HRV Summit 2017 Confirmed Speakers

CEO, Optima-Life

For the past 25 years Simon Shepard has worked in the sporting, corporate and health sectors. The combination of environments and experiences has produced a fresh and multi-dimensional approach that brings together technology, education and motivation, to help organizations develop Key Human Performance Indicators (KHPIs). He consults and delivers to the public sector, international businesses, sporting organizations.

Sport Scientist, Welsh Rugby Union Group

Ryan Chambers has been at the WRU since 2009, initially beginning his career in strength and conditioning before being appointed National Squad Sport Scientist in 2012. His role oversees player monitoring across the National squad and Regional clubs as well as sport science innovation. Ryan is currently undertaking a PhD at the Australian Catholic University in Brisbane under the supervision of DR. Tim Gabbett focusing on the validation of contact and collisions in Rugby Union using wearable inertial sensors.

Co-founder and President of Valencell

As co-founder and President of Valencell, Inc., Dr. LeBoeuf has developed ongoing strategic partnerships between Valencell and leaders in industry and academia. He has raised more than $10M in funding for Valencell and is the inventor/co-inventor of more than 50 granted patents, including dozens of foundational patents in the field of accurate wearable sensors. Prior to Valencell, LeBoeuf led the optoelectronic biosensor program at GE Global Research, where he managed the development and productization of biosensor systems and developed cutting-edge nanosensor technology. Before joining GE, LeBoeuf developed optoelectronic solid-state materials and devices while researching at North Carolina State University. Dr. LeBoeuf holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from N.C. State and a B.S. in Mathematics and Electrical Engineering from Louisiana Tech University.

Assistant Professor, Agricultural Education Program, University of Illinois

Dr. Erica Thieman is a social justice-oriented teacher educator and education researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who focuses on the context and impact of resilience and stress in high stress professions. As an experienced teacher educator and educator, Professor Thieman has three generations of her family who were educators before her and 13 years of experience as an agricultural educator at both the public school secondary and public post-secondary levels. Dr. Thieman has experience in a range of public school settings from small, remote rural-serving districts to large suburban districts.

CEO, YourPrevention

Florian Wolf is the founder of the international YourPrevention™ network and has been working in the field of stress-related mental and chronic diseases over 15 years. By making complex evidence-based medical patterns easy to understand, Florian Wolf has innovatively linked medicine with integral coaching. Streamlining this neurobiological, psychological and physiological data enables people to switch effectively into self-development and change mode. Florian Wolf is the Integral Business Coach at YourPrevention™ and has supervised people from corporate businesses for years.

Head Coach of Women’s team, Dutch Rowing Federation

Josy Verdonkschot has worked as a rowing coach for National Teams of Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. Currently he is the women’s head coach for the Dutch Rowing Federation. He has been coaching at the international level for over 25 years, including five Olympic Games. Most appealing results of his coaching have been the Olympic golds from Beijing 2008 and from Rio 2016 in the Women’s Lightweight Double Sculls, as well as the Olympic silver from Rio 2016 in the Women’s Quadruple Sculls. Josy’s special fields of interest are innovation, physiology and measurability of data.

Head of Technology, Clothing+ powered by Jabil

Mr. Heikki Jaakkola, M.Sc. (Tech), Head of Technology of Clothing+, has more than 15 years of experience in wearable technology research, product development and manufacturing. Heikki has worked in Clothing+ in multiple positions including SW engineering, tooling engineering, project management and last 10 years as R&D director, Business Unit Director and Head of Technology. In the current role Heikki leads the Technology Development department of Clothing+ focusing on developing new sensing, integration, signal transfer and manufacturing technologies. He is also responsible of Clothing+ patent portfolio / IP management. His main interests are in new technologies, manufacturing processes and IoT applications.

Sleep Specialist, Co-Founder and Medical Director, Oivauni Sleep Clinics Finland

Henri Tuomilehto is a well-known expert of Sleep Medicine and one of the rare full-time sleep physicians in Finland. He is the founder and Medical Director of Oivauni Sleep Clinics. Recently, he has been working as an advisor for the Finnish top-athletes (HJK, Jokerit and High-performance Unit of Olympic Committee) to enhance their recovery and performance by better sleeping. Over the last few years he has been counselling more than 500 Finnish professional athletes. Henri has published a total of 65 peer-reviewed articles on sleep and particularly how to treat and prevent sleep disorders with healthier diet and physical activity.

Leading Medical Specialist, Adjunct Professor, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health

Arja Uusitalo is a Medical Specialist of Clinical Physiology and Nuclear Medicine and in Sports and Exercise Medicine. She has worked in Research Institute for Olympic Sports (1993-1998) and in University Hospitals of Kuopio, Tampere and Helsinki together for 16 years. In addition, she has worked in Universities of Jyväskylä and Helsinki as a senior researcher. She has also acted as a Professor of Clinical Physiology and Nuclear Medicine in University of Helsinki. Her research interests focus on stress physiology, echaustion and staleness, recovery, limits of physical performance and autonomic nervous system. She has been working at Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH) since August 2016.

CEO, Firstbeat Technologies

Joni Kettunen, PhD, is a pioneer in physiological analytics and its applications. He is leading Firstbeat at the cutting edge of heartbeat analytics for wearables, fitness devices, wellbeing services and professional sports. As of today, Firstbeat analytics is used by hundreds of elite sports teams, thousands of corporations, and millions of consumers to improve their performance and wellbeing. Before founding Firstbeat in 2002, Joni has done and published research in the areas of psychophysiology, behavioral medicine, autonomic nervous system function and stress quantification.

CTO & Co-Founder, PulseOn

Professor Ilkka Korhonen has studied heart rate variability and ambulatory of wearable health monitoring for more than 25 years. He has over 150 peer reviewed international publications and several patents in the area. He is a co-founder of PulseOn, developer of optical heart rate sensor technology, Adjunct Professor in Tampere University of Technology and Principle Scientist at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

Physiology Research, Firstbeat Technologies

Tero Myllymäki is responsible for physiological analytics development and research collaboration at Firstbeat. He has academic background and has previously been working as a researcher in multidisciplinary expert teams combining physiology, psychology, and technology. His goal is to seek innovative solutions for providing meaningful and actionable feedback on wellbeing, lifestyle, and performance in everyday life.

Reidar Wasenius is a Personal Brainer, who’s voice is familiar to all Finns who own a phone. From June 2014, his voice is also heard in Finnish trains. During his career, Reidar has worked in education, communications and service development sectors in corporations such as Samsung and Nokia as well as several schools and academies. As one of the top event hosts in Finland, Reidar will act as a moderator for the Summit.