2017 PINES IOC scholarship: student experiences

With the generous support of Sportsoracle, PINES is able to offer two IOC Diploma in Sport Nutrition Scholarships. These scholarships are awarded annually, based on applications by candidates from all corners of the world. Juliane Heydenreich from Germany and Marta Kozior from Poland were the successful applicants in 2017. We asked both, to share their experience in a short report.

Juliane Heydenreich, MSc – Germany

The begin of the year 2017 was quite challenging, since I gave birth to my second child and the first weeks after birth I just was trying to organize my life with full-time motherhood, start of the IOC-course, and part-time PhD. However, I was very happy and satisfied with the first year IOC course since the quality of the lectures was really great and I learned a lot although I had some preliminary knowledge about sport nutrition.

In March I did a presentation about Nutrition for Recovery in Sport which was part of a symposium made for sports physicians. Here, I was able to apply my obtained knowledge and transfer the research into practice. Since also some athletes joined the meeting it was quite interesting to get know their thoughts about the topic as well and to see which problems might occur in real-life.

In November I had the mid-term exam of my PhD, where I presented preliminary analyses of my data and where we discussed further steps of the PhD. I am really happy that there is overlap between the PhD topic and some aspects of the IOC course, so I can profit a lot from the lectures of the IOC course.

For me the highlight of the year was the visit of the ISENC conference in Newcastle in December 2017. At the day before the conference started current and former IOC students were invited to have a meeting with some of the organizers of the IOC course, Ron Maughan, Susan Shireffs and Louise Burke. Some students were chosen to present their research and/or experiences with athletes and I took the opportunity to present preliminary results of my PhD. These results I also presented as a poster during the congress. At the congress it was really great to get know in personal other IOC students and also to speak with some of the lecturers.

I am looking forward for the second year of the IOC Diploma in Sports Nutrition where we will get more knowledge about the translation of the Sport Nutrition research into practice. I am very happy and would like say thanks to PINES for co-sponsoring the course!

Marta Kozior, MSc — Poland

When I was asked to write the second note to PINES Newsletter about my experience in the last twelve months, I thought that it was a great year! The transition from 2016 to 2017 was smooth and from the beginning of the year I have continued working with athletes from different sport disciplines at University of Limerick (UL) in Ireland, which I find extremely interesting. When the second year of IOC Diploma in Sport and Exercise Nutrition started in February, it was time to think about the topic for the final assignment in September and to plan my preparation for the final exam in November. I completed the IOC Program in December last year. My enjoyable IOC Program experience led me to invest more time in my professional development. I prepared a PhD proposal with the consultation with my supervisors at UL. The proposal was accepted and in the first progression review, after six months, I received very positive feedback. In the next three years, I will be investigating the optimisation of nutrition for athletic training and competition. As an early Christmas gift to myself, I booked flight tickets to Newcastle for the International Sport and Exercise Nutrition Conference in December. Despite flight delays due to the weather conditions, it was wellspent time. I exchanged knowledge, discussed presented topics and networked with researchers and practitioners from around the world. It also was my first opportunity to meet with the IOC Diploma program directors and “virtual classmates” in Newcastle.

We have a chance to meet again in April 2018. This time we will meet in Lausanne in Switzerland for the IOC Diploma gradua