Al Sadiq College students visit MARCS Institute

The MARCS Institute recently hosted visiting students from Al Sadiq College, Yagoona as part of the STEPS@UWS program. 

STEPS @ UWS is a Widening Participation program at UWS which partners with high schools across Greater Western Sydney and works with students in Years 10–12. 

Around 50 students visited the MARCS Institute's Bankstown labs on Thursday 12 March, where Dr Marina Kalashnikova demonstrated some of the research conducted in MARCS BabyLab. 

Dr Kalashnikova is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Speech and Language (S&L) program, and the MARCS BabyLab Leader. 

Her research focuses on the early processes of lexical acquisition, and the relationship between early linguistic, social, and cognitive development. 

Marina discussed MARCS BabyLab and the type of research and equipment that is used in our world-leading research facility, including the variety of techniques and state of the art equipment such as behavioural paradigms, eye tracking, and electroencephalography (EEG). 

Marina used slides with images and videos of experiments, and also showed some equipment first hand. She explained to students how this research could relate to degrees within UWS, and how it might relate to some subjects in high school. 

The aim of the visit was to provide Western Sydney high school students with a small glimpse into some of the facilities at UWS, opening their minds to different options to studying, and showing that there's facilities at UWS to help with research. 

Visit the MARCS BabyLab website for more information on this research.

A selection of photos from this visit can be viewed below.