What is the topic of your PhD project and how does your work look like in practice?
The topic of my PhD project is the embodiment of tools and prostheses and how they are represented in the brain. To study this topic, we use exoskeletal fingers which make your fingers longer. As I only recently got started, I have mainly been working on designing my first experiment in which people will point to locations on their unseen finger and exoskeletal finger in VR. By fitting Bayesian models of position estimation, I aim to derive the precision of postural priors that people have on their exoskeletal finger, and how priors change with usage.
What did you want to be when you were younger?
When I was younger, I dreamt about being a game developer, but also thought about becoming a doctor. Around the age of 15, I fell in love with AI and how AI could be used in the context of prostheses. This led me to do both my bachelor’s and master’s here at Radboud. It’s only now that I realize that I am becoming exactly what I dreamt of when I was young; I am designing game-like experiments to answers questions about perception in prostheses, and if I successfully complete my PhD trajectory, I will be a doctor. So, I suppose I always wanted to be a researcher, I just didn’t know it yet.
What aspect of your job do you excel at?
I always want to understand every underlying concept fully before I apply something or dive into more complex topics. This means I spend a reasonable amount of time just conceptualizing things I read and trying to verbalize formulas to understand what every symbol contributes. This can be a time-consuming endeavor, but I believe a solid foundation is required to support the building of knowledge.
What does your perfect weekend look like?
Every Saturday morning, I go play squash with my best friend. We play squash twice a week, it’s a great way to get some exercise, catch up and have a lot of fun! I often leave cleaning for the weekend as well, so there go my Saturday mornings... The remaining time has to be divided over other things that I love to do, such as playing games with my partner and friends, working on small projects, and hanging out and watching movies. In other words, the perfect weekend would be a longer weekend to have time for all hobbies.