Profile
Gustav Markkula
My CV
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Education:
1985 – 1993: Swedish “grundskola” (age 7 – 15), Södra Vi / Åtvidaberg, Sweden
1994 – 1998: Swedish “gymnasium” and French “lycée”, Åtvidaberg / Vara, Sweden and Carpentras, France
1998 – 2004: MSc studies, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden
2010-2015: PhD studies, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden
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Qualifications:
1997 French Baccalauréat (STEM specialisation)
→ taught me French which I have used a lot in international projects later on1998 Swedish high school diploma (STEM specialisation)
→ got me into my engineering MSc programme2004 MSc in Engineering Physics and Complex Adaptive Systems
→ got me my first full-time job, in Volvo research and development2015 PhD Machine and Vehicle Systems (thesis: “Driver behavior models for evaluating automotive active safety: from neural dynamics to vehicle dynamics”)
→ allowed me to transition more fully into cross-disciplinary psychology/engineering work, and got me my job at the University of Leeds -
Work History:
2000 – 2003: Software Developer (part time), Enera International AB, Gothenburg, Sweden
2004 – 2015: Systems Engineer / Project Manager / Technology Specialist, Volvo Technology / Volvo Group Trucks Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden
2015 – now: Associate Professor / Professor, Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds
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Current Job:
Professor (Chair in Applied Behaviour Modelling)
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About Me:
Behaviour+maths researcher and embarrassing dad. I love hanging out with my family, thinking, reading, drawing, cooking, and lots more.
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I live in Leeds with my wife, two kids (a girl of 10 and a boy of 6), and our bearded dragon Peachy. Originally we are from Sweden, where I worked as an engineer at Volvo (a car/truck company). We moved to the UK six years ago, when I got my job at the University – and we really like it here! If I was to do something else than research – maybe I’d make computer games? And I like playing games too – lately me and my kids have played a lot of Minecraft.
Here is me trying to do some online teaching – but Peachy wants to be a part of it too.
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Think for a second about what you do when you want to walk across a road with cars. You look to both sides, and when you see that it is safe, you cross. But how exactly do you know that it is safe? If you think about it, it’s quite hard to tell! In some way, your brain uses the information it gets from your eyes, and turns that into a decision to start walking. My research is about trying to figure out how your brain allows you to do that sort of thing: Crossing a road, riding a bike, driving a car…
This can be helpful in some different ways: For example, if we can understand why humans sometimes make bad decisions in traffic, then we can use that to try and make roads and cars safer for everyone. And if we can understand how humans are able to drive or bike or walk even in very complicated situations, then we might use this to teach self-driving cars (robot cars) to do the same – because right now there is a lot they can’t do!
My specialty is to describe these kinds of behaviours using maths and computer programs. Just like a physicist might use maths and computer simulations to describe for example the movement of a planet in space, I use maths and simulations to describe human behaviour. Humans are a little harder to predict than space rocks though!
To collect information about how humans behave in traffic, I often use simulators. In Leeds we have some really nice simulators, for example this is our driving simulator (there’s a car inside that big golf ball):
and this is me testing out our pedestrian simulator (walking simulator):
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My Typical Day:
A perfect research day involves me sitting in my armchair reading, thinking hard, doing some maths, and then programming it all up into a simulation of behaviour on my computer, to see if what comes out looks like human behaviour. But on most days there’s also a lot of meetings and email to deal with! 😀
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The first thing I do at work is often to spend an hour or so reading. Being a scientist is a lot about keeping up with the latest stuff that other scientists have done, in my case for example some new cool maths describing human behaviour, so I can maybe put some of their maths in my own work.
Then I will probably have a few different meetings with PhD students or researchers that I work with. For example, we might discuss the results from our latest simulator experiment, or plan what to do next in our research.
One of the meetings might even be in a simulator, to test our next experiment. We carefully create different traffic situations that we are interested in, such that people can come to our simulators and experience those situations. And when they do, we can observe and measure exactly how they behave.
Then I will maybe have a couple of hours to myself, to think and do my maths, and program my little pretend humans in my computer. I will check if they behave like I have seen the real humans do in our simulators. Or I might write for a bit on a report describing my latest results, so that other researchers can read about it and use it in their work.
Finally, I will hurriedly try (and fail) to respond to all of the emails in my inbox, before I run off to pick up my kids from school.
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What I'd do with the prize money:
One idea I had was that I could maybe use it to pay for renting a bus+driver on one or more occasions, to allow kids from local schools in Leeds to come visit and test our simulators at the University?
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
engineer turned behaviour-researcher
What did you want to be after you left school?
I was hesitating between engineer or psychologist
Were you ever in trouble at school?
No not really... I was probably a bit of a teacher's pet actually
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Classical music (like Bach!) and electronic dance music (like The Prodigy!)
What's your favourite food?
I'm a huge fan of Middle Eastern cuisine, like falafel and hummus and such
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
End wars, end global warming, and then five hours each day where the world would just stop and I could do all the fun stuff I want to do!
Tell us a joke.
Two balloons were crossing a desert. The first balloon said: Watch out for that cactus! The second balloon said: What cactusssssssss
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