Our Team

The team behind your Level

LEVELEN was founded by a sweat scientist and a team physician who worked with professional and collegiate athletes in Philadelphia. Today it runs on more than 20 years of research and sweat data from 2,500 athletes.

Take the Sweat Test How the formula works

Where LEVELEN started

A question from the sideline

Dr. Sandra Fowkes Godek studied how athletes handle heat: how much they sweat, and how much sodium leaves with that sweat. Dr. Arthur Bartolozzi was a team physician for the Philadelphia Eagles, Flyers and Phantoms. As experts in the Philadelphia sports space, they brought their focus together and founded HEAT Sport Sciences, Inc. in 2012, with a goal of helping athletes perform and avoid heat-related problems.

Their research with NFL players showed how far apart athletes can be. In one preseason camp, average daily sweat sodium losses ran from 7.5 grams for backs to 12.5 grams for linemen, and one player lost more than 30 grams in a single day. Across their work with the Eagles and the Flyers, sodium lost per hour differed by more than 100-fold from one athlete to the next.

That spread is why LEVELEN measures each athlete instead of handing everyone the same drink. The two founders' method was patented, with the patent granted in 2016 (U.S. Patent 9,421,226 B2): measure an athlete's sweat during hard exercise, assign them to a sodium group, and match the drink to that group.

The first partners were professional and collegiate teams around Philadelphia. LEVELEN now works with athletes from weekend competitors to professionals in football, hockey, basketball, soccer, tennis and endurance sports, and supports several military and public safety groups.

Read our history Read our mission

Sources: LEVELEN Our History and team pages; Fowkes Godek and Bartolozzi, Athletic Training & Sports Health Care, 2009; U.S. Patent 9,421,226 B2; LEVELEN Hydration Sports Science page. Full list on the Formulation page.

By the numbers

The record behind the team

2012

HEAT Sport Sciences founded

By athletes and physicians in the Philadelphia area.

20+years

Of sweat research

With professional and collegiate teams.

2,500

Athletes in the data

Sweat tested and analyzed in LEVELEN's research.

9,421,226

U.S. patent

Granted in 2016 to the two co-founders.

Co-founders

The founders

A sweat scientist and a sports physician who built LEVELEN on their own research with professional athletes.

Sandra Fowkes Godek, PhD, ATC

Co-Founder, the science

An expert in thermoregulation, athlete sweat testing, and fluid and electrolyte replacement.

Dr. Fowkes Godek leads the science behind LEVELEN. Her research covers thermoregulation, sweat rates and sweat sodium losses, sodium depletion, exercise-associated hyponatremia, and exertional heat stroke, much of it in NFL and NHL athletes, including the Philadelphia Eagles and Philadelphia Flyers. Sweat Test samples are mailed to her lab for analysis.

She has given more than 80 regional, national and international presentations and has more than 60 first- or second-author publications on thermoregulation in collegiate and professional athletes. In 2004 she received the Kenneth Knight Journal of Athletic Training Award for Outstanding Original Research Manuscript.

She organized and presented at the 3rd International Exercise-Associated Hyponatremia Consensus Development Conference in Carlsbad, California, and co-authored the consensus statement that followed, published in July 2015 in the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine and the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Credentials

Full Professor, Department of Sports Medicine, West Chester University
Ph.D., Exercise Physiology, Temple University
M.S., Exercise Physiology, University of Colorado
B.S., Athletic Training, Penn State University
Co-inventor, U.S. Patent 9,421,226 B2

Arthur R. Bartolozzi, MD

Co-Founder, sports medicine

A sports surgeon and former team physician for the Philadelphia Eagles, Flyers and Phantoms.

Dr. Bartolozzi has treated athletes across sports, from wrestling to rowing and from the NHL to the NFL. As a team physician he saw what professional and amateur athletes ask of their bodies, and his work centers on helping them recover from injury safely and efficiently.

He specializes in arthroscopy, ligament reconstruction and total joint replacement in the knee and shoulder, and is a past recipient of the Eastern Athletic Trainers' Association Moyer Award for his contributions to the field.

He co-authored the NFL preseason study on blood electrolytes and plasma volume with Dr. Fowkes Godek, and the two are co-inventors on the LEVELEN patent.

Training

A.B., Chemistry, magna cum laude, Brown University
M.D., University of California, San Diego School of Medicine
Research Fellowship in Orthopaedic Surgery, McKay Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania
Residency in Orthopaedic Surgery, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
Fellowship in Sports Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles
Co-inventor, U.S. Patent 9,421,226 B2

Leadership

Running LEVELEN

Livingston Cheng

Chief Executive Officer

A business and marketing executive who has managed product lines in automotive, consumer electronics, sporting goods and wearable tech.

Livingston began his career as an engineer at Ford, where he helped launch vehicles including the Ford Mustang and led rebranding work on Ford's vehicle dynamics and powertrain attributes. He then moved into product management and marketing, managing product lines for Bose Corporation (Wave Music Systems), Franklin Sports (baseball training) and MC10, Inc. (sports and fitness wearables).

One product he managed, the Reebok Checklight head-impact sensor, won the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Award for Innovation in Sports and Fitness and a 2014 Red Dot Design Award.

He joined HEAT Sport Sciences after earlier collaborations with Dr. Fowkes Godek and the Philadelphia Eagles. He has led LEVELEN as CEO for at least the past five years.

Education

B.S., Mechanical Engineering, Cornell University
M.Eng., Mechanical and Systems Engineering, Cornell University
M.B.A., Marketing and Corporate Strategy, University of Michigan

What the team built

From research to your Level

The research

Years in the field

Dr. Fowkes Godek's LEVELEN research library holds roughly 30 abstracts, 9 publications and several presentations on electrolyte management, muscle cramping, sweat rates and thermoregulation, much of it in NFL and NHL players.

See the studies

The method

A patented Sweat Test

You collect your own sweat during a real training session. The lab measures sodium, potassium and chloride separately and works out your sweat rate, then assigns your Level.

How the test works

The mix

Built to your Level

One formula, made at increasing sodium levels. Level 3 has 900 mg of sodium per liter, Level 4 has 1,200 mg and Level 5 has 1,500 mg. Every other ingredient stays the same.

Inside the formula

Know your Level