Title: Can we make the human brain smarter and faster?

Prof. Dr. Werner Helsen is a leading expert in football performance, match officiating, and applied sports science. He has extensive experience supporting elite match officials, youth academies, professional clubs, and national teams, and is widely recognised for his work at the intersection of high-performance sport, decision-making, and modern performance analysis.

Football and research are his two core passions. His work is driven by the daily challenge of bridging the gap between practitioners and scientists through innovative tools and advanced technology. Rather than focusing only on traditional “evidence-based practice” (starting from theory), he strongly values “practice-based evidence” — where research questions emerge directly from the training ground and the realities of elite sport.