One of the things that always excited me, even as a young student, was to be able to explain things that we learned at school/university at my colleagues. And one of the reasons for choosing an academic career was because of this internal drive to explain to others. You can imagine then that teaching for me is not a secondary obligation as an academic, but it is part of the fun part of it!
Deciding to become an academic, was neither an easy nor a fast decision. I remember I was going around a lot until I decided to start a PhD: I basically took a 9 months of retreat in order to decide what do I want to do with my life (while doing my compulsory military service :P). And deciding to stick to academia after I finished my PhD took me even longer… I actually still thinking about it from time to time. What were my options though? I wanted to have a life of exploration and learning, of flexibility and self-organisation, of connection with the world and communication with it. What other job could offer me these posibilities?
For the past two years, one of my principal professional activities has been teaching. Yes, as part of academia, a big part of our time is invested in preparing the next generations of engineers! (It sounds much more motivating if put this way, instead of just ’teaching’ :) ). It is not an easy job: The hours can be long, you need a lot of preparation and some time for debriefingand, if you are like me, you assosciate others’ failure (i.e. the students’) with your own failure.
This is a list of ideas for student projects, both for Bachelor and Master students. This list represents some ideas that align with my research interests and that I believe are feasible for completion. However, this list is not exhaustive and it can be a starting point for discussion of other projects. If you have any idea that you think might be appealing for me, please don’t hestitate to contact me so that we discuss it.
If you know me a little, you know that I have a deep interest in philosophy. Not only that I like philosophising about things, but I actively try to learn more about it and its history. I started reading History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russel this year for instance, a bit endeavour that will probably take a whole year to complete. But that’s just one example.
A long time ago, I discovered a pretty nice podcast on philosophy for beginners. It started as an experiment in 2013 from its creator Steven West and it still goes one after 5 years and 123 episodes. The quality is not always great, but what I appreciate about it is the down to earth, honest take on some of the most important philosophical ideas of humanity. The guy also has a great sense of humour and puts a lot of effort in explaining things with every day examples.
One of the concepts that I had to use constantly during my research, but never really manage to get my head around, was the concept of transformations represented as matrices. It was something I was not formally taught and ended up being forced to use and understand in a slow and painful way. And I finally managed to grasp it when I would least expect it: when I had to teach it to others! (This is one of the aspects that I really love about teaching btw.)
Since I started working on the BETER REHAB project, I decided to use ROS as the central platform to implement all the logic for the controller of the robotic arm. This was due to two reasons: a) ROS is considered a MUST for anyone doing robotics and b) I really wanted to learn something new (those that know me can understand that this is a very big motivation for me).
ROS (standing for Robotic Operating System) is a centralised system for running multiple ’nodes’ that talk to each other using ’topics’. Each node can decide which topics is it interested in and to which topics does it contribute with information. This is a very flexible system that allows to run nodes that focus on doing one job well (following the UNIX paradigm). And since it supports different languages (e.g. C, Python), it allows bringing together the powers of different systems and combining them. And of course, there is a hugo community of researchers and hobbyists using ROS and contributing with tons of packages.
Once I heard the news about the research grant that I obtained, the first thing that I really wanted to do was to create a website for the project. This way I can communicate the purpose and results of the project to the broad audience and try to make research open and more inclusive.
Today I can finally say that I have the first version of the website ready! You can visit it here. Even if not all information are there yet, the basic elements are in place. I just need to keep posting my progress and any results I might have :)
During one of the last laboratories of the semester, I had a pleasant surprise coming from my students: they had elected me as their favourite professor from their four year of studies. It was a very weird moment for me, as during that lab I was quite angry at them, since we had to stay over hours to finish their projects. But it was definitely something that helped me feel better afterwards :)
Wow, it seems like I skipped one month (March), but that’s no excuse for why stopping the series all together. So, what did I learn last month? Here’s a list on the top of my head:
That’s something :) Excited to see what will I learn in May!