It’s time for sun, sweat and STEM! Check out the professionals supporting tennis, cricket and even chess
Australia’s summer sports calendar isn’t just about smashing aces at the Australian Open or belting sixes at the Ashes. Behind every thunderbolt serve and “Howzat?!” moment lies a world of STEM careers.
From data scientists behind the tennis, to engineers working on cricket technologies and statistical theorists reinventing chess, STEM professionals are quietly shaping the sports we love.
Tracking tennis
At the 2026 Australian Open, players on court are creating stacks of data. High-speed cameras, motion tracking and analytics platforms churn through terabytes of performance info.
Lots of the major competitions, including the Australian Open, now offer tablets to coaches for tracking their player’s real-time data, which can then inform in-match strategy.
Behind the scenes, STEM professionals – including data scientists, sports statisticians, software engineers and biomechanics researchers – have created these systems to collect and interpret data.
Data snapshot: how big is the Australian Open?
In addition to tennis balls, the Australian Open is set to serve up:
- 220,000 serves of hot chips
- 152 million YouTube views
- More than 1 million attendees!*
*Statistics via Australian Financial Review
Cricket technology
When it comes to data in cricket, all eyes have been on the Real Time Snickometer (RTS) aka the “snicko”. It’s a decision-making tech system used to work out whether a batter has hit the ball during a video review.
But last month, cricketer Mitchell Starc called for the snicko to be “sacked”, after its reliability came under question two days in a row at the Ashes.
So who’s behind the scenes, developing this kind of tech and making sure it’s a help not a hindrance? Sports engineers and computer scientists are some of the professionals working on this signal processing, machine learning and hardware design. They’re making sports tech more trustworthy for players and fans alike.
The future of chess
Officially considered a sport, chess is all about mental endurance. And this summer, chess players are stirring things up with Chess960. It’s a mathematical variant that randomises the starting positions of pieces to reduce memorisation and boost creativity.
Playing white pieces is typically an advantage in chess, but statistical theorist Marc Barthelemy has recently found ways to make the game more fair. Despite being more than 1,500 years old, mathematicians are still improving this game!
