The 21st Science Festival, themed around light and optical technologies in the daily lives of people, ran from 9 to 22 March. The main psychology events took place on Saturday 14 March, with the Department throwing open its doors to welcome crowds of enthusiastic visitors of all ages. Many members of Department, including undergraduates, graduates, research staff, and academics, got involved, making the most of this opportunity to talk about their work with members of the public.
In addition to a range of fun and educational hands-on Seeing and interacting with our world activities, there were three lectures on that day. Professor John Mollon gave a talk on colour perception, Dr Andrew Welchman presented a lecture on how people perceive the visual appearance of objects, and Dr Charlotte Lee and Dr Karen Campbell gave a talk on artists whose work reveals an increase in creativity with age. Professor Melissa Hines appeared at the Cambridge Union with the comedic songstress, Helen Arney, In her element, that evening.
On Friday 20 March, Professor Barry Everitt gave the Cambridge Neuroscience Public Lecture, entitled Brain mechanisms of drug addiction: are abstinence and prevention of relapse realistic treatment goals?
For more detail on this year's Science Festival at the Department, see Brianne Kent's guest ScienceGrrl blog post.