Athletic Training Education Program Faculty is Named the 2026 Researcher Athletic Trainer of the Year
April 17, 2026
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Jatin Ambegaonkar, professor in the Athletic Training Education Program at George Mason University, was named recipient of the 2026 Researcher Athletic Trainer of the Year by the Virginia Athletic Trainers’ Association (VATA). The award was presented earlier this year during the VATA annual meeting held in Hampton, Virginia. Ambegaonkar’s selection for the award recognizes the exceptional contributions he has made using translational research in which discoveries made in controlled laboratory settings are applied to real-world communities where people live, train, and perform. Much of Ambegaonkar’s research centers on populations that are often overlooked including dancers and performing artists, older adults at risk of falling, and underserved youth in Prince William County and Northern Virginia. The field of candidates considered for the prestigious VATA award included dozens of professionals in athletic training located throughout Virginia.
Ambegaonkar expressed his deep gratitude on being named the 2026 VATA Researcher Athletic Trainer of the Year. “To be recognized by my peers in Virginia, where I have poured my heart into this work for twenty years, is incredibly humbling,” he stated. “This VATA award means a great deal to me not only because I am personally honored to receive this recognition, but because this award reflects the collective effort of every student, colleague, and community partner who has walked alongside me in this work. So much of what I have accomplished has been through them—their curiosity, their energy, and their willingness to engage with communities. Research is not a solitary endeavor. It is a collective one.”
He continued, “I came to the United States from India with a desire to better understand movement sciences, and Virginia—specifically George Mason University—has been home for 20 years. To be honored by the athletic training community here in Virginia, where so much of this work has unfolded, is deeply gratifying. It is also a reminder of why I do this—not for recognition, but for the people we serve.”
When asked why he thinks the athletic training discipline is so important, Ambegaonkar emphasized the unique role it plays in providing healthcare in environments where a gap in medical support would otherwise exist. He explained. “We are often the first point of contact when an injury occurs, and we are present in settings, whether in schools, universities, courts, practice fields, or performing arts venues, where other healthcare providers simply are not present.” Ambegaonkar added that athletic trainers view individuals holistically, within the context of their activity, sport, or art form. “That proximity,” he says, “gives us the ability to reduce injury risk before injuries happen, manage them when they do happen, and guide people back to full participation. At a time when healthcare access is unequal and demand is high, athletic trainers are a cost-effective, highly trained, and underutilized resource. Elevating the profession and expanding its reach is something I feel genuinely passionate about.”
Ambegaonkar described several key projects he is involved with at George Mason in collaboration with the research team in the university’s Sports Medicine Assessment Research and Testing (SMART) Laboratory. These initiatives demonstrate how athletic training services can benefit individuals across the lifespan, especially in settings where quality healthcare may be limited or non-existent. At the core of each of these projects is the principle that the science of human movement is really the science of medicine. But Ambegaonkar noted that there is another important aspect connecting these endeavors. “All of these are not separate projects for me,” he said. “Rather, they all reflect the same commitment—namely, to serve people who have fewer resources and less access to quality healthcare.”
The first of these projects involves the work that Ambegaonkar and his team are doing through the Supporting Healthy Arts Research (SHARe) Consortium, an initiative he founded at George Mason in 2017. In this project, Ambegaonkar’s team is collaborating with colleagues nationwide to create longitudinal databases that will quantify fitness, workload, and injury patterns of dancers and performing artists. These individuals endure physical and mental demands comparable to what elite athletes experience. Yet, unlike athletes, they receive far less sports medicine attention. Ambegaonkar is trying to raise awareness of the unique health needs of dancers and other preforming artists and how the availability of athletic training medical care can address those needs and prevent injuries. “My mantra,” he explains, “is ‘Arts and Health for the Physically Active, Physical Activity for Health and Artists.’ This is more than a catchy phrase—it is a lived reality that I work on every day. A ballet dancer deserves the same healthcare and injury prevention access as an athlete—the challenge is shining a light on the need for this access.”
A second initiative to which Ambegaonkar is devoting his expertise centers on improving the quality of life in older adults. Ambegaonkar worked with faculty at George Mason’s College of Visual and Performing Arts on a National Endowment for the Arts supported project to provide free dance, music, and health related sessions to older adult community members in Northern Virginia. The goal of this endeavor was to improve the physical, mental health, and social connections of Northern Virginia residents. Activities for community members were conducted at the Hylton Performing Arts Center at George Mason’s SciTech campus in Northern Virginia’s Prince William County.
