Jožef Šimenko

Dr Jožef Šimenko is a Lecturer in the Essex Pathways Department at the University of Essex. He is a module leader for the Introduction to Anatomy and Physiology module. He joined the Pathways department in August 2019. Jozef holds a doctoral degree in Kinesiology from the Faculty of Sport, University of Ljubljana. He has been working as a Lecturer at the University of Greenwich, the Richmond upon Thames College and the Faculty of Sport, University of Ljubljana. He also worked as an associate expert at the Sports Institute, Univesity of Ljubljana, where he was screening elite athletes, led strength and conditioning training and rehabilitation of elite athletes. In his research, Jozef focuses on combat sports and martial arts with particular emphasis on judo. He is also interested in the research on special forces, such as military and police personnel, isokinetic, soccer, 3D body scanning, functional and morphological asymmetries, and rehabilitation. In 2016, he was awarded the Young Researcher Award at the IMACSSS conference in Portugal. He had been invited to give keynote presentations at several conferences, including the 2019 European Judo Union Scientific Conference in Poreč, Croatia, and the 2018 Croatian NSCA conference.

Dr Simenko holds several coaching qualifications – judo coaching license, the UEFA A coaching license, youth basketball coaching license, youth volleyball coaching license, the TRX suspension trainer license, ski instructor license, to name a few. He also holds the black belt II DAN degree by BJA in judo. As an athlete, Jozef has been categorized athlete of the Slovenian Olympic Committee and a part of Slovenian Junior National Judo team where he competed in international competitions. He concluded his competing career and became a coach to elite judo athletes that have won Grand Prix and World Championship medals. He was also a National coach of Slovenian University Team at the 2015 World University Games in Gwangju, South Korea and in 2016 European University Games in Zagreb, Croatia. He also served as the president of Slovenian Judo Union Coaching Commission where he was in charge of the education of new and existing judo coaches.