Board Member Profile: Travis Klopfenstein

Executive Director of Programs, University of Iowa Technology Institute

Mr. Travis Klopfenstein is the Executive Director for Programs at the University Of Iowa Technology Institute.  His work focuses on leveraging past experiences as a ground combat veteran (TACP/JTAC) with the US Air Force, and new product and market manager for a major defense contractor.

Klopfenstein spent 12 years at Rockwell Collins working as a Programs Manager and a Business Development Manager. He was responsible for the annual pursuit and capture of Advanced Technology research programs valued over $20 million and managed multi-year, multi-million-dollar Soldier System programs (Nett Warrior) with a staff of over 40 engineers.  While at Rockwell Collins, he also worked in the simulation and training industry as a business development manager responsible for introducing new virtual reality simulation and training product lines to domestic and international customers.

We sat down with Travis to hear a little more about his perspective on the Tactical Athlete. Here is what he had to say:

(TA-LB): The themes of the Tactical Athlete Leadership Board are Readiness, Resilience, and Recovery. From your perspective, why are these themes important, and what about them resonates with your experience in the human performance industry? 

(Travis): It's the dawn of a new era where the technology and approaches utilized for revolutionizing platform design, development, test, and training (e.g. aircraft simulators) will now be applied to the human.  Iowa's high fidelity, physics-based, Predictive human models now enable the inclusion of human digital twins in the virtual space to better predict how humans will react to new environments, technology, and load (i.e., carrying X weight causes Y injury and results in Z reduced rate of movement).  When integrated with body worn sensors and other real-time data or past records, leaders will have a better understanding of true training or mission Readiness (even a go no go "score"), and a more accurate assessment of an individual's or unit's state of Recover.

This new, powerful data, will enable data driven decisions that directly increase likelihood of mission success through improved logistics planning and predictive human modeling, reduce the likelihood of musculoskeletal and overexertion injuries, and reveal the true importance of sleep, nutrition, and wellness to the metrics of Readiness, Resilience, and Recovery.

(TA-LB): Looking to the future, what technological innovation do you think will have the most significant impact on tactical athletes?
(Travis): Integrating real time health & fitness data from body worn sensors and diary inputs with medical history data, and into a predictive human digital twin model to forecast the "human cost" of various physical movements.

(TA-LB): The spirit of the TALB is to bring a diverse set of perspectives to the table aligned toward a singular purpose: to sustain the tactical athlete of today and prepare for the tactical athlete of tomorrow. Why is it essential for the broader human performance industry to work together towards this end? 

(Travis): Revolutionary or "disruptive" innovation emerges from obscure origins that have the freedom to combine approaches and technology in novel fashions, as opposed to the evolutionary or "sustaining" innovation that mark the product line approaches of all businesses. I reference the seminal work on technology innovation by Clayton Christensen, "The Innovators Dilemma" as evidence that collaboration and work outside normal organizational structures is the most likely path for truly disruptive innovation to emerge.

(TA-LB): What is the greatest challenge to innovation in the human performance sector?

(Travis): "Expertism" The field of human performance is blessed by subject matter experts with a long history of success, however, this leads to confirmation bias and opposition to data driven decision making that leverages insight from big data, AI/ML, and new discovery.

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