Thomas van Hogerwou is a master’s student studying biomedical engineering at the

Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He was born in the Netherlands

]but spent his childhood growing up in Florida where he fell in love with baseball.

Thomas moved back to the Netherlands, choose to study mechanical engineering,

and became president of the Delft student baseball club. The club soon received an

email asking for volunteers to come in and participate in a biomechanical study on

baseball pitchers. Before that point, Thomas was unaware that Delft had such a
lab and participated in these kinds of projects. He later chose to study biomedical

engineering to gain the knowledge needed to participate in these studies as a

researcher. It quickly became evident that while the quality of the research he

performed in the Netherlands was high, they lacked the baseball population that

America has. Thomas’ professor suggested doing an internship at the SMML to get

the chance to work with an elite level baseball population. While working within an

SEC sports program was motivation enough, he also always wanted to see what

college life was like in America. Thomas was then introduced to Dr. Oliver, who invited him to intern at the SMML for the fall semester. Here is what Thomas had to share about his experience in the SMML: “I learned much in my time here. Before coming to Auburn, all my research projects had been solo endeavors. The motivation that working as part of a team of like-minded individuals granted me was fantastic. Being able to talk biomechanics with fellow baseball researchers helped me quickly find flaws in my research approaches, as well as provided a totally different background with which to analyze my results. Conversations
with athletes and coaches provided me the chance to learn how working with professional teams may look, and what a future job as a biomechanist may entail. I loved my time here and am so happy to have met the wonderful people working here at Auburn.”