I never imagined that my childhood ‘experience’ with Play-Doh will be useful one day!
My friend and I tried to do facial re-construction of a human face from a faux skull using clay during the forensic biology session at WISE 2023 hosted by Murdoch University.
WISE 2023
Women in STEM and Entrepreneurship is a Government initiative and this 2023 session was at Murdoch University. Girl students from adjacent high schools were invited for this event and I went there with my classmates.
Session 1
The first session we had was a lecture ‘My Journey Through Careers in STEM’ by Dr Lechi Vo. She explained how her career changed into STEM as a psychologist.
Session 2
The next session was a robotics class using Sphero Bolt Coding Robot. Sphero is a robot in the shape of a ball that can be controlled by coding. Using the Sphero app on a tab, we all managed to play a game of tag!
Session 3
In the third session, Bonnie Eivers taught us how forensic scientists can recreate the face of a dead person from the skull to solve crimes and historic puzzles. It was an interesting experience to roll, spread and shape the clay on the skull to reconstruct a face.
There are different techniques to reconstruct parts of the face. We can identify the gender and race of a person by looking at the specific features of the skull.
Session 4
The last session for WISE 2023 was a Q&A with Bonnie Eivers (Genetics and Molecular Biology; Forensic Biology and Toxicology) and Amy Henderson (Bachelor of Marine and Environmental Sciences). We all got to ask questions and listen to the inspiring stories from them.
I also got some goodies from Murdoch university including a tote bag, a pen, note book, beanie and a sunglass.
Overall, the program was very informative and enlightening to me. I’m sure that the lessons learned will help me in my future career, whatever that will be!