ME Alumna Marge Hartfel Makes US Olympians Go Faster

A thousandth of a second can sometimes mean the difference between a gold medal and a silver one at the Olympic Games. Just ask any world-class athlete—or ask Margaret “Marge” Hartfel. This University of Minnesota alumna, who now mentors current students at the Earl Bakken Medical Device Center, works with Team USA to make Olympians go faster, especially down an icy track.

“My involvement with the Olympic program really began in graduate school, when I led a research project on sprint starts in speed skating at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics in Alberta, Canada,” said Hartfel, who holds two degrees from the College of Science and Engineering on the Twin Cities campus—a master’s in mechanical engineering and a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering. 

As she was nearing the end of that research project, her advisor Art Erdman asked if she wanted to work with the USA Luge National Team. 

Erdman, a renowned biomechanics and human performance expert at the University of Minnesota, had received a call from 3M looking for someone to participate on their engineering team that was working on making faster luge sleds. At that time, 3M was both a sponsor of USA Luge and a global sponsor of the Olympics.

Hartfel spent a lot of time in Lake Placid, New York. Her days at the team’s training center included setting up a system to monitor the athletes’ starts, sled speeds, and overall sled performance. 

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Story by CSE Communications