S2 Ep11: Resolution

TRANSCRIPT

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
ucl, people, touch, project, episode, podcast, synapses, technology, talked, plants, interview, patient, surgery, years, work, research, beards, tooth, guests, wooden structures
SPEAKERS
Professor Carey Jewitt, Cassidy Martin, Dr Owain Rhys Hughes, Professor Anne Young, Dr Susan McGrath, Mr Manish Chand, Lili Golmohammadi, Theme music, Professor Andrew Coates, Dr Michelle Heys, Professor Helge Wurdemann, Cassidy, Dr Simbarashe (Simba) Chimhuya, Dr Emilia Molimpakis, Cerys Bradley, Dr Sarah J Young, Dr Seb Coxon

Cassidy Martin  00:02
Hello, I'm Cassidy and welcome to the final episode of series two of Made at UCL the podcast. This podcast explores the world of UCL through the groundbreaking research and vital community work conducted by our staff and students. 

Cassidy Martin  00:22
Over the past year, we have made 10 episodes exploring 10 different themes and spoken to 34 guests about everything from teaching Spanish to elderly people over Zoom to saving the planet from climate change to anti-racist initiatives in universities. I have met some incredible people and learned a lot, not just about research at UCL, but about myself and how I understand the world. 

Cassidy Martin  00:50
To round up the series, I sat down with our producer Cerys Bradley, and we talked about our experience working on the project and shared some updates from a few of the inspiring guests that I've gotten to interview over the past year. We were able to hear from some of the researchers who have huge breakthroughs, and from those whose research is still stalled because of the pandemic. We also talked about some of our favorite stories, and the things we've learned from being part of made at UCL, the podcast.

Theme music  01:20

Cerys Bradley  01:27
So what we want to talk about is kind of how things have been going, since we've recorded all of these episodes, and what kind of research projects and kind of innovations that we've heard from from all of these amazing people at UCL are still happening. So have you had any updates from anyone who are like continuing their their research?

Cassidy Martin  01:47
Yeah, we've had a few updates recently. So we have Anne...

Professor Anne Young  01:52
Hello, my name's Anne Young and I'm a professor at the Eastman Dental Institute.

Cassidy Martin  01:58
So Anne was actually creating like a dental implant, a new one, it's like a new form of doing it that that fits in the tooth and makes it much easier...

Professor Anne Young  02:07
If you have a normal composite for an adult, you just fill the hole that you've drilled. So you've taken out all the decayed tissue, and you just fill it up with this composite, the difference that we've done is we've made small modifications, that actually mean that the composite will penetrate into the tissue that's actually diseased. So you don't have to remove it. So you can leave it in place, you don't have to drill it out, the material penetrates in, fully stabilises, it makes it strong again, makes it so that the decay process stops, it totally surrounds the tooth structure, seals it and converts the tooth back to its original shape, its original function, looks exactly like the original tooth. So it's much better for children because it's so much quicker to place. No drilling, no anesthetic.

Cerys Bradley  03:04
This was back in episode three?

Cassidy Martin  03:06
Yes, that's right, and at that time, I believe she had said that it was they were hoping to get it out, like possibly start being used in like three months. But then because of COVID and everything just kind of got pushed back. It's still, it's still in progress, though. So there'll be a phase two clinical trial coming up. So there'll be access for 90 patients at UCL to see how well the long materials stay in place and then they'll be submitting paperwork to ethical committees for permission to undertake the study, hopefully in the next couple of weeks. So that's very exciting. I would be so sad if this project didn't go through because I [laughing] I personally have had some dental work done, which is not fun. And so I think it's such an amazing thing that she's created and I think so many people could benefit. Obviously, so many people could benefit from it. It's it's a big, big improvement in the dental industry, so yeah, I am excited to see where this goes. And hopefully it'll create some momentum now.

