Information School Represented at Mind Investors Event at Festival of the Mind

As part of the University of Sheffield’s Festival of the Mind event, Sunday 28 September will see the Mind Investors event take place in Sheffield city centre.  This event will see researchers pitch their ideas to an audience who can quiz the researchers on their proposals, make suggestions and vote for the projects which they think are most interesting, valuable and deserving of investment.

Dr Jorge Martins of the Information School will be taking part in this event and will present several projects which he is currently involved in as part of the Sheffield Crucible programme:

'If Sheffield stones could talk’ – The people of Sheffield are emotionally connected to the buildings in their city.  While some of them have been transformed or disappeared, their memory remains.  This project is developing a mobile application that allows an augmented reality experience of some the city's disappeared built heritage, enriched with the living memory of its citizens.

‘Find my migraine' – This project aims to create a smartphone app for migraineours to record daily activities and correlate those with their migraine attacks and migraine relief.  The app will send information to their GP, create graphs, and can be used to monitor and hopefully help prevent future attacks.

'Demystifying Bitcoin' – If you have ever wondered what Bitcoin is, how it works and if it is safe, this project will answer these questions.  This public information project will show the public how it works, explore the perspectives of business, regulators and consumers, and expose the pros and cons.  The impact on Sheffield businesses will be examined in the project.

'Research for the People' – While research funding ultimately comes from the public, they don’t decide how it is spent.  The vision of this project is a social enterprise that removes the middle man and lets the public set the research agenda.

'Wonder where are the Ada Lovelace and Marie Curie of our time?' - Gender bias and inequality in the workplace discourage and prevent women from reaching the top professions in science.  This project explores how mentoring practices can help reduce the impact of gender discrimination for those who take a career in science.

'Life with stroke' - The experience of living with stroke is unique to each individual stroke survivor and their family.  As a result of living with stroke, they become experts in their condition.  This project aims to understand the uniqueness of individual experiences of stroke by actively involving stroke survivors as partners in the project. 

The Mind Investors event is free to attend and all are welcome.