Dr Iain James
Senior Lecturer in Sport Surface Technology
Location: Building 42, Cranfield Campus
E: i.t.james@cranfield.ac.uk
T: +44 (0)1234 750111 x2736
Environmental Science and Technology
Current activities
Dr Iain James leads Cranfield University’s research in Sports Surface Technology and is Course Director of the Sports Surface Technology MSc by Research.
Iain’s research is improving the performance of sports places and facilities to enable improved athlete performance, reduced injury risk and improved durability and sustainability to increase participation in sport through.
Iain’s latest project is helping the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) develop a Sustainability Strategy by benchmarking resource use in cricket and evaluating the current and projected impacts of climate on cricket clubs in terms of both flooding and water shortage.
Projects include the EPSRC project ‘Engineering sustainable sports surfaces: investigating human - sport surface interactions’ (EP/C512243/1) which was the first integrated study to investigate both human and surface behaviour and is now being used in doctorate research to develop new devices for measuring sports surface performance.
Current EPSRC Engineering Doctorate research, funded by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and the Institute of Groundsmanship (IOG), is investigating how aeration equipment perform and how this improves pitch preparation. This builds on a similar EPSRC/ECB funded project on the preparation of cricket pitches that resulted in the Cranfield-ECB Guidelines on Rolling in Cricket – downloaded by over 2500 cricket clubs world-wide and awarded the IOG Innovation in Grounds Maintenance Award in 2009. This research has had an impact at all levels of the game from local club and school facilities to stadia used in recent Ashes series in both England and Australia.
Iain works in this way with clients in the sports industry to deliver tangible improvement in sports facilities. Another example is the Cranfield-IOG guidelines for Maintaining Synthetic Turf which have been downloaded from across the world and provide a benchmark for research in synthetic turf maintenance and how both supply companies and facility owners can put this into practice.
Clients
- Australian Golf Course Superintendents Association
- Bayer Environmental
- Boughton Loam Ltd
- British Horseracing Authority
- East of England Development Agency
- England and Wales Cricket Board
- EPSRC
- Football Foundation
- Institute of Groundsmanship
- Lely UK/Toro
- New Zealand Cricket
- The Scotts Company
- Syngenta
- The Synthetic Turf Council (USA)
- TGMS Ltd
- Turftrax Racing Services Ltd
- The Wisley Golf Club
Background
Dr Iain James graduated with an MA in Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford and subsequently studied for an MSc and PhD in Soil Science and Agricultural Engineering at Cranfield University. He was employed as a consultant at NRM Ltd, an environmental and agricultural laboratory company before joining the academic staff at Cranfield University in 2002.
Dr James is a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College and is on the editorial board of the journal Sports Technology. He has been invited to present his work on sports surface technology in Europe, the USA, Australia and New Zealand.
