Summer school students from Singapore visit CATCH

During the last two weeks of June, engineering students from the Ngee Ann Polytechnic  in Singapore have visited the University of Sheffield to take part in a summer school under the theme of “Transforming Society”. A group of 5 students chose to work with computer science lecturer Dr Heidi Christensen from CATCH on a project concerned with using assistive technology to help people with dementia. They were attracted to this idea as it was “a project with a heart”, as one of the students put it.

To help the group get a feeling for the difficulties of designing assistive technology, they visited local company KingKraft where they were shown around and heard more about the challenges faced by companies in this market.

Summer school participants being shown around KingKraft by director, Tom Harrison

The students also visited the CATCH HomeLab where they got to meet and discuss their ideas with CATCH researchers and students.

On the final day, they presented their work and ideas to the academic leads and the industry advisers using slides, a video and a report. They received a lot of positive feedback for their highly motivated, enthusiastic and excellent work. Hopefully the week in Sheffield will have inspired them to pursue a career in assistive technology and perhaps one day come back to visit Sheffield and CATCH.

Summer school participants listen to CATCH researchers present their work" and "Summer school participants discuss their ideas with Jochen Farwer

Written by Dr Heidi Christensen