Discipline-hopping internships

2014 cohort

Deborah Thorpe

Deborah has a background in medieval literary studies and history. She is jointly supervised by Professor Linne Mooney at the Centre for Medieval Studies and Dr. Stephen Smith of the School of Physics, Engineering and Technology. The project is titled, 'Tracing Executive Function Impairment in the Handwriting of Medieval Scribes'. The internship involves researching the effect of neurological disorders on the handwriting of modern-day people and learning how to use optical character recognition and evolutionary algorithms to identify similar features in the work of medieval scribes.

The internship gives me the opportunity to apply electronics methodologies to the study of historical handwriting in a way that will enhance our understanding of the expression and experience of neurodegenerative disorders.

Bartek Walus

Bart has a background in musicology and film music composition. He will be supervised by Dr Sandra Pauletto and Dr Amanda Mason-Jones in the School of Arts and Creative Technologies and Department of Health Sciences. His project will involve using sonification design and film music techniques to communicate health risks.

I have always been fascinated by relations between music and health. This internship offers me the opportunity to extend my skills and understanding of data sonification and chronic illness epidemiology, which will help me in building a career in interdisciplinary research.

Ryan West

Ryan has recently completed a PhD in Biology and is moving into the Department of Psychology for this project which will be supervised by Professor Alex Wade from Psychology and Dr Chris Elliott from Biology. Using Drosophila melanogaster as the foremost genetic model organism, this project looks to dissect the genetic causes of Parkinson’s disease and the visual defects that have been reported in patients. To do this we shall develop methods of measuring visual responses in both flies and patients, allowing for the development of improved assays for screening Parkinson’s. 

This position provides a unique, early career, opportunity for me to learn electrophysiological techniques required for the study of neurodegeneration whilst gaining experience working both with model organisms and patients.