In 1996, Geoff Burns (PhD ’20) was glued to the TV for the Summer Olympics in Atlanta. The 6-year-old especially couldn’t stop watching the track and field stars. He remembers witnessing iconic sprinter Michael Johnson win both the 200- and 400-meter dashes — the first man ever to do so.
   
“I remember his idiosyncratic biomechanics, sprinting very upright,” Burns says.

Johnson’s coaches had tried to change the athlete’s unique form, his dad explained, but that unusual posture was key to Johnson’s record-setting performances. It was Burns’ first exposure to the individualized, optimal movement patterns each athlete has, the mysterious mechanics that can shave fractions of a second from a sprinter’s time.

Decades later, Burns is still a bit obsessed with running biomechanics; in fact, he penned his PhD dissertation on just that. He personally uses that expertise when he competes in — and sometimes wins — ultramarathons across the U.S. and Europe.

But he also leverages his knowledge as a sport physiologist with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC).
   
“I wouldn’t ask [athletes] to do anything I wouldn’t want to do or don’t see value in,” he says. “But I also will ask them to do the hard things or the inconvenient things that I do see value in.”

Luck strikes twice

Although Burns’ job seems like the perfect fit now, his route to the USOPC was just as winding as those of the races he loves to run.

He started in biomedical engineering, earning his bachelor’s from the University of Michigan in 2012 and his master’s the following year. His courses touched broadly on mechanical, chemical, electrical, and materials engineering. Burns even joined business courses through the Tauber Institute for Global Operations, learning about process improvement and manufacturing theory.

It gave him “a large, large toolset” and many potential jobs post-graduation. The challenge was choosing one. He’d always wanted to work in sports, but a job in the industry felt like a distant possibility, with many applicants competing for a limited number of openings.

“I was floundering a bit,” he admits.

Within two weeks of taking a job optimizing pacemaker production at a medical center, he had a sinking realization: The role wasn’t a good fit. Despite lucrative offers to pivot within the company, he decided to leave.

And then, there was a moment of serendipity.

A job for a biomechanical research engineer at U-M Orthopedic Surgery opened up. Richard Hughes, an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery who’d already mentored Burns at U-M, suggested he apply.

Despite a substantial pay cut, rejoining academia meant Burns could conduct and publish his own research, which would boost his odds of acceptance to a PhD program and, he hoped, reorient his career trajectory to sport science.

He was also able to study anatomy in depth as he worked with cadavers in his day job. For someone with more engineering background than physiology know-how, “understanding musculoskeletal systems and structures viscerally, pun intended, was so valuable” to his work today with athletes, Burns says.

But when browsing PhD possibilities, Burns encountered a familiar problem: many options but no obvious path. Hughes stepped in again, telling Burns, “You have an obvious passion for running. You need to pursue it.”

That epiphany launched him into a PhD in kinesiology. Burns stayed at U-M, studying the biomechanics of elite runners in the Michigan Performance Research Laboratory under SoK professor Ron Zernicke and using his running experience to guide his hypotheses. He wrote his dissertation on the biomechanics of runners, a springboard to his ongoing research into the factors that spur efficient form and demand effective shoe choice for these athletes. (Burns does some of this work in conjunction with the U-M Human Performance & Sport Science Center, of which Zernicke serves as co-director.)

By the time he added “Dr.” in front of his name, Burns had found his purpose: helping prepare athletes for competition. In a spark of luck, a rare opportunity to work with U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes popped up during his post-PhD job search. Its requirements precisely matched Burns’ unusual mix of engineering, kinesiology, and sport science expertise. “I just knew I was the perfect person to do it,” he says. “It was like a dream.”

Living the dream          

Today, Burns is what he calls an “all-purpose scientist” for the USOPC. There, he consults with coaches and conducts athlete fitness assessments, using metabolic metrics to show physiologic responses to training. It’s not unusual for him to be present for specific workouts, taking blood samples or oxygen measurements during training to determine when to dial up or down intensity.

He also guides climate adaptation programs, preparing competitors for extreme environments, and examines athlete mechanics, helping them select the most energetically efficient equipment, tweaking prosthetics, and more.

“I’m almost like an assistant coach to them,” he says. “There is nothing better and cooler.”

Last year, helping Olympians and Paralympians perfect their craft meant prepping the U.S. Paratriathlon team for the World Championships in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where long travel times coupled with soaring heat and humidity threatened performance.

So Burns developed a heat acclimation plan. He asked athletes to lounge in saunas, don extra layers of clothing for indoor workouts, and exercise in a climate-controlled chamber that simulated Abu Dhabi’s conditions. To minimize jet lag, he developed strict plans for meal timing during and after the trip and scheduled sleep hours to help athletes quickly adjust after their 22-hour flight.
   
“The squad ended up crushing, with six different athletes winning medals in their respective classes despite the huge hurdles we had to overcome coming from winter in the U.S.,” he says. “The pressure to perform can be high, but those stakes inspire me and get the best out of me as a scientist.”

And despite his insider perspective, Burns is still glued to the Games as a fan. 

“The athletes are less of these mythical beings I saw them as a kid,” he says, “but they’re no less impressive and moving.”