Sarah studies unheard-of things
Former Komanian at cutting-edge of technology
ARAH, daughter of Llewellyn and Christine Maclean, has won a prestigious award in Europe in a most unusual field.
Having completed her schooling at GHS in 2013, Sarah went on to the University of Cape Town where she got a bachelor’s degree in mechatronics engineering which is a combination of electrical and mechanical engineering.
She said, “Engineering is a great path for anyone who enjoys maths and science, but also likes to be creative. As a post-graduate I am doing a master’s degree in biomedical engineering. This is a mixture between engineering and the
Smedical field. I love the bridge between engineering and medicine and hope to carry on working on innovative medical technologies when I have finished my studies.”
She was selected to attend the Medical Imaging Summer School (Miss) which is a conference-style summer school held in Favignana, Sicily. The focus is to train scientists how to use deep learning (a form of artificial intelligence) specifically in medical imaging.
Medical imaging is the science and technology to acquire images of the human body (either as a whole or in parts) for clinical interpretation or interventions. Talks were delivered by world-renowned experts from both academia and industry, who are all working closely at the interface of medical imaging/deep learning.
Attending the school were 150 students from all over the world. There was a mixture of master’s students, PhD students, post-doctorates, senior researchers (both academic and industrial) and other academic and industrial professionals.
Sarah was one of two students from South Africa. The other was Jean-Rassaire Fouefack who is a PhD student also at the University of Cape Town.
As a participant, Sarah had the opportunity to present her own research which is on a mobile phone-based Latent Tuberculosis Infection detection method in which, basically, patients can send a photo of their eye to their doctor and he can work out what medication is required based on that. She won the award (cash and a trophy) for the best presentation at the conference.
She is also working on other, similar projects.
The conference lasted a week and she had an extra week to travel in Italy, but is now back at work in Cape Town.