Invited Speakers
Dr. Robert Schneider holds the title of Distinguished Service Professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Brockport. He is the director of the sport management program at Brockport, which is ranked 14th in the United States (2017 College Choice National Ranking Service). In 2010 Dr. Schneider received the highest scholarship award granted from the State University of New York (SUNY) system of higher education: The Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship/Creative Activity. His efforts have advanced sport management at universities, and sport-based organizations throughout the world. A frequent invited keynote speaker, Dr. Schneider’s scholarship primarily focuses on the versatility of sport management content and how it can align with, and meet university and sport industry goals. The author of several textbooks, Dr. Schneider’s most recent will be published in April of 2021 and is entitled, “Ethics of Sport and Athletics: Theory, Issues, and Application.” No less than, 90 publications and more than 150 presentations in over 30 different countries represent Dr. Schneider’s sport management based contributions to the literature. He also serves on over 20 advisory, editorial or guest editorial boards for international or national peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Schneider continues to accept speaking and consulting invitations where he interacts with university officials and leaders in sport organizations as part of his long-standing efforts to serve in helping institutions develop sport management programs that meet their needs.
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Igor Jukić is a university professor, international lecturer and high performance specialist. He holds a bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in kinesiology from the Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Zagreb. In the period 2009/13 he was the dean of the Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Zagreb. He has published in more than 200 papers related to sports science and practice. He is a professor at the Football Science Institute (FSI) and a member of the advisory board of the Euroleague Players Association (ELPA). In the field of practical work he worked with senior and youth basketball teams of Croatia, winning a gold medal with the U-18 team at Eurobasket in 1996 and a silver medal with the U-20 team at the 2001 World Cup. He worked with the senior basketball team from 1997-2006., and participated in Eurobasket 1999, 2003 and 2005. With the Croatian national football team he participated as strength and conditioning coach in the World Cup in Brazil 2014, and in the Euro qualifiers for Euro 2016. In the period 2016/18 he was head of performance in the Baskonia-Alaves group where he established unique high performance system BAL. 2021 he works as a high performance specialist at FC CSKA Moscow. Also, from 1999 until today he works as a individual high performance specialist of top international athletes. In 2011, he founded Biotrening Ltd., a company with international references in the field of high performance in sport. From 2022 he is director of Croatian High Performance Sport Center (Croatian Olympic Comittee) He is the founder (2003) and current Secretary General of the Croatian Physical Conditioning Association, and the founder (2006) and current Secretary General of the European Physical Conditioning Association. In Zagreb, he founded the magazine Physical Conditioning (2003) and the international conference Physical Conditioning of Athletes (2003).
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Ingi studied physics at the University of Iceland with a focus on geothermal activity,
and later he studied sport science at the same school where is Bs. thesis was about
race analyses in swimming. Ingi then earned his master's degree in Sport Science
from the University of Iceland with strong collaboration with the Catholic University of
Leuven, Belgium. His master thesis (A comparison of race parameters in Icelandic
swimmers with and without intellectual disabilities) is one of the research that the S14
classification system is based on today. Ingi then defended is Ph.D. Dissertation,
Physical fitness and health of Icelandic children with intellectual disability
Research fields and collaborations:
Ingi has published several articles in peer-reviewed papers about the performance of
Intellectually disabled (ID) swimmers. As well as papers on Physical fitness and
public health among intellectually disabled children. In addition, he has published
papers on open water swimming as well as on Functional Aquatic resistance
Training. Ingi is also currently in few international research teams that, among others
are looking into classification research, with a focus on swimmers with ID. Ingi is also
one of the more experienced ID classifiers today.
Coaching career:
Ingi started coaching in 1989 as a junior coach for the local swimming club. He
always welcomed disabled swimmers to swim with his abled body swimming club
when he was a junior coach and kept that going after he became a head coach. Ingi
has worked with disabled swimmers swimming at the Paralympic games since 1996
and has to date worked with swimmers who have won in total eight medals at the
Paralympic games. Ingi also coached and worked closely with swimmers at Sydney,
Athens, and Beijing Olympic games, where the highest-ranked swimmer he worked
ended up in fourth place. Ingi has also, for many years, been one of the Icelandic
para national team coaches. For a brief time, he was also working as a national team
coach for NPC Belgium.
Work career:
Ingi started working for the national energy association but quickly moved away from
that into full-time professional swimming coaching. He then took a lecturer position at
the University of Iceland and is currently a professor at the University of Reykjavik.
