware of stress, improve how they adapt to it, and ultimately support both their performance and mental health.
In addition to the outcomes within the award period, the grants will also serve as seed funding to generate preliminary results for larger, external grants.
To learn more about the ways Notre Dame Research is partnering with Notre Dame Athletics to provide new facilities, infrastructure, and funding to explore the science of elite performance, contact sportsperformance@nd.edu or athleticsresearch-list@nd.edu.
Contact: Brandi Wampler, associate director of media relations, 574-631-2632, brandiwampler@nd.edu
Originally published by at research.nd.edu on April 22, 2025.
Latest ND NewsWire
- Notre Dame celebrates new pope; Father Dowd offers prayersRev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., president of the University of Notre Dame, offered his prayers for Pope Leo XIV, elected by the College of Cardinals today in Vatican City as the 267th pontiff of the Catholic Church.
- Collaboration with National Education Equity Lab to Create Pathways to Notre DameA group of campus units led by Notre Dame Learning’s Office of Digital Learning are building a pathway to the University for students who might not otherwise envision themselves as candidates to attend. It is an initiative made possible through a collaboration with the National Education Equity Lab, which partners with top universities to deliver actual college credit-bearing courses and supports to scholars in low-income high school classrooms across the nation.
- Clare Cullinan named valedictorian, Bennett Schmitt selected as salutatorian for the Class of 2025Clare Cullinan of South Bend, Indiana, has been named valedictorian and Bennett Schmitt from Jasper, Indiana, has been selected as salutatorian of the 2025 University of Notre Dame graduating class. The 180th University Commencement Ceremony will be held May 18 (Sunday) in Notre Dame Stadium for graduates and guests. During the ceremony, Cullinan will present the valedictory address, and as salutatorian, Schmitt will offer the invocation.
- Notre Dame’s Fightin’ Irish Battalion receives Department of Defense award as nation’s top Army ROTC programThe United States Department of Defense honored the University of Notre Dame’s Army ROTC Fightin’ Irish Battalion as the nation’s top Army collegiate program for the 2023-24 academic year. This will be the first time the unit has received the department’s Educational Institution Partnership Excellence Award, which recognizes the program’s achievements in recruiting, educating, training and commissioning leaders of character to be the next generation of military officers.
- In memoriam: Karl Ameriks, the McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy EmeritusKarl Ameriks, the McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, died on April 28 from pancreatic cancer. He was 77. Born in post-World War II Germany, Ameriks’ family emigrated to the United States when he was a child, and he grew up in Detroit, Michigan. He received his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from Yale University. He came to the Department of Philosophy at Notre Dame in 1973 during a formative time for the department, which had transitioned from a predominantly Thomist focus to the more analytical American philosophy in the 1960s.
- Senior James Reintjes named 2025 Yenching ScholarUniversity of Notre Dame senior James Reintjes has been named a 2025 Yenching Scholar. He is one of 114 Yenching Scholars overall, representing 40 countries and regions around the globe. He is Notre Dame’s 12th Yenching Scholar and its 9th since 2018.
