Tuesday, 31 October 2017

Month in Review: October 2017

If the end of September sees the pre-teaching rush easing off, the end of October sees teaching very much in full swing. There's been a lot going on, a lot of new things starting, but not a lot finished. Unless you count lectures and tutorials and project meetings delivered. I've taken to adding them to my task list, so that every lecture can be ticked off. Otherwise, you do a day of solid teaching and think: "I've got nothing done!". I'd hope the students - whose fees are paying for those tasks - don't see it that way, and makes it no sense to manage your time as if teaching were a drain that got in the way of the real work.

Anyway, I've got three undergraduate team projects for MEng/MDes students, and seven dissertation projects under way. I had industrial visitors in to sponsor an undergraduate project for our level 2 students.

Otherwise, three proposals have been on the go - one died in the internal sift - and I've been hard at work trying to map out the PACLab technology roadmap, so we can keep on top of the tech we need, particularly as VR is becoming a bigger part of our work.

Speaking of which, some of our work with Dubit (particularly driven by Faisal Mushtaq) on health and safety of VR, has now been published, and achieved some note from the media.

Also excitingly, the Apex project I'm doing with Stuart Murray on "Engineering the Imagination" has now been officially announced. We've known about it for a month or two, but had to keep it under wraps! Now we can announce to the world that we'll be doing some critical design of our own, exploring how engineers respond to cultural theory by designing a prosthetic hand to communicate empathy. Really exciting stuff.

November promises to be just as exciting: the grand finale of the Tracking People AHRC network is taking place on the 9th. I'm really looking forward to it: stay tuned!

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