Sports injuries are a business concern for Clara Wu Tsai (MBA 1993). She and her husband, Joe Tsai, are owners of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets; the WNBA’s New York Liberty; and the men’s lacrosse team, the San Diego Seals. Sidelined athletes affect both individual careers and team chances of winning championships. The aches, pains, and strains that these professionals endure are also a personal concern for weekend warriors and anyone who works in physically demanding environments: “We are all athletes,” Wu Tsai explains. Yet the science of human performance and healing remains underdeveloped.

Athletes, from the casual joggers to elite ultramarathon runners and everyone in between, often rely on untested hypotheses and folk wisdom to develop training and recovery regimens, Wu Tsai explains. “There’s really a gap in learning in this area of human performance science, but there are tools out there that, if applied to this area of research, can lead to major breakthroughs.”

That’s why she and her husband donated $220 million to launch the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, a collaborative network of six research programs across the United States dedicated to studying athletes of different ages, genders, and ethnicities to better understand the potential of the healthy human body and to improve knowledge of injury prevention and rehabilitation. The goal is to give people of all abilities scientifically sound guidance for achieving peak performance and preventing injuries through the study of the healthy body and optimal performance. It’s an area that hasn’t been well funded in the past, despite widespread interest from scientists, says Wu Tsai.

Through the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation, established in 2018, the couple is committed to supporting research and action in this type of underfunded effort, what Clara Wu Tsai calls the “white spaces.” She notes, “I believe in being strategic and bold and in trying to fill the gaps, funding high-impact ideas and visionary leaders that need to be funded.” That philosophy has led to investments in neuroscience research and social justice and economic inequality initiatives, among other areas.

To establish the Alliance’s research agenda, Wu Tsai began meeting with leading experts in a variety of disciplines in the fall of 2019. Together, they created ambitious goals—“moonshots,” Wu Tsai calls them—and that’s what she was looking for. “We wanted to create a new field that’s grounded in quantitative, predictive science, and the only way to get there is to think broadly and boldly,” she says.

Scientists at Stanford University are building a “digital athlete,” a predictive model for testing training and treatment plans. Meanwhile, at Salk Institute for Biological Studies, researchers are mapping the molecular changes and gene expressions that occur during athletic activity to better understand changes in performance. Work is also underway at the University of California San Diego, where the focus is on understanding how healthy biological tissue responds under different circumstances, and at the University of Oregon, where the emphasis is on regenerating damaged tissue.

The Alliance plans to share its findings widely, both within the scientific community and beyond. Its five innovation hubs will focus on “translating” its research for health care professionals, coaches, and trainers, as well as the everyday athlete. For instance, the University of Kansas’s Jayhawk Athletic Performance Laboratory will put research into action on the basketball court, and Stanford University’s Human Performance Lab will incorporate new insights into wearable digital sensors.

At the Female Athlete Program, Boston Children’s Hospital, this approach has already led researchers to recommend reassessing guidelines for women who experience stress injuries to the tibia, also known as shin splints, a condition that affects up to 20 percent of runners and military personnel. Most are encouraged to return to full participation in 4 to 14 weeks, but a study published earlier this year found the recovery time may be insufficient and lead to reinjury.

Wu Tsai hopes that eventually the Alliance’s research will make a difference for everyone from the young superstar basketball player to older people struggling with mobility issues. “Everything that we’re learning that applies to athletes also applies to the whole world and can improve the quality of life for a lot of people,” she says.

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