Cerys Bradley  04:25
Yeah, because so many so many people weren't able to go to the dentist. In COVID, I got my first ever filling, which I'd never had one before. It was very stressful. And then all of the dentists were closed because no one could get any PPE like, all the dentists around me weren't able to reopen. So I had to wait like a week with this huge hole in my tooth and it was so painful and there must be loads of other people who have kind of like unchecked things because they weren't able to go to their regular dentist appointments. So it feels like if there was ever a time to get a really quick or relatively painless way of doing fillings it is definitely now after two years of all of us letting our teeth decay.

Cassidy Martin  05:05
Yeah, absolutely. I had the same problem I didn't, I didn't get a filling I had to get a root canal. But you know, filling a root canal, they have to put those shots in your mouth. I don't know about you, but I am terrified of needles. I can't imagine how terrifying that would like be for a child as well like.

Theme music  05:19

Cerys Bradley  05:25
Anne's project is one that like was really, really dramatically affected by COVID. Can you remember any projects that we kind of talked to people about who had their work disrupted by COVID? But then that actually ended up not really being a good thing, but like, did any... was anyone able to kind of like innovate out of that?

Cassidy Martin  05:43
Yeah, yeah. So Carrey, and Lili,

Professor Carey Jewitt  05:46
I'm Professor Carey Jewitt, I'm based at the UCL knowledge lab.

Lili Golmohammadi  05:50
And my name is Lili, I am a doctoral researcher attached to the IN-TOUCH project at UCL.

Cassidy Martin  06:00
who were working on like IN-TOUCH and Touchy Vocab. 

Professor Carey Jewitt  06:04
Well, the ultimate goal of the IN-TOUCH project is, well, there's a few. One really is to kind of get a sense of the technology that might remake what touch is. So it's... at the moment, there's, there's a lot of computer scientists, engineers, and human computer interaction designers really galloping along, pushing the boundaries of what digitally mediated touch can be. And so ultimately, our goal is to have a conversation with the design of future digital technologies that involve touch. 

Lili Golmohammadi  06:41
Touchy Vocab... it's one of a set of resources that I've been using in my research into loneliness and touch. So it's a vocabulary that's kind of formatted so that it can be printed as a series of sticky labels, but it's divided into two parts. So on the one hand, you've got types of touch and tactile interactions. So some examples might be "elbow", "hug", "poke". And then on the other hand, you've got words that describe tactile qualities and some examples might be there "course", "glassy", "frothy", "earthy", things like that. And the vocabulary is always evolving. And the idea is that it will be shared online as a resource that other people can also add to and build on.

Cassidy  07:35
So the Touchy Vocab one, I remember that it was, it was first an issue because originally it was supposed to be a workshop, and it was supposed to be in person and they started out I think, doing that, at the beginning. So in the middle of them doing the workshops, and like having these like things where they're touching all these things, and doing this, they had to all of a sudden switch it to doing remotely because of COVID-19. And so that put a big wrench in it but it ended up being a really good thing because they ended up figuring out like because people were able to use personal items from home and realise this like connection, people had to like things that they had. And it became like a much more personal project as opposed to just like touching objects that didn't have any significant meaning to them. 

Cerys Bradley  08:17
Do you know where the project is now?

Cassidy Martin  08:18
The IN-TOUCH project is part of like this huge umbrella type thing where they have all these different mini sub-projects going on within it and now they have the new online design tool, Designing Digital Touch Toolkits. So the IN-TOUCH project, which was still like in the middle of COVID, when everything was shut down, and no one could go see their friends or anything unless they happen to really close by and get together outside for a walk, so that whole thing because they studied like digital touch and the use of digital touch and it was like comforting for people like during COVID and I think that's part of why this project, in general has been able to thrive because people were so deprived from touch for so long that especially people that lived alone and away from people they cared about. So they have a new online digital touch toolkit thing that they're working on right now, which is really exciting. But they have like seven new papers or something that came out since the last time we talked and just seem to be doing a whole bunch of things. So they seem to be doing quite well!

