27.02.2024

Seed Fund in ‘Data Science and Sports’

The Universities of Tübingen and North Carolina at Chapel Hill initiated a new collaboration in ‘Data Science and Sports’.

Prof. Tim Pawlowski and Prof. Jonathan A. Jensen successfully applied for a joint project on ‘Data Science in Sport: The Present & the Future‘. The funded project intends to facilitate collaborations between researchers from both universities via – amongst others – a workshop co-organized by the Data Science and Sports Lab (DSSL) in Tübingen.

“One of the most visible ways in which data science has become a mainstream phenomenon is due to its application to sport. From the publication of the bestseller Moneyball to the establishment of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston, data science advances in the context of sport have served to ignite passions across millions of students to learn data science. As such, sport can be credited in large part with the advancement of interest in data science around the globe. At the same time, sport provides an excellent laboratory in which to study firm and human behavior, as emphasized by Nobel Prize laureates Daniel Kahneman or Gary S. Becker. In particular, by exploiting granular sport data with cutting-edge data science techniques, important topics can be addressed, such as the behavioral responses to emotional cues (e.g., for alcohol use), which have a much broader appeal and societal impact. This seed fund will help to carry on this tradition by sparking new collaborations in the area of data science in sport that may lead to significant scientific advancements, as well as inspire students and faculty across the two universities.”