Former Penn State football standout, retired Baltimore Raven, and current Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ph.D. candidate John Urschel will return to Happy Valley to speak at the 2018 Penn State Sports Analytics Conference on Thursday, April 12 at the State Theatre. His symposium-opening keynote address will begin at 7 p.m. and is open to the public, as is the rest of the conference.

Urschel’s lecture will focus on the relationship between mathematics and athletics. Having retired from the NFL after three seasons in 2017, the former offensive lineman is now an M.I.T doctoral candidate in applied mathematics. He has written on a number of different subjects, including linear algebra and graph theory, and was named to Forbes’s “30 Under 30” science list last year. 

Sponsored by the Penn State Center for the Study of Sports in Society, the two-day Sports Analytics Conference will feature a series of free programs and lectures at the Nittany Lion Inn. Urschel is confident in the ability of the Center for the Study of Sports in Society to demonstrate the immense impact of modern athletics on local and global communities.

“I believe the Penn State Center for the Study of Sports in Society is uniquely situated to draw on the resources of Penn State’s legendary sports program and the different areas of the University, helping each innovate and giving them space to collaborate and explore new ideas,” Urschel said in a press release.

The conference will also include talks on topics regarding the gender disparity in sports analytics and the use of data in the sports media industry. A complete conference schedule can be found here.