In April, School for Talents welcomed 33 new participants from a diverse range of disciplines to the annual program 2024/25. This year’s theme “Expanding Realities – New Visions” provided a great pathway to collaborate with SimTech and VISUS on two occasions during our Explore Module. At both events, participants received valuable insights into how technological advancements and AI are changing our perceptions of day-to-day life.
On 26 April, our kick-off-day, our students not only met each other for the first time and learned about the program during the year ahead, they also got to enjoy a workshop on “Simulated Reality – Analyzing Flooding Scenarios in a Sandbox”. SimTech’s Junior Professor Marco Oesting, Institute of Stochastics and Applications, and doctoral researcher Oliver König, Institute of Applied Analysis and Numerical Simulation, designed this first workshop of the season. The interactive, fun-packed session focused on the usefulness of simulations, and explained which uncertainties should be taken into account when making predictions about the future. Students were able to experiment with what they had just learned by trying out how flood scenarios can be analyzed with the help of simulations. For this purpose, the SimTech team had set up a real-life sandbox at Eulenhof (IBZ). In small teams, our participants challenged each other, trying to save penguins from a simulated flood wave that threatened their ecosystem in a real-time simulation. Only a few penguins got wet feet while participants had fun experimenting and asking questions!
A follow-up workshop on 13 May was a great opportunity to build onto the sandbox learnings. Again, thanks to the support from our colleagues at SimTech, we were able to visit the group of SimTech PR Michael Sedlmair, Visualization Research Center of the University of Stuttgart (VISUS). Sebastian Rigling and Tobias Rau, Doctoral researchers at VISUS, gave insights into the “Real-world Application of Augmented and Virtual Reality Research”. After an informative introduction to the topic, which catered perfectly to our group from different study fields, students were able to test out VR and MR equipment themselves. Anastasiia, a Bachelor student in software engineering, summarized her main takeaways for us:
“I was very intrigued by the idea of using VR and MR in education over time. I find it easier to comprehend everything through practice, and I believe it provides excellent opportunities to enhance engagement in subjects that require a lot of visualization in the mind, such as analytical geometry or chemistry. For example, one could "touch" molecules or observe physical phenomena on specific models without any harm to health.”
Thanks to everyone involved for making these two events possible, and for providing the grounds for research based learning, opportunities to get answers from experts directly, and to experience research in action.