Year 9 students had a women in STEM ‘Women in Control’ event – a new initiative from The University of Sheffield. The girls had a brilliant time and heard about some fantastic research currently underway by female scientists and engineers and Sheffield University. There was also a practical aspect building a potentiometer to control RGB colour brightness and to investigate colour sensing properties of the human eye.
On Wednesday 3rd July 2024 we took 11 of or Y9 girls who have chosen Triple Science and/or Engineering for their GCSEs to The University of Sheffield for a Girls into STEM day.
We were very lucky to learn about lots of different careers within STEM as well as how new technologies are being developed to support in medicine. Below is a brief overview of the day.
There were 4 mini lectures:
- Dr Mahnaz Arvaneh works with brain-Computer interfaces and leads pioneering work in stroke rehabilitation. In her mini lecture she talked about how she applies machine learning which is underpinned by statistics and probability to her research – demonstrating a practical application of maths in bioengineering.
- Dr Dana Damian’s mini lecture ‘Living with robots inside our body’ she highlighted the increasing number of technologies that have been developed to solve various health issues from identifying diseases to providing therapies.
- The creators of the MediTel robot, a robot that provides remote medical treatment in hazardous environments, presented a short talk on the robot design and the integrated technologies including CAD, virtual reality, telexistence, advanced sensors and robotics.
- Dr Charlotte Buckley, holds a PhD in Experimental Psychology, she concluded the mornings lectures talking about decision-making and advanced population health modelling. Dr Buckley is currently developing new models to explore the psychological mechanisms and environmental factors underlying associations between socioeconomic inequalities and health behaviours such as alcohol use and food choices.