Cerys Bradley  09:23
Yeah. And they've also got a cool new podcast, which is all about the interdisciplinary nature of social science, which is produced, produced by me. So this is a little self plug I guess, which is really cool. It's coming out in January and it's kind of looking at loads of different researchers at UCL who are combining different disciplines like coding and anthropology and all these different areas with social science and kind of helping that to grow both the discipline that they're working in and social science 

Cassidy Martin  09:55
Nice!

Theme music  09:55

Cerys Bradley  10:02
So speaking of how COVID in a way, interrupted things, I got an update from Susan, who people might remember from the episode that we did about Recovery, which was episode nine...

Dr Susan McGrath  10:15
I'm Susan McGrath, and I have two roles at UCL: as an academic at the Institute of Education, but across the university, I think I'm probably better known by an informal title, I seem to be the UCL community gardener [laughs]

Cerys Bradley  10:33
And I got a little update from her, just to say that they've got a new team of volunteers and so it sounds like they've been really busy, they have had to cut out all of this dead wood from trees and shrubs that haven't survived without being watered when campus was locked down. And they've actually found during this process, they've actually found some plants that have grown from where seeds from like the original plants in the garden had germinated. And so they cut back all of this dead wood being like, "oh, no, we're getting rid of all of the garden," and then they found all of these new seedlings and things. So that's really cool. And then in Sarah's garden, which was the one that we talked about being the memorial garden, actually, quite a lot of the planting has survived, but it has been quite badly impacted by strong winds, which have damaged a lot of the wooden structures. So Susan has kind of reframed this as an opportunity for volunteers to develop their woodworking skills. So they can start replacing some of those wooden structures and building some more kind of housing for the plants and things. They're planning their final gardening session for 2021 and they're going to be planting lots of spring flowering plants, and bulbs, and just starting the cycle all over again, which I think is really cool. And we've got some photos, which are on the website so you can see some of the volunteers hard at work in the garden. And you can still sign up to volunteer, you can do that by getting in contact with with Susan, and maybe join, join in time to plant a whole bunch of spring flowering plants, which I think would be nice. 

Cassidy  12:10
Yeah, that sounds that sounds like fun, too. And that's really - I think it's really cool that they saw new things plant and like start to grow after COVID and being left alone for so long. I guess nature takes over and then they decide its own type of strategy. [laughs] I'm curious to see like, what kind of plants did grow like, what what were the things that like the new stuff that was growing?

Cerys Bradley  12:33
I don't know enough about plants. What I can tell you is that there are some plants with some green leaves [laughing] does that narrow it down for you?

Cassidy Martin  12:45
Yeah, there's not a lot of plants with green leaves, so that helps [laughs].

Theme music  12:48

Cerys Bradley  12:57
So have you have you heard back from any other projects? Any other updates?

Cassidy Martin  13:01
Yes, yes, yes, yes. So Helge who was also in episode one of our podcast...

Professor Helge Wurdemann  13:08
I'm Helge Wurdemann, I'm Associate Professor of Robotics working in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UCL.

Cassidy Martin  13:16
So they've been working with Naked Prosthetics.

Professor Helge Wurdemann  13:19
Naked Prosthetics is a US company who do body powered partial hand prosthesis. So they look into protheses, when you only lost part of your hand, not your entire hand, so part of your finger for instance, and they develop devices that can be attached to the remaining stump, and then be actuated, not by electronics, but by other movements of the body. So they are entirely mechanical devices. So they have now agreed to provide us with a number of prosthetic devices that will be fit to patients that are suitable. And we will be then integrating our haptic feedback system to try out in the real world, how our haptic feedback system works. And it's even more exciting to see that we are now working with these industrial partners who also believe that this could be beneficial for patients that their devices are made for. So that is very much the latest update and that is happening at the moment. So I'm waiting almost every day that there should be something arriving at UCL, abody powered prosthetic hand from Naked Prosthetics, and very unexpected because that is not was not the plan, but it is a very nice addition to the project.

