Visualise and explore the work of over 1,600 superstar Researchers from across 48 countries in the Rugby Olympics 2016 Research Dashboard by wizdom.ai, the world’s largest research knowledge graph powered by big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Today as we watch our superstar Olympians compete at the Rugby finals in Rio, let’s appreciate the world-leading star researchers who are continuously studying the game not only to make it more exciting, but also much safer for the players. There are over 1,600 researchers across 48 countries who have contributed to the advancement of sport through their more than 1,000 research publications on rugby. Applying big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence to the world’s largest research knowledge graph, wizdom.ai, we are bringing into limelight the top researchers studying rugby from across countries through a dashboard.

With all eyes set on the Rio Olympics 2016, the world witnesses the greatest display of human strength, endurance, dexterity and performance by participants from across the globe. Everyday over the course of the two weeks, over 11,000 athletes compete for the gold medal in their game. They have undertaken intensive training for months and years to reach the epitome of physical fitness and optimise their performance by milliseconds.

Backing the Olympians that make it to the podium in every field, all along through their training there are thousands of researchers around the world who have laboriously studied and analysed human performance in the context of the games to raise the bar on every perceivable aspect. To appreciate the scientific research behind the Olympics and recognise the efforts of researchers that constantly boost the Olympians’ performance, we applied big data analytics on the world’s largest research knowledge graph, wizdom.ai and presented the results in a dashboard featuring Rugby from the Olympic games.

In our dashboard, we have identified the top contributing researchers in the field of Rugby globally. Dr. Grant Trewartha, a Senior Lecturer in biomechanics at the University of Bath, specialises in rugby injury science . He and Dr. Keith Stokes, also a prominent rugby researcher and Professor of Applied Physiology at Bath are Network Editors for the World Rugby Science Network and those funding their research include the Rugby Football Union and the International Rugby Board. Simultaneously leading with their studies on rugby are Dr. Colin W Fuller, a renowned consultant and Member of the FIFA Medical Assessment and Research Center, Dr. John Brooks, who has formerly played for Harlequins and the England Saxons, Dr. Christian Cook,  Professor, Elite Performance  at School of Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences – Bangor University and Dr. Simon Kemp, Chief Medical Officer at the Rugby Football Union. Dr. Brooks, Dr. Stokes and Dr. Trewartha, along with a team of prominent researchers chaired by Dr. Kemp, are also at the forefront of the Professional Rugby Injury Surveillance Project which is the most comprehensive and longest running injury surveillance project in Professional Rugby Union.

Recent publications on rugby feature in-depth studies on numerous aspects of the sport. One recent study monitored changes in the sleep patterns and quality during game and non-game nights among elite male rugby union players. Another attempted to study the current practices of strength and conditioning coaches and sport scientists working in the elite Rugby Union and outlines their recommended training and exercise regimes. For those who scientifically want to perfect their kick, there is also a research paper that studies step alignment and foot positioning relative to the tee among professional rugby union goal-kickers. Using content mining, we have also identified the most researched areas in rugby that have been presented in a world cloud. As the dashboard updates in real-time, fans and researchers around the world can observe how the research on rugby evolves overtime.

Supporting the incredibly large team of rugby researchers from around the world are research institutions that equally have an invaluable contribution. These include universities from New Zealand – University of Otago and the Auckland University of Technology, universities from the UK including the University of Bath and Swansea University and the University of Cape Town from South Africa.

Rugby related research publications have been on the rise globally since 2002, with most publications in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research and the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Overall across journals at the publisher level, Taylor & Francis (Informa UK) has published the most rugby related papers.

This dashboard provides an unprecedented resource for the Sports Science research community specialising in Rugby to analyse the research landscape around the sport and monitor how it evolves overtime in future. It is also a valuable resource for the rugby and sports’ fans around the world to appreciate and explore the extensive research that underpins players’ performances as we watch them compete in the Olympic games.

About wizdom.ai and colwiz:

colwiz, a startup from the University of Oxford’s Isis Incubator, recently announced wizdom.ai (details in our blog post here), the world’s largest research knowledge graph powered by big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence. wizdom.ai contains 2.7 billion factual data points, interconnected with 78 million publications, 700 million citations, 50 million researchers, $700 billion in research funding, 60,000 journals, 50,000 institutions, 289 million concepts and 150 terabytes of web crawl data. Our previously launched Brexit Dashboard was featured in the WIRED magazine and Fast Company and shared widely on Twitter and Facebook –  people from 1700+ cities in 120+ countries visited our site to explore our dashboard.

Through our dashboards, we provide a glimpse into the powerful capabilities offered by wizdom.ai – you can see the full list of features for researchers, publishers, institutions, funding bodies, businesses and governments on our website.