Perhaps you have heard of the Yukon Quest or Iditarod. A +1000 miles Dog Sled race with 14-16 dogs, 1 Musher (sleddog driver) and the icy wilderness of Alaska. When Grizzlies hibernate, Northern Lights decorate the sky and days become nights, mushers try to cover this distance as fast as they can. Sixteen brave dogs and their master are put up to the test.

Sam Deltour, ° 2 January, 1985 (Medical Student University Leuven, Belgium) is not a rookie anymore. He is a very active athlete and the first Belgian Iditarod finisher in 2008 (the other 1000 mile race in Alaska).

Sam and his team are preparing new races for 2010 (Yukon Quest and Iditarod). Passion, hard work and an inexhaustable motivation helps them to pursue their dream. From October 2009 on, a 24/7 training schedule will start with more than 3000 miles of mushing in one of the world’s last unspoiled, pure natural environments: Alaska.

As medical student with profound interest in the human physiology in extreme environments, Sam and his team are interested in biosignals acquisition during his training and race episodes in order to join researchers and practitioners from multiple areas of knowledge, including biology, medicine, engineering interested in studying and using models and techniques inspired from or applied to biological systems in these cold environments. A diversity of signal types can be interesting in this area, including image, audio and biological sources of information. The analysis and use of these signals are based on signal processing, pattern recognition and computational intelligence techniques, amongst others. ECG, EEG, temperature, etc monitoring of the sleddog racer are the principal components of interest.

Which company is interested to sponsor our team and use our races as test environment?

Cheers Dr. S. Van Poucke, MD