SofTMech

CardiARC Zone Saturday 17th September 12.00 - 15.00

As part of the ARCADIA festival SofTMech presented the CardiARC Zone on the
17th September 12.00-15.00 in the new Advanced Research Centre (ARC) at the University of Glasgow. We ran some fun competitions to test peoples' knowledge of the heart. Our Virtual Reality (VR) tours of the heart in the ARC's VR suite proved very popular and we we were sold out.

At the end of May 2022 SofTMech  successfully applied to run an event at the ARCADIA festival.The SofTMech team who delivered the CardiARC Zone was led by Hao Gao, Deputy Chair of SofMech's Training Committee. The team comprised of Research Associates Liuyang Feng and Yangkun Du, PhD students Andrew Brown and Sathish Kumar and Project Administrator Gillian Brown and was supported by SofTMech's Director Professor Nick Hill and Professor Radostin Simitev, Deputy chair of Outreach and Engagement.

Appropriately within the ARC's Atrium we had our hands-on table with heart competitions, including testing your knowledge of the 4 chambers and valves of the heart and guessing the number of arteries and veins in a jar.  Amazingly 3 people guessed the correct number!.  The fastest time to pin all the stickers to the parts of the heart was 20 secs beating a medical student into second place.  Andrew and Liuyang never grew tired of explaining to the children and adults who visited our table (88) how the heart worked prior to them having a go at the competitions.  Within the VR suite Yangkun, Sathish and Liuyang were very busy patiently guiding the individuals and families who had booked the heart tour. The heart was rotated moved and sliced as it popped up within the virtual laboratory; check out images of the event via the link CardiARC Zone

SofTMech would like to thank the organising committee of the ARCADIA festival for giving us the opportunity to present the CardiARC Zone. We would also like to thank all the people you came to our table on the day.  Initially we had also planned an ARCancer Corner at this event but have decided to run this at a future date

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First published: 23 August 2022