And so the first month of 2018 draws to a close, and a busy old month it's been. But that's hardly new: every month is busy in Academia. The standout feature of this month, has of course been SUITCEYES, which is now officially live, and has been running for a month. There's been an exam to mark, an open day, a transfer viva, semester two teaching to deliver, and coursework to mark, too. Plus some time getting the Ada hand working for the Apex grant with Stuart Murray and playing around with Peltier modules and servo motors for various projects, which has been good fun.
But SUITCEYES has been the big deal. Partly because we have two postdoc roles to recruit, and a contract to sort out, and links with various partners to explore, and we're now having regular fortnightly meetings at Leeds to make sure we're all on the same page.
The main thing, though, was the kick-off meeting at our co-ordinator University: Högskolan i Borås. It was an intense three days (of solid work!) plus two days' travelling, so it took up a good piece of the month. But it was a productive time, and good to meet in person the people with whom I'd had so many Adobe connect calls.
I won't bore you with the details: suffice to say they had a cake (a cake!) to mark the start of the project, and a symposium ("From Touch to Cognition") covering various aspects of haptic communication for people with deafblindness. You can find a full report over at the SUITCEYES website.
Anyway, there was much aligning of expectations, and pronunciation (SUITCEYES is pronounced "suitcase", whereas I had been pronouncing it "suit-kize"). I'm excited to take this forward: after so much planning, it's good to be transitioning to actual work!
Oh, and I volunteered Leeds to host the second consortium meeting, in the summer. So there's that to look forward to. It's all gathering pace...
