Brendan Cunningham ’26 Helps Improve Student-Athlete Wellness Through Data Analytics Internship

As a Marketing major with minors in Management Information Systems (MIS) and Economics, Cunningham helps analyze connections between academic performance, athletic performance, and student-athlete retention. His work contributes to NDUR’s broader effort to understand how student-athletes navigate the pressures of academics, competition, and campus life, and how institutions can better support them.

As part of his role, Cunningham analyzes anonymous, non-clinical data—such as engagement trends, topic discussions, and early signals of stress—to better understand how athletes navigate the various commitments of collegiate sport. By tracking these patterns over time, he’s helping NDUR to identify when institutions may need additional resources or programming. Cunningham also attends in-person workshops with Curry teams on campus, helping connect the data to real student experiences.

“The opportunity has allowed me to apply lessons from the classroom to the real world,” he said. “My Marketing major and MIS minor have helped me understand how to measure engagement, collect and analyze data, and think critically about research design and ethics.”

Cunningham is also assisting NDUR with an application for the NCAA Sports Science Institute Research and Innovation Grant. The grant would allow NDUR and Curry to expand their work with student-athletes and broaden the scope of programming across varsity teams. As part of the process, Cunningham has helped gather letters of support and align the project’s goals with the priorities of the NCAA Sports Science Institute.

His perspective as a student-athlete on the Curry men’s soccer team brings an added layer to the work, having experienced the demands of balancing athletics, academics, and personal life. Cunningham understands the challenges many student-athletes face, from injuries to pressure to perform, which helps him approach the data with empathy and a clearer understanding of the real experiences behind the numbers.

For Cunningham, Curry’s emphasis on personal connection helped open the door to his meaningful internship with NDUR. Through his coach, Dr. Peter Mendel, he was introduced to the opportunity and the chance to contribute to work that supports student-athlete wellbeing. The experience reflects what Cunningham values most about his time at Curry: the people.

As he looks toward a future in data or marketing analytics, Cunningham credits his internship with not only helping him to realize how powerful data can be when it is used to support people and improve systems, but also for strengthening his own career tool belt.