Every year, the Incorporation of Hammermen of Edinburgh offers a travel scholarship to an outstanding undergraduate mechanical engineer, allowing a developing young professional to supplement their learning during their normal undergraduate programme. This year the recipient of this award was 5th Year MEng Student Matthew Hislop.
GaLA Conference
The scholarship allowed Matthew to represent the Institute of Mechanical, Process and Energy Engineering's Digital Engineering Research Group at the Gaming and Learning Alliance (GaLA) Conference in Paris in October this year, where he presented his paper entitled €˜Beyond Simulators: Using F1 Games to Predict Driver Performance, Learning and Potential'. At this event he also had the opportunity to listen to presentations from subject matter experts and make valuable new connections.
Analysing the Brain Activity of Formula Drivers
The work outlined in his presentation was based around Matthew's 4th Year prize winning individual project, supervised by Dr Theo Lim and Professor Jim Ritchie and supported by Dr Thusha Rajendran, a Reader in Psychology in the School of Life Sciences. Entitled €˜Analysing the Brain Activity of Formula Drivers', Matthew's project aimed to find neurological patterns present in expert drivers which could be used as a blueprint for finding potential champion racing drivers. The study demonstrated learning across of range of driver abilities and subjects using the Group's Formula One simulator and provided a new means of classifying and measuring driver skill levels. Matthew is continuing to analyse his data and it is expected that at least a further two journal papers will be produced from his work.
Matthew will give a presentation on his experience at the Incorporation's Annual Dinner in April 2014.