For the third consecutive year, we proudly participated in London's Open House Festival. Our open days, Friday September 8th, and Saturday September 9th, once again proved to be a resounding success, offering visitors a unique insight into our world of cutting-edge research.
In the scorching hot weather, we opened our doors to festival-goers, providing a refreshing, solar powered, escape from the sweltering temperatures. Visitors were treated to a wealth of captivating experiences, including a guided tour of the building, an architectural talk by Principal lead Ian Goodfellow who brought PEARL to life, demonstrations showcasing our state-of-the-art laboratory capabilities, and insight in live projects. Attendees had the opportunity to witness first-hand how our expert team of researchers and production specialists work, manipulating every facet of the environment to recreate real-world scenarios.
Making and Production Technician, Ben, demonstrates a reverb chamber using our projection screens and audio system
Guests got to interact with our dedicated research staff and enthusiastic PhD students and even try out equipment, all against a backdrop of Q&A's with the team. This allowed us to both showcase current and upcoming research projects to several groups over the two days, and discuss the important issues we are striving to address through our work.
PhD students Jordy, Julia, and Yitao showcase their projects and how they use PEARL to conduct their research
Our participation in the Open House Festival has become an annual tradition, eagerly anticipated by both the team and the festival's attendees. As this year's Open House Festival draws to a close across the capital, we are already looking forward to next year where we hope to welcome guests once again and share even more of our latest research and facilities. Be sure to mark your calendars for the next edition, where new discoveries and captivating experiences await.
Specialist Lead: Sound, Steve, explains how he creates and uses immersive audio in experiments
A big thank you to all at Open House, the team, and our wonderful PhD students for their work that went into making this year such a success. To learn more about the Open House Festival, which is part of Open City, visit their website at https://programme.openhouse.org.uk/.
By Craig Smith
Community Partnerships and Engagement Team
craig-smith@ucl.ac.uk
Photos by Wenhan Haung