Impact in 60 Seconds 2019: Results!
Last week, we held the Impact in 60 Seconds Competition Finals and Awards Event at the Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT), and it was a joyous occasion as the 9 entrants were able to see their films exhibited on the big screen in front of an audience that included both friends and family…and our judges: UofG alumni Carla Brown, PhD, founder of Game Doctor, and Gerry McCusker, founder of Dog Digital; Professor Kevin O’Dell, Dean of Public Engagement; and Dr Jane Draycott, Lecturer in Classics.
After the showing of the videos, the judges deliberated while the audience voted on their favourite to decide the People’s Choice. This was followed by a talk and group discussion about impact led by Carla Brown (@Sci_Game_Girl) and Kevin O’Dell. After that, it was the time everyone was waiting for: announcing the winners.
Some fabulous prizes were up for grabs: £400 Amazon Gift Card for the individual winner; £100 to Little Italy for the winning team and 1-year GFT membership for each team member; a 1-year GFT membership for the individual runner-up; and £50 to Little Italy for the People’s Choice. And the winners were….(drumroll please).
Individual Winner: ‘The Art of Reconnection’: Engaging vulnerable young women in arts-based adult learning - Nic Dickson, COSS, School of Education
Individual Runner-up: Understanding the weight loss journey - Meigan Thomson, MVLS, Institute of Health & Wellbeing, MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit
Team Winner: Attack of the friendly robots - Team SoBots, COSE and MVLS, Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology
People’s Choice: From Ice Buckets to Cure: The Challenges of MND - Bethany Waddington, MVLS, Institute of Molecular, Cell and Systems Biology
Congratulations to the winners, and job well done to everybody who entered the competition with their informative, engaging, and creative videos!
All of the competition entries can be found on Youtube by searching for UofGImpact 2019.
The winners’ videos are embedded below.
Losing a small amount of weight can help people to improve their health. In NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, weight management programmes are used to teach and support groups of people to improve their health and wellbeing by teaching them about healthy diet and exercise, building the skills needed to maintain a healthy lifestyle and providing support. These programmes have high success rates, but many people still either drop out of the programme or do not reach their weight loss goal. My research aims to understand the factors which impact whether someone will be successful.
From your Alexa system to your Roomba vacuum cleaner – we are already sharing our everyday lives with many different robotic companions and various forms of artificial intelligence. But what happens if these robots look and act like you and me? Social robots are designed to provide economical care, companionship and support. But do we experience these encounters as truly social events? Does our social brain spring into action when we collaborate with a robot on a task? #TeamSoBots investigates what effect interacting with robotic friends has on our thoughts, feelings and behaviour – and how these change over time.
Motor Neurone Disease (MND) is a fatal disease affecting the neurones (cells of the brain and spinal cord), which carry electrical signals to the muscles of the body to allow us to breathe and move. Thanks to the Ice Bucket Challenge, MND has been given the attention it rightly deserves. Here, I aim to shed light on the challenges faced by those of us researching MND and what techniques we are using to better understand the role of protein recycling, with the aim of developing new treatments for Motor Neurone Disease.