S³ 2024

Satellites might be hard to spot, and we tend to forget about them, but they have significant importance in our daily life. From weather forecasting to GPS, from enviorment and agriculture monitoring to emergency response. But how do they get up there? Rockets are the first answer that comes to mind, but thrust on its own is not enough. Orbital mechanics is the science that studies how gravity affects the motion of objects in space, this knowledge allowed us to use gravity to our advantage, rather than fight against it. A key subject in orbital mechanics is the movement between different points in space, by choosing timings and maneuvers the same movement can come at very different costs both in time and money. Understanding these concepts is fundamental for the operations of any of the satellites that constantly affect our lives.

In this project you will learn the fundamentals concepts of orbital mechanics. Starting with geometrical and physical parameters of the orbits and how the launchers affect them, you will then understand different ways to change those parameters. The objective is to come up with different sequences of maneuvers to perform orbital transfers and learn how to discuss and compare the results. By doing so you will also gain valuable knowledge about coding that is fundamental to run various calculations and visualize what you're learning.

Ever wondered why some things are just so hard to quit, like that cup of coffee in the morning or endlessly scrolling through your phone at night? That's the addictive power of habits at play, and it's not just about substances and routines; it's about how our brains latch onto them, driven by intricate processes involving dopamine, the 'reward' hormone, and neural pathways that reinforce our cravings. Studying addiction is relevant because it's all around us, influencing how we live, what we do, and even how we think. Our addictions are steered by cognitive and neurological processes and companies exploit these mechanisms to shape our behaviour and habits. Understanding the neurological foundations of habit formation, including the role of neurotransmitters in reinforcing addictive behaviors, gives us greater influence over our actions so that we can make more intentional choices.

As we dive into this project, we'll peel back the layers on why we do what we do, turning our everyday actions into a fascinating exploration of the human brain and behavior. You won’t just be learning the theory, but also exploring the real-world implications of addiction and how it touches every aspect of our lives. We'll start by covering the theories of addiction, habits, and behavior and delve into how they are linked to the brain and dopamine release. Then, we'll design and conduct our own experiment to uncover which reward system is most addictive. Afterwards, we'll employ statistical analysis, a critical step that will allow us to sift through our data, uncovering patterns and drawing scientifically valid conclusions. This project, combining neuroscience, cognitive science and statistical analysis will demonstrate the importance of interdisciplinary approaches in modern science. [Project image is generated by DALL·E]

The climate crisis, caused by human-made CO₂ emissions, is already creating noticeable devastation to our global ecosystems and quality of life - arguably the most pressing problem of our generation… It’s up to your collective young minds to solve it! One promising technology that has been buzzing around the last two decades is one called “Carbon Capture and Sequestration” or CCS for short. The idea is simple: capture all the CO₂ before it enters the atmosphere and permanently store it underground - easy! 
 
But can it be as simple as placing a “net” at the end of the exhaust pipe? In this project, you will learn firsthand what it takes to remove CO₂ from an exhaust stream by building your own CO₂ capture unit and more importantly how to calculate its climate change impact. By the end of this project, you will be able to make your own judgement of the capability of CCS and take your first steps in the fight against climate change! 

Computer Vision and Machine Learning are two important fields of Artificial Intelligence. Computer Vision focuses on deciphering image content while Machine Learning attempts to extract knowledge from large amounts of data with the goal of creating models that can perform useful tasks in everyday life. The two fields are closely related as the integration of Machine Learning approaches lead to significant breakthroughs in many Computer Vision challenges. A crucial task within Computer Vision is classification, where we expect a model to sort new images into a predefined set of classes. There are many potential real-world applications of such models in a variety of fields such as autonomous driving, online commerce or industrial quality assurance. They are also likely to find their place in medicine in the future, where they may be used for detecting illnesses from different types of medical imaging such as MRIs, CT scans or X-ray images. Just recently, an AI tool has successfully identified signs of breast cancer that have been missed by doctors (read more here).

In this project, we will cover the basics of machine learning and image processing and combine the two to perform image classification. We will train simple image classification models and test their performance on expected inputs. We will look at existing datasets for medical imaging and apply our models to them.

Oomycetes are fungus-like eukaryotes that pose a significant threat to freshwater environments as they can infect freshwater animals like crayfish and salmon. Salmon farmers have reported up to 50% of their stock being lossed due to infections by Oomycetes. Conventional methods of controlling such infections often involve using harmful chemicals. One such chemical is a cheap organic dye called malachite green which is currently banned in most states for use in aquaculture due to its toxic effects on human health. As with most things, in our search for a safer and environmentally friendly alternative, we can turn to nature to look for a solution. As it turns out, some bacteria found on freshwater fish and crayfish have the ability to inhibit oomycete growth. Although there is research into what specific strains of bacteria have this ability, how they inhibit Ooymcete growth remains unclear.

In this project, we aim to use simple molecular techniques to try and characterize the substance or substances that cause the inhibition of Oomycete growth. We will learn how to prepare culture media for Oomycetes. We will learn how to isolate bacteria from freshwater samples. We will learn how to prepare culture media for bacteria. We will test different components of bacterial solutions for the ability to inhibit Oomycete growth. We will use a polymerase-chain reaction to isolate and amplify the 16s rRNA from bacteria. We will also use phylogenetic tree construction to try to identify the isolated bacteria.