Posted on 6 November 2019
We’re celebrating This is Engineering Day. Together, we’re helping to change the image of engineering.
The campaign, led by the Royal Academy of Engineering, is working to bring engineering to life and give more young people the opportunity to pursue a career that is future-shaping, varied, well-paid and in-demand. The aim is to showcase what engineering really looks like, and how it could be an exciting and rewarding path for young people in the future.
At York, engineering means everything from working to make film more accessible to a visually-impared audiences to helping the residents of Vanuatu make sure that their water is safe to drink.
After studying at York, Dr Helena Daffern is currently a Lecturer in Music Technology in the Department.
Helena’s project Sing From Your Seat aims to give an entirely new user community access to the exciting outputs of the previous Hills are Alive research project. In addition to taking a bespoke virtual reality (VR) experience to care homes in York to engage directly with the new audience of elderly residents, the project will also develop creative and innovative engagements with the care home sector. Find out more.
BabblePlay, an app created by Helena, researchers from York and James Madison University, responds to baby’s vocalizations with fun colourful moving shapes, encouraging babies to vocalise more.
Helena is currently looking to recruit a PhD student to work on the project ‘The role of vibrato in the aesthetic of blended choral singing’. Find out more.
Led by Helena, the York Centre for Singing Science is a cross-departmental research centre exploiting all perspectives of voice research. The Centre aims to strengthen future research and teaching in voice science, and particularly singing.
Feeling inspired?
Thanks to the diverse research strengths of our academics, our undergraduate students can specialise in anything from music technology to medical engineering. They get to work with researchers who are changing the face of engineering, in facilities including an industry-standard clean room and recording studios.
Our postgraduate students work closely with our research groups focussing on communications technologies, intelligent systems and nanoscience and engineering education and management, giving them the opportunity to get-to-grips with a huge range of innovative engineering.
Find out more about the research we’re doing across the department.