Postdoc, Faculty of Applied Health Sciences
Intro
Former varsity football player turned researcher, Jeff Brooks is passionate about making sports safer, with a focus on head injuries.
What does your postdoc research focus on?
My postdoctoral research focuses on understanding and reducing sports-related head injuries using wearable technologies, including instrumented mouthguards and inertial motion capture systems. I study a variety of athlete populations, with a particular focus on youth and female athletes, aiming to uncover patterns of head impact exposure and develop strategies to make sports safer for all participants.
What are your career goals following a postdoc?
My goal following my postdoc is to secure a faculty position at a university where I can contribute as a researcher to make sports safer, particularly for youth athletes. I also aim to mentor and collaborate with the next generation of scientists, fostering innovation and evidence-based approaches in sports safety research.
I completed both my MSc and PhD at Western University, where I examined head impact exposure in varsity football athletes. That work underscored a key finding: every head impact matters when it comes to brain health. Building on this foundation, my first postdoctoral research shifted to youth soccer, investigating how heading the ball affects cognitive function. I combined instrumented mouthguard data with finite element modeling to simulate brain responses, aiming to better understand and mitigate the risks of repetitive head impacts in younger athletes.