Scott Felluss, Ph.D.

Performance Researcher & Founder

Developer of the Control Loop Framework. UC Berkeley Postdoctoral Fellow Candidate. Twenty years of applied expertise coaching 2,000+ competitive tennis players. Founder of the Felluss Institute for Adversarial Performance.

Background

Education

Ph.D. in Performance Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Thesis focused on the architecture of competitive performance and how elite athletes maintain decision quality under maximum pressure. Former Division I athlete at Brown University.

Coaching Experience

Twenty years of applied expertise coaching over 2,000 competitive tennis players across San Francisco, Berkeley, and the East Bay under active city contracts. Specialized in high-performance coaching for competitive players transitioning to elite levels.

Research Foundation

Theoretical foundation grounded in Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) and extended into adversarial competitive contexts. Developed the Control Loop Framework as an original extension of PCT that explains how performers organize their nervous system under pressure.

Contemplative Practice

Background in Zen practice and Catholic apophatic tradition. Integrates contemplative understanding with rigorous scientific methodology. Believes that the interior of performance—the subjective experience of decision-making under pressure—is as important as the external outcomes.

Current Work

The Unfinished Athlete

Active longitudinal research study investigating aging athletic performance. Phase 3 of Study 001 is underway with return to competitive tennis imminent. Study 002 transitioning into focus with new findings on constraint saturation and recovery mechanisms.

UC Berkeley Postdoc

Pursuing a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fellowship with Duška Radosavljević at Lund University. Three-year research program formalizing the Control Loop Framework and expanding Ground Press as the vehicle for public intellectual engagement.

Ground Press

Interactive research platform distributing findings from The Unfinished Athlete and related studies. Subscription-based access to guided tours, research documentation, and ongoing findings as they emerge.

Corporate Partnerships

Developing partnerships with IBM, Whoop, and Asics to apply CLF principles to performance technology, athletic wearables, and competitive equipment design.

Personal

44 years old. Based in Alameda, California. Father and husband. My wife Uyen runs Sunset Hosting Co.

Beyond research and coaching, I'm a GarageBand music producer developing training tracks for the Efference Copies protocol. These tracks are designed to support the somatic reorganization work that underlies performance improvement.

I believe that serious intellectual work and personal contemplative practice are not separate. They inform each other. The research deepens the practice. The practice deepens the research. This integration is visible in everything I do.

The New York Times has contacted me for a potential story on The Unfinished Athlete. Punahou School application in progress. MSCA fellowship application with Lund University underway.

Explore the Work

Subscribe to Ground Press to access the complete research architecture, advanced tours, and ongoing findings as they emerge from The Unfinished Athlete and related studies.