Pembroke College, Oxford

We hope you're jumping for joy! 🥳

Many congratulations to everyone who received their A-level results today!!

If you'll be joining us in October, we'll see you very very soon 🤗

Don’t forget to wear your eclipse glasses later! 🌒😎

Pembroke Professor Ben Davis and his consortium, ECLIPSE, had a perfectly timed meeting in College today.

They work on integrating biosensing, chemical logic, magnetic actuation and AI-assisted imaging to achieve minimally invasive, autonomous intervention within confined anatomical spaces!

A new approach to singing training developed by Pembroke lecturer and alumna Nicola Harrison has resulted in her founding a new singing school, The Embodima School.

When we sing, we activate approximately 100 muscles across our bodies. Nicola's new methodology underpinning Embodima uses movement, gesture and visual images to help singers coordinate and synchronise the complex muscular systems involved in singing. These gestures and neurological cues create new motor memories that enable singers to sing with freedom and physical authenticity.

Working in collaboration with anatomists and neuroscientists at the University of Oxford, Cardiff University and UCH, Nicola has tested and developed the tool with over 100 singing students, including many at Pembroke, where the project began.

Nicola explains: “We cannot elect to activate the muscles of singing voluntarily. The act of singing itself coordinates these muscles and, for this to take place effectively, task-based gestural cues and images can be used. This prompts the brain to orchestrate the pattern of muscle activity required.”

Read more at the link in the comments.

How did Monet's deteriorating eyes affect the way he portrayed the world? And what might his paintings tell us about his ageing eyes?

In 1912, Monet was diagnosed with cataracts. This made blues and violets harder to see, affecting the way he painted as his vision got worse. By 1922, he had become essentially blind in one eye and had to stop painting. He finally agreed to have cataract surgery in one eye. Now, Monet complained that everything appeared too blue through his operated eye and too yellow through the other!

Professor Jack Werner, who visited Pembroke last year as part of a Fellowship funded by The Leverhulme Trust, studies human vision and how it changes across the life span. You can read his full article on the science behind Monet's ageing eyes in our Pembroke Arts Magazine at the link in the comments.

🎨 Impression, Sunrise, Claude Monet, 1872, oil on canvas

Pembroke Fellow Professor Ingmar Posner and his team at the Oxford Robotics Institute recently showcased their fascinating research to the public at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition.

They demonstrated how Oxford researchers are developing intelligent robotic systems that can match the coordination, precision and control of human hands so they can be used in the manufacturing industry.

The team introduced the public to Frank, a dual-arm robotic manipulator used to train world models that allow robots to perceive and understand their environment and assist humans in manufacturing settings.

Visitors had the chance to use a controller to stack blocks in a simulation environment and thus get a better understanding of the remote operation platform used to control Frank.

‘Robot manipulation remains one of the frontier challenges in robotics, and people are often surprised by just how difficult seemingly simple tasks are for robots,’ shared Professor Posner. ‘This is why it’s so important to bring robots out of the laboratory and into direct contact with the public.’

You can read more about the work of the Embodied Intelligence team from Oxford Robotics Institute at the link in the comments.

Image credit: The Royal Society

King James and Professor Furger getting acquainted and King Ian looking over his kingdom 👑