Finding her career as a biomechanics researcher

Dr. Laura Hutchinson has always loved sports. “I played just about every sport I could fit into my schedule in high school and haven’t stopped since,” she says.

She also enjoys math and science, and chose to study engineering in university, as “it seemed like biomechanics was this really cool intersection between science and sport.”

Following these passions led her through her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Queen’s University, a PhD at the University of Queensland and finally to her post-doctoral research at VIU thanks to a Mitacs Accelerate award in collaboration with lululemon. Her research was supervised by Dr. Michael Asmussen, who leads the Foot-Ankle Stability Lab at VIU.

She began her post-doc MITACS project in the spring of 2023. It involved understanding the effects of compression apparel, such as running tights, on tissues while people run. She also examined breast biomechanics with the goal of optimizing bras to both improve comfort and performance during running. Her research was presented at the Canadian Society for Biomechanics in August.

Laura loves understanding how to improve performance, while also managing things like injury and overloading. She’s also passionate about equality in STEM and sport, noting her career has allowed her to investigate the intersectionality between the two.

“Women in science have been underrepresented both as researchers and as participants,” she says. “I feel privileged to be a part of this work, while also finding new ways to make science and sport more inclusive.”

Dr. Asmussen’s Foot-Ankle Stability (FASt) Lab conducts research related to apparel and technology with a focus on running with different industry partners. He realized Laura would be a perfect fit for this work.

“She has an engineering background but had also done research in the field of kinesiology and is interested in pursuing a career in industry,” he says. “It’s rare to find someone who checks all those boxes for a unique post-doctoral position where you straddle both academia and industry.”

Laura has recently landed a new job as a researcher in the Nike Sports Research Lab. “Laura will be a big asset to the team at Nike from all her experience gained in her graduate and post-doctoral training," says Dr. Asmussen.

For current postdoctoral fellows looking for their next step, Laura has some advice: “Put your effort in, practice and learn from failures,” she says. “It’s easy to present the line of successes that led me to where I am now, but just because you see a line of success, doesn’t mean there wasn’t an equally long line of failures. Persist, insist and lift as you climb.”