Cassidy  14:43
It's amazing this idea of like this body powered prosthetic because you think of something that's sensitive to touch, and that is able to work with just connecting to certain parts of the hand and then it's able to move and touch because you always think of that, I don't know I always thought of that as like electronic which I guess it has been in the past, but that they're able to do that through just like connecting with the body. That's just so cool. I don't know, I'm so amazed by all of his work and the soft haptic project and all of that that's going on.

Cerys Bradley  15:13
That story kind of reminds me a bit of the Mission to Mars story that we covered in the episode about Mars, except it's kind of the opposite, because they're waiting for this thing that they've built to be sent off into space? That was episode six and we talked to Professor Andrew Coates, who was describing the Rosalind Franklin...

Professor Andrew Coates  15:33
I'm principal investigator of the PanCam instrument on the ExoMars, Rosalind Franklin rover, which gets to Mars in 2023. We proposed that instrument in 2003 and we've been been working on it since then, you know, getting the technology right, building it and getting to the state it is now and ready to go to Mars. So we're launching in September, next year, September 2022, and then landing on the 10th of June 2023. So that is the date for the diaries. So with that, we hope to get the first UCL images from the surface of Mars.

Cerys Bradley  16:07
They spent all of this time, like the project, they've been working on the project for years and years and years and years. And then they've made this bit of equipment, and then it's being sent off. And I guess it's kind of like, it's a similar but the opposite kind of excitement for this new technology, which is going to arrive because of these people that you've met who are kind of working on a similar kind of thing.

Cassidy  16:24
And then they're just waiting for it to launch. And then if it launches, like because they don't know what's gonna happen, like, is it gonna make it there? Is it gonna, everything gonna, like work properly? Is it you know, and you put years of your life into that, and then so many hours in time, so that's, that's exciting, but also, like, terrifying, you know, you just want it to work so bad and I imagine it well, but you never know with these things. And then also, like, I don't know, you get to know those people as well that you're working with for so long. And you're like, in it together and then you're done.

Theme music  16:53

Cassidy  16:59
It has been great to hear from some of our guests to see how their projects have continued to develop since recording their episodes. But we also wanted to give you a little behind the scenes look at our own experience of working on the podcast.

Cerys Bradley  17:14
We met through this project sort of around this time last year. So I was brought on as a producer, because I've been working on the Coronavirus podcast. And then we had to choose a host. And we actually had loads of people apply, which was really cool. What made you apply to be a part of the project?

Cassidy  17:30
So I applied for this because I'd worked on the podcast previously. So the summer actually, before this season started, I had done the last two episodes - I was Assistant Producer for and I really enjoyed working on it and it kind of like aligned with this idea of something I wanted to do, which was to make research more accessible. And I had such a good time working on it, that I when I saw that a host position was open, I thought I I'd go for it. And also because I hadn't been a host before so it was an opportunity for me to try it, try it out and see. See how I like it?

Cerys Bradley  18:07
Was it what you expected?

Cassidy  18:08
I didn't know what to expect, really. I thought it was gonna be more intimidating talking to academics, but but it wasn't really. When you think of interviewing academics, especially these people that have gotten into these, you know, amazing positions and to have very prestigious kind of stuff that they have done but but they're all just people, you know what I mean? So like you talking to them, it's not, it's not as intimidating as you think it would be. And actually, you know, a lot of times they are nervous talking to me like because they're being on a podcast and maybe they haven't done media before or they have but they don't enjoy doing it or whatever and I find that endearing like and I also love like when I'm able to make someone that was nervous about doing it like that. They've said afterwards "oh, actually, you know what, like, that wasn't so bad and like I actually enjoyed that and that was fine like..." that always makes me like feel good. Like okay, I've done my job. I was able to make you feel comfortable and you were able to like talk about your work in a way that you felt confident about.

Cerys Bradley  19:12
Do you have any favorite interviews where either the kind of like the subject or the person the way that they were talking about it you were like, "oh my goodness, I did not know this, this is incredible!" or...?

Cassidy  19:22
Yeah, so Manish, who was in the Save Us episode, episode four...