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Šime Veršić is an assistant professor and vice dean for students and teaching at the Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Split. He finished doctoral degree in kinesiology in 2020. with doctoral thesis entitled "Factors associated with the potential use of doping in swimming, rowing and sailing". He is involved as professor in courses Theory and Methodology of Water Sports 1, Conditioning in team sport games and Strength and Conditioning. His current research focus are demands of elite sports and relationships between performance and injury prevalence. He is the author of over 80 scientific papers, 48 of which are cited in the Wos and Scopus databases, and he is the winner of the University of Split science award in the category of young scientists for 2019. Besides science and teaching, he is involved in practical work as strength and conditioning coach in HNK Hajduk, with primary duties in prevention and rehabilitation and analysis of running performance.
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Anamarija Jurcev Savicevic is a medical doctor, specialist of epidemiology with professional focus on infectious disease prevention and control as well as health promotion. She has been working at Public Health Institute of Split and Dalmatia County as a head of Scientific Unit and head of Department for Epidemiology of Respiratory Infections. As a field epidemiologist, she has been deeply involved in different outbreak control activities, including COVID-19 pandemic control.
At university level, she is experienced teacher, researcher and reviewer, employed at School of Medicine University of Split and Department of Health Studies University of Split where she runs Department for Preventive Medicine.
Her fruitful scientific collaboration with Faculty of Kinesiology Split in the field of health promotion has been upgraded with joint activities and research on COVID-19 clusters in the professional soccer club.
Full member of Croatian Academy of Medical Sciences.
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Dr. Gregor Jurak is a Professor on Faculty of Sport at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. Dr. Jurak is head of SLOfit research team, one of the most propulsive European teams using fitness monitoring for educational and health purposes. He is also head of an international FitBack network that supports development of systems for monitoring physical fitness of children and adolescents. Dr. Jurak is experienced researcher, expert and strategist in Sport and Physical education, especially on physical fitness and physical activity on children and adolescents. He is very devoting to implement research findings to the practice and policy-making. He is the member of few strategical professional bodies in Slovenia on the sport and education area, first author of national programme of sport and co-author of national PE curriculums. Dr. Jurak has well proven managerial competencies acquired on master study in School for Economics and Business at University of Ljubljana and experience as director of national sport foundation, vice-dean for finance and project manager. Currently, he is focusing on upgrading SLOfit – Slovenian physical fitness monitoring system.
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Dr. Nevenka Maras is a university professor and the head of the Department of Educational studies at the Faculty of Teacher Education, University of Zagreb. Until 2021, she held position of the vice-dean for business and development within the same institution. Since 2009, she is a teaching associate at the University of Split, Faculty of Kinesiology, where she's teaching in the field of pedagogy and didactics in several study programs, and since 2016 she is teaching several courses in the fields of pedagogy, didactics and neurodidactics at University of Zagreb, Faculty of Teacher Education. The area of her scientific and professional interest is the quality of cooperation between teachers and principals, factors in the well-being of teachers and principals, sports pedagogy and leisure pedagogy. As a researcher, she participated in the project of the Croatian Science Foundation (Teaching and schooling for net-generations: Internal reform of teaching in primary and secondary schools) and in support projects for scientific research at the University of Zagreb. She has published 30 scientific and professional papers and participated in several scientific conferences (Azerbaijan, Latvia, Spain, Turkey, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia). Since 2022, she has been a member of the Editorial Board of Napredak Scientific Journal. She participated in the Comprehensive Curriculum Reform as a member of the working group for the English language curriculum. She is a member of the Center for Lifelong Education, the Center for Research in Early and Preschool Education and the Center for European Education.
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Johannes Carl has an academic background in sport science, psychology as well as health promotion (Universities of Stuttgart, Hagen, and Tübingen in Germany) and currently works as a research group lead at the Department of Sport Science and Sport at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg. His research activities are based on the assumption that the self-responsible adoption of a physically lifestyle requires the simultaneous consideration of physical, affective, and cognitive determinants on the personal level. Accordingly, he adopts an integrative, holistic perspective on health-enhancing physical activity. In this context, both the World Health Organization and the UNESCO propose within their most important documents and strategies on physical activity to align efforts with the concept of physical literacy to enable lifelong adherence to physical activity (PL). In his talk, Johannes Carl presents the most important findings of the recent EUROPLIT study, which has assessed and compared the implementation state of physical literacy in Europe, and draws specific conclusions for the Balkan region. His perspective will finally include implications when using the concept for interventions.
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