Ambegaonkar was part of a project supported by the Potomac Health Foundation in partnership with local community-based non-profit organizations where the SMART Laboratory team delivered community-based exercise and dance programs. Currently, Ambegaonkar is part of a group of CEHD faculty members who are collaborating with George Mason’s College of Public Health where they provide free “balance for wellness” community events in Northern Virginia. This cross-college collaborative work is supported by George Mason University’s Office of Research, Innovation, and Economic Impact (ORIEI).
The dedication and commitment that Ambegaonkar brings to each of these research initiatives can be traced back to a time earlier in his career when he worked as an occupational therapist at the Paraplegic Foundation in India helping individuals with spinal cord injuries. Reflecting on that early experience, Ambegaonkar said that it “planted a seed” giving rise to what he describes as a deep respect for the resilience of underserved populations and a drive to find better, more evidence-based ways to help them. Ambegaonkar says that when he arrived at Springfield College and later at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, his graduate work with dancers reinforced that passion. “These were physically active people with real health needs and almost no infrastructure supporting them,” he stated. “That gap felt like both a responsibility and an opportunity.”
Ambegaonkar shared his thoughts on what he considers to be some of the most important challenges and opportunities that exist today in athletic training research. One of the most pressing, he says, is the research-to-practice gap. He points out, “We generate strong evidence but translating that evidence into everyday clinical practice, especially in underserved or under-resourced settings, remains difficult.” Another challenge highlighted by Ambegaonkar is the need to achieve increased diversity in athletic training studies, especially given that many existing studies are skewed to well-resourced, majority populations.
Still, he is confident that these challenges are being addressed. Ambegaonkar explains, “Wearable technology, community-based participatory research models, and interdisciplinary collaboration are opening doors that simply were not there before. The ability to assess movement and collect health data in real-world environments, and not just in the lab, is transforming what is possible.” He cites as examples a study he led using biosensors to study physical activity levels in youth middle school students to positively impact the childhood obesity epidemic, and a current study he is leading that involves assessment of the workload, sleep, fitness, and nutritional demands placed on dancers. Ambegaonkar and researchers on his team are using data collected from state-of-the-art biosensors worn by dancers participating in the study. They are also analyzing the responses from dancers who are asked to complete questionnaires in which they self-report their perceptions of the physical and mental workload, fatigue, and sleep habits they experience. The goal of the study is to determine the overall health of the dancers and to develop training, recovery, and care programs that will help dancers stay healthy.
Regardless of the challenges in athletic training research, Ambegaonkar believes that effective solutions need to be based on the idea that healthcare should not be limited only to those who fit the typical profile of what an athlete is. “No one should be left out of the conversation of health because they do not play a ‘traditional’ sport,’” he emphasized. “We have the technology and the ability to bring elite healthcare to dance studios, community centers, and underprivileged schools, and we hold a collective responsibility to do so!”
As far as what he believes future priorities in athletic training research should be, Ambegaonkar stresses the need for activities that are community-engaged, equity-focused, and lifespan-oriented. “We need research that follows people from youth sports through aging—understanding how early movement patterns and injuries shape long-term health trajectories,” he stated. “We need to expand our reach into underserved populations and build the evidence base for athletic training interventions in those contexts. And we need more interprofessional collaboration—athletic trainers working alongside physical therapists, occupational therapists, physicians, social workers, nurses, and other public health researchers to address health holistically. The silos between disciplines cost us both knowledge and efficiency.”
Concluding his remarks, Ambegaonkar reiterated the significance of the VATA recognition and the deeper meaning it holds for him. “This VATA award validates that our profession is growing,” he observed. “It is a sign that we are finally looking at the ‘whole person’—from the child struggling with obesity to the older adult trying to avoid a fall.”
Please join the College of Education and Human Development in congratulating Jatin Ambegaonkar on being named the 2026 Researcher Athletic Trainer of the Year by the Virginia Athletic Trainers’ Association. Ambegaonkar’s selection for the VATA award reflects the many contributions he has made during his career in the fields of exercise physiology, athletic training, sports medicine and performing arts medicine. It also exemplifies the high caliber of the research underway within George Mason’s Athletic Training Education Program.