Mr Manish Chand  19:29
My name is Manish Chand, I am Associate Professor of Surgery at UCL and Consultant Surgeon at University College London Hospital. 

Cassidy  19:38
So they use AI technology to do this very like intricate kind of surgery that's to get rid of bowel cancer.

Mr Manish Chand  19:48
Currently, how we work is that the patient is surrounded by the robot which looks like a big spider sort of coming down on top of it with multiple arms, and I may be in an adjacent room. So I'm at a remote distance. And what we've tested now the use of 5g surgery, and how we can use telecommunication technology to enhance our surgery. So in reality, if I wanted to, not that we were anywhere near doing this or would want to do this, I could be sitting in London and I could be operating on a patient in New York. I mean that that technology is there, and we've tested it and it works.

Cassidy Martin  20:27
And the use of AI in surgeries and stuff is scary, I don't know, just talking about it and not knowing anything about it sounds like very scary? But after talking to Manish, I'm very like pro using AI technology and surgeries. I mean, the way that they're able to do such precise cutting and I mean, you have to be precise when you do these kinds of things and it's so tiny. They're just able to do such a precise job and it saves people's lives. And it's amazing that they can also do it, the other thing was talking about doing it from afar. So you could be like in another country and like be performing surgery on someone which of course that is a big deal if the area that you're performing in doesn't have a particular surgeon that can do that kind of stuff. So I am all for the advancement in technologies and surgery. What about you?

Cerys Bradley  21:27
I had the exact same reaction to quite a few of the medical stories that we kind of covered. So when we interviewed Michelle and Simba about Neotree...

Dr Michelle Heys  21:37
My name is Michelle Heys, I am an Associate Professor in Community and Population Child Health at the Institute of Child Health at UCL.

Dr Simbarashe (Simba) Chimhuya  21:46
My name is Simbarashe Chimhuya, I'm a pediatrician, and a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe, in the faculty of Medicine and Healthcare Sciences.

Dr Michelle Heys  22:00
My main project is the is the Neotree, which I've been leading as Principal Investigator over the last seven years,

Dr Simbarashe (Simba) Chimhuya  22:08
I've been involved in the Neotree Project as a Principal Investigator for Zimbabwe for the past three years, since 2018.

Dr Michelle Heys  22:19
There were so many electronic healthcare record systems that ask for data to be collected by healthcare professionals at the bedside. But the Neotree aims to actually use those data at the bedside to improve care.

Cerys Bradley  22:33
And then interviewing Owain in the Recovery episode about Cinapsis...

Dr Owain Rhys Hughes  22:36
I'm Owain, I'm an ear, nose and throat surgeon, and I'm the founder and CEO of Cinapsis. Very simply Cinapsis is a communication platform that makes it easy for clinicians to communicate with one another and share information. Before Cinapsis, what would happen is that the patient would be sent into a hospital or sent to an outpatient clinic with Cinapsis, they can right there and then, they can get advice from a specialist.

Cerys Bradley  23:02
And then most recently, in the last episode about awareness and activism, your interview with Emilia...

Dr Emilia Molimpakis  23:10
My name's Emilia Molimpakis, I did a PhD and a postdoc at UCL, which I finished about a year and a half ago now and there my specialty was cognitive neuroscience and linguistics. And I am now the CEO of Thymia.

Cerys Bradley  23:27
About creating a video game designed to identify depression.

Dr Emilia Molimpakis  23:32
So for instance, you go to your GP you express that you're feeling low, and they'll say... they'll typically ask you, okay, on a scale of zero to four in the past few weeks, how sad have you felt? How tired have you felt? These questions haven't actually changed in decades, they've been the same since the 60s, some of them have been used since World War One, which is quite shocking. And so that's where Thymia essentially consented to address this issue.

