After achieving a first in Robotics from Reading University, and completing a scholarship with Google, Miles Aubert is off to the USA. Twenty -year-old Miles has been awarded a further full scholarship – worth $80,000 – from Google and Duke University North Carolina to do a PhD.
While at Duke, Miles will work as a research assistant in the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory at Duke, and will be working with Professor Missy Cummings. During the next seven years, he will have the oppourtunity to travel all over the world visiting other universities, research institutes, companies and the Google headquarters in California.
This latest scholarship will see Miles specialising in mechanical engineering, materials science, and intelligent systems. As part of his PhD. he will specifically be researching ‘the brain and boredom’, looking into blood oxygenation and re-engaging a person’s attention in driverless cars. Miles explains, “we monitor activity in a person’s brain and, when they are bored, re-engage them to improve reaction times.
“The research can be used in other applications. We will study people who are not doing anything and then have to react very quickly in a high pressure situation.”
Miles, who attended Brentwood School from 2004 to 2011, has both dyslexia and dyspraxia. In 2013, he beat 2000 other applicants to win the Google Europe Scholarship for Students with Disabilities. He was one of the youngest winning scholars as the award was open to students enrolled in Bachelors, Masters or PhD programme at universities across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Miles starts his PHD – at Duke University in North Carolina – in August.
