News and Excursions

STEM Snippets

Our students attended two inspiring presentations delivered by Monash scholars for the last STEM Snippets session of the term. 

Dr Yasith Mathangasinghe, a medical doctor and lecturer from the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, opened a window to us into the remarkable complexity of the human brain. Yasith teaches medical students how the body is brilliantly organised to keep us alive, moving, thinking and feeling. In this session, he guided students through the developing brain using microscopes and human and mouse brain samples, while unpacking why recovery from brain injury remains one of modern medicine’s greatest challenges. His research also highlights the capacity of the brain to reorganise, grow, and form new neural connections in response to learning, experience, or injury (brain plasticity). 

For our final STEM Snippets session, Corey Port, from Monash University's School of Earth, Atmosphere & Environment, took students along on his Antarctic expedition. Corey studies natural archives to decode the secrets of past climate and environmental change, helping us understand how the planet behaved at the end of the last ice age and what those patterns might reveal about our future. He even brought along some of the samples he collected in Antarctica, giving students a rare chance to see real field materials up close.

A fantastic way to end term 2!

~ Yao Cheng