Cerys Bradley  23:56
The thing that I think that I took away from all of those stories was not necessarily that like they created or were working to build this cool new thing that was solving a problem, which obviously is amazing. But something that came out of all of those stories was the way that medical developments seem to work where people seem to be really stuck in like "this is the way that we have to do things" and how much it seems to... how difficult it seems to be kind of like to break out of that thinking. And so you have to be able to see that something is not right and then you have to come up with an innovation. And then there's so much work that goes into convincing other people that that innovation is going to save lives. Everyone kind of had to talk to all like told us about their kind of journeys of trying to persuade people that this incredible, groundbreaking piece of technology was really, really necessary, which we're just hearing the tail end of it so we're like, of course, of course this is amazing. But they've had to do so much work to convince people that they need to adopt it and it was that kind of like way of thinking every time it surprised me. But now like looking back at it, we just we heard it again and again and again.

Cassidy  24:57
Yeah, no, it's amazing what these people are also like able to come up with and I guess it's also because they're doing something that no one has ever done before or even thought about doing before. So it's this completely new concept, which is difficult for people to sometimes get on board with, because it's a risky thing, right?

Theme music  25:16

Cerys Bradley  25:25
Was there, was there a story that we covered in the series that like changed your opinion about something?

Cassidy  25:30
Yeah, Saheli definitely changed my opinion. So she was in episode five, the Cost of Freedom...

Dr Seb Coxon  25:38
My name is Saheli Datta Burton, and in my research, I look at the politics and economics of science and technology.

Cassidy  25:48
So she talked about how like, all all those Bluetooth things that you have in your home, including Alexa can be hacked, and they can be manipulated. She also talked about like children's toys as being one of those things. So it was all very scary, honestly, because she just made me think of things that I just, I don't know, I guess I was just really naive about I didn't know that I use, you know, different Bluetooth things, you know, I have Bluetooth headphones, for example and now I get creeped out because for instance, like every once in a while, I guess, the headphones, I'll hear them, like go off or something like randomly or like start saying something? And I'm just like, uh, somebody's messing with it is somebody like hacking into my headphones. But I don't know why anybody would hack into the headphones like what they can get from that. It's just now I'm like a paranoid person after, after listening to that, not to say that, like the information that they shared was not important information to know, because it definitely is and I've definitely told people to listen to it, because I'm like, "you need to understand that this is a risk and this is the problem." But yeah, it's definitely made me more paranoid in general [laughs].

Cerys Bradley  27:08
I kind of feel like that is exactly what Saheli wanted. In the interview, she talked about, like just wanting people to like really understand what the technology is doing. So I think... I'm hoping secretly, she'll be kind of pleased that she's planted this seed of doubt in your mind and now you're like questioning everything.

Cassidy Martin  27:26
[laughing] Did it - I mean, I guess you, you know, you studied that in school, cybersecurity and so forth, so it wasn't like a surprising topic for you? 

Cerys Bradley  27:35
Well, I mean, it's one of those topics, isn't it? Where, and they just keep coming up with new ways of doing terrifying things like the story that Saheli told about the children's toy and how, especially now that everyone's working from home, like if you can hack one of those, you can hack into people's quite secure networks. I was like, yeah, that was a lot. But I love that whole episode. I thought the interview was Sarah Young about the Russian Prison was so interesting. And I like actually went away from it being like, right, I'm gonna go read a whole bunch of these books that she's mentioned, cuz she talked about them in such a way that made them sound so, so much more readable than I ever thought that Russian literature would sound. It's definitely one of the episodes that really stuck out in my mind.

Cassidy  28:17
Yeah, no, absolutely. It's not something that I would have ever thought to read about or had like, particularly, you know, but but but she, she definitely got me interested in that.

Cerys Bradley  28:28
And I loved how like relevant, she was able to make it to life now. I thought the stuff that she was talking about, about how like Russian Literature, it kind of has this history of being written in prisons, which is quite grim, but it means that for like modern activists now, there's this kind of like resource. And so I've always thought of it as something like really abstract and entirely separate from like modern life. But it was really, really interesting to see how she's like, "no, it's really important that we study it now," and obviously has written this book...

