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Lu and Blindenbach, both 2022 graduates of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, are the creators of , an AI-powered analytics tool used to analyze figure skaters’ performances.

“My research adviser at UVA, (mathematics professor) Ken Ono, he was the one that got me into sports analytics,” Lu said.

Ono, a world expert in number theory, arrived on the world stage in 2022 in a Super Bowl ad for Miller beer. Later, Lu worked with Ono on his well-documented efforts helping �鶹�ƽ�� decorated swimmers, including Gretchen Walsh and Kate Douglass, , work NBC Sports featured.

When NBC asked for help with the Olympics, Lu immediately thought of his UVA roommate, Blindenbach, whom he met at a club swim tryout.

World-renowned mathematician Ken Ono is University of Virginia graduate Jerry Lu’s mentor. The pair used math to help UVA swimmers win a combined 11 medals at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris – five gold, five silver and one bronze – the most in University history. (Contributed photo)

“I mean, we love sports, and I know Jacob is very passionate about building these types of technology for sports teams,” he said. “So, yeah, I reached out to him.”

It started with figure skating

“(NBC) wanted to make the sport more understandable to the general audience,” Blindenbach said. “It’s figure skating. When you watch it on TV, it’s so elegant and graceful. It is difficult to know how many hours of training it took to look effortless; exactly how difficult it is to spin so quickly when they’re in the air. 

“We had long conversations with them, and then we did our first event with them,” he added. That was in Wichita, Kansas, in January 2025 at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

Between then and now, the UVA pair has enhanced OOFSkate with direct input from Olympic gold medalist Tara Lipinski, two-time Olympian Johnny Weir and NBC veteran play-by-play figure skating announcer Terry Gannon, who will be calling the competition in Italy.

Lu, left, poses with Phryges, the mascot of the 2024 Summer Olympics. Jacob Blindenbach, right, powers the performance data for NBC’s broadcast of the Figure Skating World Championships in March of 2025. (Contributed photos)

Lu said the tool uses an AI-assisted algorithm that can take video from one or multiple cameras. It can, in real time, interpret Team USA’s Malinin’s skating and rotation performance data that helps inform judging, artistry, execution and overall evaluation. 

Their tool analyzes video of the jump. “The first AI algorithm that we run is called a ‘pose estimation’ algorithm that basically gives 3D points of all the limbs on their body,” he said of athletes. “And then we can do something called a ‘digital twin reconstruction,’ which is essentially just creating a skeleton that’s performing the exact same action that Ilya performed,” he said, offering his quadruple axel as an example.

They can manipulate the angles to see how the joints are moving relative to each other. The data is then run through biomechanics algorithms that calculate how fast Malinin spins, how quickly he reaches peak rotation, and how long he remains in the air. With additional camera angles, the system can also estimate jump distance and measure his speed going into and out of a jump.

Lu and Blindenbach are in Italy with NBC for the 25th Winter Olympic Games, supporting Lipinski, Weir and Gannon as they call the shots in real time.