Red Deer Polytechnic is teaming up with Canadian Sport Institute Calgary (CSIC) and Bowhead Corp. to "revolutionize" parasport equipment used by para-athletes across the country in training and competition.
This project, titled "Increasing Accessibility to Specialized Parasport Equipment Across Canada Through Advanced Design and Manufacturing," is worth $860,000. It is supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada applied research and development grant ($450,000) and an Alberta Innovates Campus Alberta small business engagement grant ($300,000). In addition, CSIC has contributed $110,000 toward this project. These funds will be distributed over three years.
“We are grateful for these investments which help integrate sports, multi-disciplinary applied research and advanced manufacturing to develop customized parasport equipment and reduce barriers for Canadian athletes,” said Dr. Tonya Wolfe, associate vice-president of applied research at RDP.
“This is an exciting project and is one example of how RDP’s multi-disciplinary approach in applied research, along with enhanced partnerships, help to address the needs of people, industry and communities across Canada.”
RDP staff and the institution’s Centre for Innovation in Manufacturing–Technology Access Centre (CIM-TAC) will play an integral role in helping to create inclusive and cost-effective designs that address a national shortage of tailored sports equipment for para-athletes.
As a technology access centre, the CIM-TAC, which houses $7.6 M in specialized equipment, is a key on-campus hub of the Alberta innovation community that focuses on product development and improvement through innovative technical services, RDP said in a media release this week.
This project has initially focused on para ice hockey, leveraging statistical shape modelling, which is a technological tool to analyze images, which helps create affordable, customizable sledges. This project will eventually expand to other sports. RDP and its partners plan to integrate knowledge from athletics and assistive devices to optimize the performance and comfort of parasport equipment while evaluating a variety of factors such as pressure distribution, range of motion and speed.
Five RDP students have been hired to work on this project in summer 2025. As a result of this project, RDP staff will share their experiences with global experts at the SPort INnovation Summit held March 31 to April 2 in Calgary.
Jennifer Dornstauder, CIM-TAC engineering technical lead, and Prateeksha Aggarwal, CIM-TAC industrial research associate, will present Adaptive Design in Paralympic Sport at the Summit.