Dr Sarah J Young  29:04
My book that's coming out is called Writing Resistance, Revolutionary Memoirs of Shlissel'berg Prison 1884 to 1906

Cerys Bradley  29:13
so that we can kind of understand more modern treatment of prisoners and things. So that was really interesting. These are the kind of things I think these stories really changed my opinion, because obviously, my back background is kind of more science based. But then there was this interview, there was the interview that you did with Seb Coxon...

Dr Seb Coxon  29:29
So I'm Seb Coxon. I'm a member of the German department, which is part of this bigger School of Languages, we call it SELCS and my speciality is Medieval Literature and that's what I do my research in.

Cerys Bradley  29:42
about beards in medieval Germany.

29:46
There's this fabulous German heroic epic. It's a kind of like the German equivalent to what you might say, Homer or Beowulf in in Anglo Saxon, and I've taught this text for a number of years. My questions always been at that point in the class what do you think the point of referring to the beards is, so I started doing that in that class and then because I did it in that class, I kept on noticing whenever beards were refered to another stuff I was teaching. So it's actually because it became a kind of habit of mine, almost like a running joke. You know, I'm going to ask this class about beards in this story and see what they say.

Cerys Bradley  30:19
The idea that that would in any way, be relevant to my life. But it was such a great conversation, because I remember you're talking about kind of your own drag background and that was a bit that I was really sad that we couldn't fit into the actual podcast. But it's yeah, that conversation made against something that I would think would be like, so far from being relevant to my own life, actually, something that I would now like to read a book about medieval German beard representation or descriptions.

Theme music  30:49

Cassidy  30:56
So one thing that we did with each of our guests is we had like a theme question that we would always ask our guests. So if you've been listening, you've noticed, we have that. We'll ask like, what does this theme mean in relation to your work? So our theme for this episode, is evolution. So what does evolution mean to you in relation to this podcast?

Cerys Bradley  31:21
I think that I've definitely gotten better at editing in the past year. So I think that for me, evolution is like, improving, and learning new things and kind of being inspired by the people that we've talked to, to try and do things differently every time and crucially, see what works and what doesn't work, and then take the things that do work on and like the kind of feedback and advice that we've been given from people who've listened to the podcast, and friends and stuff. That is what I would say evolution has been in the context of this podcast. What does evolution mean to you?

Cassidy  31:57
Yeah, I guess yeah, I guess, you know, it's been the same for me, because I never hosted anything before this. And so it was a learning process and interviewing people was a learning process as well, because I I didn't know what I was doing when I started out. I've learned, I've been evolving. I feel like as I've gone through as we both have, we've been in this evolving process. So that's been cool and then also just evolving people's work. So this episode, we've been able to see how or talk a little bit about how some of the research has evolved and how people have either you know continued to progress and what they were doing or like as offshoots into other things.

Theme music  32:39

Cassidy  32:46
Well, that's a wrap for this year from me, Cassidy, and our producer Cerys and the team here at made at UCL. We wish you all happy holidays and don't worry, Made at UCL will be back next year to bring you new breakthroughs, discoveries and innovations that help people and the planet.

Cassidy Martin  33:15
Thank you for listening to Made at UCL, the podcast. To listen to previous episodes or find out more about life at UCL, visit www.ucl.ac.uk/made-at-UCL, or subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast. 

Cassidy Martin  33:35
This episode was presented by me, Cassidy Martin and produced by Cerys Bradley. It featured music from the blue dot sessions and additional sounds from freesound.org 

Cassidy Martin  33:45
You also heard the voices of Sarah, Anne, Carey, Lili, Susan, Helge, Manish, Phillip, Seb, Michelle, Simba, Owain, Aaheli and Emilia. Thanks to all our guests across the series for their time and expertise. 

Cassidy Martin  34:04
This podcast is brought to you by UCL minds, bringing together UCL knowledge, insight and expertise through events digital content and activities that are open to everyone. I hope you enjoyed listening as much as I enjoyed interviewing our guests each month. 

Cassidy Martin  34:21
Thanks again for stopping by. Take care of yourself