Abstract

Astronomy is usually thought of as a mostly visual science, but for the purposes of public engagement and widening participation it would be useful to be able to rely on more than just one sensorial modality of interaction. In my public engagement work, I have experimented with non-traditional channels to reach audiences that go beyond groups already interested in science and astronomy: art and science collaborations, a book about cosmology written using only the most common 1,000 words in English ("Universe" is not one of them!), and interactive workshops designed for the public to engage actively with ideas often perceived to be remote and challenging. In this talk, I will present the ongoing collaboration with chefs at Kitchen Theory, aimed at developing a multi-sensorial approach to talking about astronomical and astrophysical phenomena. Our "g-astronomy" programme is aimed at ultimately offering a multi-sensorial dining experience centered on astronomical ideas. Until now, we have worked with London's Science Museum and the Royal National Institute of Blind People to develop food-based metaphors for the multiverse, the early universe, dark matter and dark energy. Our primary objective is to talk about science in a way that speaks to the heart (and tongue!) of people, not just their mind. I will share challenges and successes, chart the way ahead and look for feedback and suggestions from the audience.

Short Bio

Roberto was born and grew up in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland. After obtaining an MSc(hons) in Physics from ETH Zurich and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Geneva, he moved to Oxford where he was the Lockyer Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society at Oxford University, and a Junior Fellow of St Anne's, before being appointed as a Lecturer at Imperial in 2008. He's now a Reader in Astrophysics (equivalent to Associate Professor).

Abstract

In everyday life, humans perform various tasks that can be described in terms of the rules that specify how to perform the task. In simple situations, a single rule may suffice to achieve our goal; however, more difficult tasks require multiple rules organised in hierarchies. While an individual can perform some action plans alone, more complex tasks require interaction with other people. Task rules are not intrinsic to the human brain; people learn rules constantly, by discovering regularities in their environment and identifying the course of action that leads to outcomes matching their goals. In this talk, I will present some of my studies investigating how task rules are represented in the human brain. I considered task sets with a hierarchical structure to identify neural representations of rules from different levels. Then, I explored task encoding when people interacted to achieve a common goal, to pinpoint neural representations of tasks performed by either the subject or their partner. Results showed that task rules were encoded within the frontoparietal control network, with no difference between rules from distinct hierarchical levels. Regions within this network encoded also information about the task assigned to either the subject or their partner. However, task information was encoded in different brain networks depending on whom the task was assigned to. Finally, I will present results from my recent work on rule acquisition showing that the amount of information available in the environment affects learning and determines how outcome value is encoded in the brain.

Short Bio

Doris Pischedda is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, where she is currently investigating how humans represent the value of choice outcomes. Beyond decision making, her research interests include cognitive control, reasoning, and strategic as well as non-strategic behavior during social interaction. In 2014, she received a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from the University of Milano-Bicocca with a thesis on rule-guided behavior investigating where and how rules are represented and processed in the human brain. She carried out her postdoctoral research at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin under the supervision of Prof. John-Dylan Haynes, investigating neural representations of collaborative tasks. Then, within a project funded by Prof. Aldo Rustichini from the Department of Economics, University of Minnesota, she explored how game variables are encoded by the brain during strategic interactions.

Abstract

As a designer, how do I apply speculative future thinking to my research (project) on emerging food culture and technology? How are designers inspired and able to test their ideas through the process of fast and dirty prototyping? In this talk, I will be sharing my future food design project "Protein Fantasy", about how I explore the design language through context design and food prototyping, and how I extend the possibilities of research and technology through design.

Short Bio

Yunwen Tu (Tutu) is a San Francisco based experience designer whose passions are the future of food and education. Tutu seeks ways to push design boundaries through her work envisioning how the food of the global diaspora will be impacted by environmental, socioeconomic, political, and technological trends. Tutu has collaborated with social mission restaurants Perennial and Don Bugito on reducing the environmental impacts of the food we eat. Tutu's work has been featured in design exhibitions at the local art and science museums in the USA. See for more details: tuyunwen.com

Abstract

One key aspect of self-consciousness is the experience of being or having a body. Bodily experience is often approached from the perspective of multisensory integration, as illustrated in the now-famous rubber hand illusion. At the Sackler Centre, I have been working on several experiments using the state-of-art virtual reality technologies to investigate the embodied experiences of selfhood, such as body ownership and the feeling of agency. In this talk, I will first talk about the cardiac rubber hand illusion experiment, in which we found the visual feedback of our own heartbeat projected on a virtual hand induced the body ownership on the hand. Next, I will talk about our recent experiment investigating the intentional binding effect, an implicit measure of the feeling of agency, with a virtual hand setup. We found the intentional binding occurs by just observing the hand movement in the realistic virtual environments, even in the absence of the intentional action. Time permitting, I will also briefly introduce other VR setups I have developed.

Short Bio

Keisuke Suzuki obtained his Ph.D in Artificial Life from the University of Tokyo in 2007. He stayed as a research fellow in RIKEN Brain Science Institute, working on human cognitive functions in virtual reality environments (2008-2011). Here, with his colleagues, he developed a novel virtual reality system called Substitutional Reality. In this setup, people believe they are experiencing real-world scenes even though they are just exposed to pre-recorded ones. In 2011 he joined the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex as a post-doctoral research fellow. Keisuke's research focuses on the study of consciousness in terms of embodied cognition, investigating ideas like body ownership, feeling of agency, sense of presence, etc.. His approach builds on state-of-the-art virtual reality setups for the study of conscious presence and the bodily-self, complemented by theoretical modelling of embodied self-consciousness.