Blog

Posted on

From Nottingham to the shores of Lake Victoria

Post by Gregor Engelmann (2014 Cohort)

The best ideas often don’t emerge from a single person – they are often the result of collaborative innovation. Hackathons bring together like-minded people who bring together different skills, tools, equipment, and experiences to celebrate creativity, innovation, and technology.

I have recently returned from ExHack, a student hackathon held at the University of Exeter. Over the last 4 years, I have supported more than 45 Hackathons throughout Europe and North America through my work with Major League Hacking before joining the World Bank Group on a short-term engagement to support the Lake Victoria Challenge.

Hackathons – What are they?


Hackathons are collaborative programming competitions run over a short period of time (usually 24 to 36 hours). During the event, attendees are encouraged to work in small teams to turn tech-related ideas into prototypes before pitching their projects to judges for a chance to win amazing prizes. Beyond the material goal of winning prizes, Hackathons are about a culture of building, learning, and sharing. They provide attendees with a holistic view of everything that goes into working as a team and implementing an idea from scratch.

While I participated in Hackathons as an attendee during the time I worked on my MSc in Human Geography, I have since focussed more on the learning and sharing aspect of hackathon culture. Working with Major League Hacking, the official Student Hackathon League, I have traveled to over 45 Hackathons to empower, support, and mentor Hackathon organizers and participants over the last 4 years.

During the events, I routinely run workshops and help attendees brainstorm ideas for their projects and debug their project code. My engagement is often in the form of informal mentorship – Hackathons are not about reinventing the wheel. Instead, it is about sharing what myself and others have learned, what worked and what didn’t and getting folks to try out new technologies.

Hackathons are also great spaces for networking. The events are frequently organized by students and supported by a myriad of (tech) companies from local start-ups and initiatives such as the Digital Economy Network to global players such as Google, AWS or Dell. Through my work with Hackathons and my Ph.D. research focussing on the role of novel data sources in informing Urban and Transport planning in Tanzania, I have been offered the opportunity to be involved in organizing the first Lake Victoria Challenge in Tanzania.

Lake Victoria Challenge

The shores of Lake Victoria are home to over 30 million people, making it one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Delivering vital health supplies and other urgent goods is often challenging due to rugged terrain, the remoteness of island communities and limited road networks. Novel technologies such as cargo drones have huge potential to alleviate some of the supply chain burdens faced by communities and businesses in the region.

Over 280 attendees from 23 countries traveled to Mwanza, Tanzania on the shores of Lake Victoria for a three-day conference and flying competition in October 2018.

The conference brought together domain experts from health, technology, transport, and regulation to discuss the transformative opportunities of commercial drone technologies for the Lake Victoria region specifically and other regions more generally. The event focussed on three areas:

1. Technology: discussing the latest development in drone technologies and application,
2. Regulation: integrating regulatory frameworks for integrating drones into civil airspace, and
3. Architecture: envisioning the form and function of Droneports, which are the hub for commercial drone operations

During the conference I had the opportunity to present some of the research outputs of the N-Lab’s Z-Roads project, using surveying drones and machine learning for low volume road condition analysis, as part of the LVC technology track in addition to being involved in the organisation of the event.

Below is a highlights video of the event:

Posted on

Summer Scientist

Each year children and parents are invited to visit the University and play lots of free and fun games that help us with research. This past summer, Wendy Olphert (2015 cohort) enjoyed assisting in one of the activities at Summer Scientist 2018:

A bit of brainwave! –Wendy Olphert

I’m researching the role that digital technologies (such as mobile phones and the internet) play in the lives of people with a brain tumour – whether their symptoms create challenges for technology use, and whether using technologies can contribute to improving their quality of life.

At one level, this is quite an easy idea to communicate to people outside of an academic context – we readily understand that if we have a problem with our brain it could affect our ability to think or act – but to appreciate the range of impacts that a brain tumour could have on an individual’s life requires an awareness of what our brains do and how they work.  The brain is such a complex organ that scientists are still researching these questions.  But we already know a lot, and as I recently found out, even for young children it can be fun as well as instructive to learn about how brains work!

Over the summer I had a chance to assist in an event called Summer Scientist 2018.

This is a week-long programme run by the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham in the school vacation that has now run for several years.  Families are invited to bring their children (aged 4-11) to spend half a day at the University to play lots of free fun games and optionally to take part in some research activities – that were also designed to be fun and engaging. By taking part, children (and parents) get to learn about how the mind and brain work by experiencing real science first-hand.

University of Nottingham Psychology Science week. Photos by Alex WIlkinson of Alex Wilkinson Photography.

I was given responsibility for an activity on the theme of electroencephalography – how dull does that sound for young kids?!  But the organisers had found a clever and entertaining way to demonstrate the fact that the brain generates electrical impulses, using a special headset with a pair of furry (fake!) cat’s ears attached (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurowear). The headset picks up electrical activity from the brain which in turn moves the ears depending on your state of mind. When you are relaxed, the ears droop; when you are interested, the ears are alert – and when you are ‘in the zone’ the ears wiggle.  The kids had free choice over the activities they chose to take part in, and most were fascinated by the wiggly ‘cats ears’ and keen to try them out for themselves.

The children attending had a free choice over the activities they opted to do, and during the course of the two sessions in the day around 40 children of different ages came to the stand to try out the ears and, by doing so, learned about electrical impulses in the brain.  There was a mirror to look in; once I’d attached their headset, some found out that the more they giggled at their reflection the more the ears wiggled (and the more the ears wiggled, the more they laughed!) Others, especially one little boy of about 6, spent many minutes silently trying out different ‘brain activities’ such as thinking about exciting times such as parties, being calm, or trying to count backwards from 20, and clearly being intrigued to see the effects of his ‘brainwaves’ on the ears’ movement.

