• Question: How did you come up with such good ideas

    Asked by tree022egg to Tom, Sanjeev, Orla, Fiona, Eimear, Cillian on 8 Mar 2020. This question was also asked by ring022end.
    • Photo: Sanjeev Kumar

      Sanjeev Kumar answered on 8 Mar 2020:

      When I started my research, the first thing I did was to identify the area of research interests. This was done by reading related books, literature, and articles.

      I summarized all my findings gathered from various resources and brainstorm my initial ideas with my supervisor, colleagues and friends. This helped me identify a particular problem that I thought could be worthwhile for further research. In my case, the problem was to improve the wireless communication range of wearable devices for healthcare applications.

      Once the problem was identified, I did further literature study. During this process, I kept looking for the solutions that are already available, and what new things I can do to further improve the performance.

      I made a list of possible solutions that I thought can be implemented to improve the performance of the existing solutions. Then, I started implementing my ideas one by one. It is imperative to mention that it was my third idea that actually worked out. Thus, from my experience, I will suggest that you should not take your first idea for granted and always have a backup idea in case your first idea does not work.

      All the best.

    • Photo: Cillian Thompson

      Cillian Thompson answered on 9 Mar 2020:

      The way that research works is that you start reading about all the main problems that exist for a certain topic, for me its in broken bones and the use of purely metal screws made from Titanium or Stainless Steel. Then you look to see what other people have done in that area and from that you could see what has not been done and then you have to ask why some things have not been done, sometimes you won’t get an answer so you just have to try it yourself. The good ideas really come after 10 bad ideas, as in normally you won’t come up with the best idea at the start of your research it usually comes after you’ve had some bad ideas that won’t work and you just improve them or change them and you end up finding a brilliant idea!

    • Photo: Eimear O'Hara

      Eimear O'Hara answered on 9 Mar 2020:

      For my research, the company I work in collaboration with came up with the original idea for this project. Based on that, we discussed the different areas we could look at. Even though we had a clear plan at the start, things never go to plan so we’ve had to change things around. This meant we discovered new things that we hadn’t considered at the start, and happened a lot in my previous jobs!

    • Photo: Fiona Malone

      Fiona Malone answered on 9 Mar 2020:

      Usually I’m given a problem or a project idea at the start, like with the swallowing robot. I was working with a company that needed a robot to test out their devices to treat dysphagia, a medical problem where the patient cannot swallow their food properly. However to come up with how the robot would move and mimic a human swallowing required me to do a lot of research and try out lots of ideas at that start. I showed them lots of different designs with the biosimulator robot, from using magnets, to using electronics. The company then would get back to me to say which ones they liked and which ones they didn’t.

    • Photo: Orla McGee

      Orla McGee answered on 10 Mar 2020:

      By continually trying and learning new things and working with lots of different people with different strengths to look at a problem in different ways.

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