Category Archives: Institution

A sneak peak into TU Delft

January 31, 2020 By in ESR, Institution, Secondment Leave a comment

Largest and oldest Dutch public technological university

Our very own Ellen De Korte, from Bradford University, has been based at the University of Delft for her academic secondment.

Delft, Netherlands

Ellen De Korte has been fortunate to work with Sylvia Pont and her team. University of Delft has a strong history of cutting edge research, with a reputation of being on the forefront of academic and technological advances.

Part of Ellen De Korte’s research

Ellen has been working at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, in the light and vision labs which are part of the Perceptual Intelligence Lab.

We will hear more from Ellen about her secondment and life in Delft once she has completed her work.

Delft, Netherlands

Exciting start to 2020

January 3, 2020 By in DyViTo, DyViTo Meeting, Institution, Science and Media Museum, Secondment Leave a comment

DyViTo would like to wish everyone a great start to 2020. We have several exciting events happening in the first 3 months of 2020.

Ellen De Korte has started her split secondment at the beginning of January. She has started at the University of Delft and she will be traveling to the University of Giessenduring the second half of her secondment. We wish her the best of luck!

Muge Cavdan and Jacob Cheeseman, from the University of Giessen, together with Baran Usta, from University of Delft, will be coming to Bradford at the beginning of February. They will be doing their secondment at the National Museum of Science and Media during their Yorkshire Gaming Festival. The festival is held from 5th until 9th February, with 5 days dedicated to celebrating games culture with workshops, masterclasses and special guests. Muge, Jacob and Baran will be helping with our partners during one of the biggest events in Yorkshire!

If that was not exciting enough, University of Cambridge will be hosting the whole DyViTo project for our Network Meeting and Workshops. As well as exciting talks and lectures from leading scientists int he fields of neuroscience and visual perception, the team in Cambridge is planning team building activities and round table sit-down with members of Downing College.

 

 

Science and Industry Museum - Manchester

July 17, 2019 By in Institution, Science and Media Museum, Secondment Tags: , , Leave a comment

There is a plethora of benefits in having industry partners involved. The vast amounts of knowledge and hands on experience that can be accessed during the duration of the project.

Working with the Science Museum Group means that our ESRs have access not just to the wealth of knowledge at their secondment institutions but the ability to visit other museums across the UK. Ellen De Korte, currently doing her secondment at the Science and Media Museum in Bradford, visited the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester.

Science and Industry Museum show

The museum, opened in 1983, is dedicated to the development of science, technology and industry with emphasis on the city’s achievements in these fields.

Inside of the Science and Industry Museum

The daily life of museum secondment - part 2

July 17, 2019 By in ESR, Institution, Science and Media Museum, Secondment Tags: , Leave a comment

Written by Ellen De Korte

It is roughly one week until the Lates and the Bradford Science Festival. I am collecting final bits for my stall and testing things out. The big challenge of it all is finding ways to draw people in and keep them long enough in order to get them interested in my research. This is not only about designing my stall, but also how I will take visitors through my objects.

Cameras from the National Science and Media Museum’s handling collection were a major challenge, because they appeared to be more attractive to visitors than the other ordinary objects on my table. It is interesting to see people’s responses to the cameras. Visitors seemed to find cameras from around 1900 strange (and they are), because taking a picture with it is very different from how we take pictures nowadays. On the other hand, the more recent ones (1980’s) were more familiar to older visitors, so the cameras draw people in for two entirely opposing reasons.

Either way, this meant that I had to find a way to get the handling collections objects in, without entirely losing the visitors to them. As soon as visitors were allowed to handle the old cameras, it was hard to get them back on track. Therefore, I tried introducing the cameras later on as a surprise for visitors who lingered a bit longer, which seemed to work much better.

This is one of the many things I am learning on my way to the Lates and the Bradford Science Festival. I think I will learn a lot during the events themselves as well. For now, I will get ready for the big days and enjoy a visit to the museum’s partner in Manchester: the National Science and Industry Museum.

The daily life of museum secondment - part 1

July 17, 2019 By in DyViTo, ESR, Institution, Science and Media Museum, Secondment Tags: , , Leave a comment

Written by Ellen De Korte

It is two more weeks until the Bradford Science Festival. My collection of objects is now complete and the preparation of my text and study material is almost done. In the meantime, I have also become a STEM-ambassador. STEM is an acronym for the combined subjects of Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics. A STEM-ambassador is a volunteer who promotes those subjects in various ways. This can include demonstrations at schools, but it means you can also work with teachers in promoting STEM in schools.

As my research topic is part of psychology, it may seem a bit odd that I have become a STEM-ambassador. Yet, there is quite a bit of STEM involved in my job. For example, if I set up a typical experiment, I have to display the materials I want to show on a computer. Not only is the computer itself an obvious piece of STEM, but the images of materials involve quite a bit of mathematics. For a computer an image is a big table of numbers that represent image colours. Unfortunately, computer monitors do not always display the right colour if you give them a specific number. This means that I have to check the colours that my monitor displays with a special device. On top of that, I have to pay attention to the lighting of the materials I use, because this influences the look of materials as well. These little things involve physics and mathematics (light and the transformation of numbers in light to get colours) and this is not even the data collection and analysis yet (there is a lot of mathematics involved in the latter).

I will not bother you any further with the biology that is involved in my subject, because I have to understand the workings of the eye and the brain as well. Or how our research findings might be used for design of materials (engineering). All I hope, is that it has become clear that STEM is a big part of my job and our daily lives.