• Question: what made you become a scientist? and what made you focus on sports within science

    Asked by ciaraistall to Amylou, Maria, Mark L, Mark U on 22 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Maria Konstantaki

      Maria Konstantaki answered on 22 Jun 2012:

      Well, I always had an inquisitive mind from a very young age (to my parents’ detriments as I used to take things apart and put them back together again sometimes unsuccessfully). I got interested in sports science when I studied the subject at University. I was fascinated by how the body alters its functions under different environmental conditions (heat, cold), how the body heals itself after an injury and also how it is possible for our muscles to generate force when contracting. I was also an athlete (swimmer) and I often had conversations with my coach about performance and training issues. 🙂

    • Photo: Mark Uphill

      Mark Uphill answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      Hi ciaraistall,

      I draw on an answer I gave to a similar question…Back in the 1990′s doing my A’ Levels I had never really considered going to university. It was really the intervention of my psychology tutor who suggested that I might enjoy and do well at university who started that ball rolling. I had a natural curiosity about how I could improve my own sport performance (and there was a lot of room for improvement), and flicking through some of the prosepctus’ I started to realise that there was a whole discipline (sport science) that was in part directed to the question of how to improve sport performance (the careers advisor had never pointed this out to me). The rest as they say..is history!

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