In this episode of Behind the Breakthroughs, host Melissa Deuber sits down with Dr. Sam Kwak to discuss his journey into injury research and the impact of motion capture technology on the world of sports. From his early interest in prosthetic research to his current work at Emory, Dr. Kwak shares his insights into the science of human performance and the commitment to keeping athletes on the field and at their best.
Articles/media referred to in the episode:
nature video. (2013, December 11). Creating Gollum [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_Z7YUyCEGE
Kwak, S. T., Riehm, C. D., Anand, M., Raphael, N., DiCesare, C. A., Schille, A., Hulburt, T. C., Zendler, J. M., Hybart, R. L., Buria, K. N., Trotter, N., & Myer, G. D. (2026). Assessing agreement and usability of kinematic measures between markerless and marker-based motion capture systems during jumping activities. Journal of Biomechanics, 194, 113065.
Melissa: Welcome to Behind the Breakthroughs. I'm Melissa Deuber from the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library. In each edition, we take a closer look at the research shaping health, healing, and human performance at Emory.
Today's episode is part of the Off the Field series, where we explore how science moves from the lab to everyday life. I'm joined by Dr. Sam Kwak to talk about their work, the questions that drive it, and what it can make possible. Let's get started.
So first off, tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got into your line of research.
Dr. Kwak: Yeah, well, so research for me started in high school. So I went to a math and science school where we were given opportunities to do research outside of the school environment. And at the time I was part of the cross-country and track team, so I just thought about what is the coolest thing I could do.
And I was in Chicago at the time, so I was just looking at different websites of different professors and things like that, and one of them happened to be doing prosthetic leg research, which I thought it just sounded very cool. I like math, I like science, and so I just did a cold call essentially asking if I could do research with them. And they were very kind enough to agree to let a high schooler in on their research and that kind of started the whole thing for me.
And since then, I've just been very interested in just the whole research process of just understanding how does the human body work, how do you go from just a curious question to rigorous experimentation to actually come up with a result, and then ultimately trying to share that result to others to see if we can make a meaningful difference in the world. And as you just keep chasing that, then you end up in a place like this.
Melissa: Yeah, that's a great story. That's a lot of initiative for a high schooler! So, first off, I guess, for the particular article that we're talking about today, what question were you trying to answer when you started this study?
Dr. Kwak: Yeah, so one of the main ways people try to understand how people move in a research perspective is using motion capture technology. So it's very similar to if you have looked at any of the behind-the-scenes from Lord of the Rings with Sméagol and they have sort of a green suit and they have reflective dots. So those dots are used to be able to track how someone's moving in space.
And since then, technology has advanced where you don't need to use those reflective dots, which use infrared light to reflect off of it, but now you can just use video cameras and machine learning to be able to track people in space. But then since this is still relatively new technology, we still need to verify and validate to see are the results as accurate as we hope to do something like clinical research where you need to have a bit more accuracy than just something that looks nice for motion pictures.
So that was really the main motivation behind the paper was to be able to see are these newer technologies of tracking people in space as accurate or accurate enough to be able to make sort of clinical claims or helping people improve in their performance or injury prevention.
Melissa: Right. So, how could what you found eventually show up in someone's real life?
Dr. Kwak: Yeah, so in the same way that motion capture, you can see it in everyday activities like Netflix, this technology, at least specific for this project, it was more of a sports orientation. So the idea is that these video capture technologies are going to be installed likely in a lot of different professional sports arenas, in their weight rooms, in different labs, and the idea is that they'd be able to see how someone moves, how they do a jump, how they land, how they cut.
And as they do these things, you can begin to understand are they doing anything particularly that may be indicative of a likelihood of getting injured, or is there something they're doing that's not quite the best way to jump and they can have room for improvement to be better in their performance. So then as they take that knowledge and understanding from this technology, they're able to improve it and then hopefully you're able to see it on the court, on the field, and things like that. And it'll be a win-win hopefully for everyone when you see less people injured and just overall more fun product, I guess, for sports.
Melissa: It's really interesting to think about how this research can impact somebody's life in the way of the things that they watch and the content that they view. So how is doing this research changed the way you think about things like patience, progress, or even success?
Dr. Kwak: Yeah, I think, well, research in general, I think the understanding that a lot of people need to have is that it is a slow process from coming up with a question to finding results that you're confident enough to deploy out into the world. Especially if you're looking at something more clinical, from the point of asking the question to developing the right protocol to test it on people, getting ethical approval to be able to do this is also a whole process in itself. So then I think there needs to be understanding of the scale of time in which you accomplish this.
A lot of people, it's very easy to say "oh, we know this is a problem, we need to fix it, there's lives at stake," perhaps not life and death, but it's people's livelihood. But the reality is that you can't just off of one person make some sort of conclusion, it's very hard to do that because each situation is unique, especially if you're looking at it from a sports perspective.
These are very high-performing athletes, and a lot of these people categorize as freak accidents. And what we're really trying to do is instead of calling them freak accidents, see it as like a pattern of injury that we can sort of infer and see what is really causing this and what is something that we can do that can not only help one person but can help leagues and even perhaps even at the grassroots level improve the way that they approach training to be able to help them with their longevity.
Melissa: That's a great point. So, the extended amount of time that happens in the beginning can make sure that it helps the most amount of people as possible in the future. So, what keeps you motivated to work on injury prevention, especially when a lot of people's success stories are often invisible? I think the goal is for people to stop seeing you, right?
Dr. Kwak: Yeah, yeah, ideally the goal is there's no more injury, which means there'd be no more research. That is kind of the funny thing about it. But the reality is that in something like sports, where high performance and something exciting is inevitable, I think just because of the limits of the human body, injuries are just a fact of sports.
And I think really what keeps me particularly motivated, I really enjoy this aspect of helping others be better. I think this idea that I'm helping someone achieve their life dreams or become the best version of themselves, I think I really enjoy that process, being able to see someone really believe in themselves and achieve their potential. I think if I can just have a small role in that, I think it's just a very satisfying thing.
Melissa: That's a really noble intention. So, of everything that you do, if you wished the general public could understand one particular thing about injury research and how it helps people, what would it be?
Dr. Kwak: Oh, that's a good question. I think there...I mean, there are so many things I would want them to know, but I think perhaps one thing to take away from sort of what we do is that I think it's easy for the public to see that sports in a lot of ways for a lot of people is sort of money-motivated. It's a business, a lot of people say in the end.
But I think one of the great things about academia and perhaps one of the faults is that we don't get paid that much, you know? Like, if someone's going into academia, they're not financially motivated. And I think that kind of helps, especially in the realm of sports, take away that sort of veil that we're doing this to help someone get more money.
Really, I think one of the things that people can appreciate about injury research is that we really do it because we care about people getting better and we really want people to enjoy what they're doing. And I think that's ultimately what everyone wants to do, to kind of be in a space where they can be happy with who they are and sort of the work that they do and feel like it's very fulfilling.
Melissa: All right, great. So, thank you so much for being here, and thank you guys for joining us for this episode of Behind the Breakthroughs Off the Field. I hope today's conversation offered a clearer look at the curiosity, care, and science behind the work happening at Emory.
If you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to explore the rest of the series where each researcher brings a new perspective on injury prevention and human performance. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.