For the older children, and in some cases their parents, I explained how scientists can use the electrical impulses in the brain to find out more about how it works and what is happening when the brain is not working as it should – and that in turn gave me a chance to tell some of them about the research that I am doing.

I really enjoyed the day and it was clear that the kids had a great time too, as well as picking up lots of science along the way.  I felt that the whole concept of ‘Summer Scientist’ week really was a bit of a brainwave!

 

Posted on

Do you wanna listen to a podcast maybe?

via GIPHY

Last week we ran a poll over our social media channels to see what podcasts our students (and the wider PhD community) listen to. Podcasts can be a great way to get out of your head for a bit and think about things a little differently. We recommend listening to them when you’re travelling around or when you’re getting ready.

We welcome more suggestions, please pop them in the comments.

Wireframe

a podcast about good design. Brought to you by Adobe and Gimlet Creative. Great for interface design and human factors

RNIB Connect

RNIB Connect Radio is a radio station serving the UK, and is funded primarily by the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) and also by other local councils. Ahmed‘s PhD is focsued on navigation technologies for the blind and partially sighted and finds listening to this podcast really useful.

Recode Decode

a podcast about all the news and happenings in Silicon Valley, hosted by Kara Swisher. This podcast is great for hearing from the top people in the tech hub.

Reply All

a podcast about the internet.

Freakonomics Radio

a podcast about the hidden side of everything. This podcast has good range in its content and asks brilliant questions to uncover the world’s secrets.

Radiolab

investigating a strange world.

Hidden Brain

exploring the world’s unseen patterns.

Invisibilia

Unseeable forces control human behavior and shape our ideas, beliefs, and assumptions. 

The Digital Human

BBC Radio 4 podcast; Aleks Krotoski explores the digital world

Infinite Monkey Cage

Witty, irreverent look at the world through scientists’ eyes. With Brian Cox and Robin Ince

In Our Time

BBC Radio 4 podcasts for general learnings.

 

A huge comprehensive list was shared with us by Teaching in Higher Ed – check it out!

Posted on

Welcoming the 2018 Cohort!

This week the new 2018 cohort have been settling into the CDT with their welcome week. They’ve been hearing about what projects are going on at Horizon and the CDT, and what the next year ahead is going to look like!

We wish them all the best and hope that they feel at home super soon!

Posted on

My way to PhD thesis submission

Tatiana Styliari (2014 Cohort) has started a new Medium blog. She is currently in the thesis write-up stage (almost there!) and wants to share her experiences and offer tips & hacks to survive a PhD. She has also started an Instagram account where she will be sharing updates, so give her a follow!

“Is this a good subject to start my Medium account? Who knows! What this article aims to do is firstly, to actually help me organise my thoughts and get whatever is on my mind out there and secondly to inform fellow PhD sufferers on their way of planning their thesis submission!”

Read more of Tatiana’s post here.

 

Posted on

Challenge accepted: two students take part in coding challenge.

via GIPHY

Velvet Spors (2017 Cohort) and Ahmed Al-Talabany (2016 Cohort) have accepted the challenge set by the Digital Economy Network (DEN) to code for one hour a day for 21 days.

Velvet and Ahmed join students from across the EPSRC Digital Economy CDT network to practice their coding skills and are recording their progress through Twitter using the hashtag #DENCodingChallenge. Ahmed is working on creating a map and running routing algorithms through it while Velvet is working on a bookmarklet.

 

Follow Velvet and Ahmed’s progress on Twitter and read more about the DEN Challenge here.

Posted on

Call for Participants: Interviews on business-orientated rail travel experiences in the digital age

PhD researcher Christian Tamakloe (2016 Cohort) is currently recruiting participants to take part in an interview-based study.

What is it for?

The study forms part of a PhD project to explore how data from digital self-tracking technologies (such as smartphones and wearables e.g. Fitbits) can be used to better understand how and why business rail passengers use and value their time while travelling, as well as how this influences their travel behavior. Insights from the project will be used to power novel tools/ apps and services that will enable passengers to plan their rail trips around their preferred time use, improving their overall journey experience.

Who can take part?

This study is open to individuals who undertake work-related journeys via train fairly often. This could be at least two short/medium-distance (1.5 – 3 hours , cross-regional/national ) trips a month, during business hours for work purposes (e.g. attending conferences/trade fairs, internal/external meetings, visiting clients/suppliers/partners, etc.) or long-distance commutes (typically around 2 hours).

What does it involve?

Interview questions will revolve around preparations for journeys, activities engage d in at different stages and places of the journey, devices used and any strategies /hacks relied on to make the most of the time spent travelling.

The interview itself will last no longer than an hour and participants will be compensated for their time with £15 Amazon vouchers.

The study has been approved by the University of Nottingham Faculty of Engineering Ethics committee and all data will be recorded anonymously and used strictly for research purposes only. Participants are free to withdraw at any time during the interview .

What next?

Your involvement will help discover how to improve the rail journey experience. If you are interested in taking part in the study or would just like to know more about the research please leave your contact details at http://bit.ly/InterviewMe2 and/or send an email to Christian via Christian.Tamakloe@nottingham.ac.uk

 

 

Thank you!

Check out Christian’s Research Highlights here: https://highlights.cdt.horizon.ac.uk/students/psxckta

Posted on

I GOT A NEW PART TIME ROLE…

It brings me great pleasure to announce that I am now the Social Media Specialist for Horizon CDT at the University of Nottingham.

I will be managing social media platforms and the blog for the unit, bringing it a fresh feel. We will be working towards showcasing students’ and staff members’ research as well as increasing engagement with our audiences. It feels very exciting to become part of the Horizon team and I can’t wait to get stuck in!

Written by Kate Green