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Linda Bush '85 Helps Students Understand Chemistry through Holograms

October 22, 2018 By Chloe Berger
Linda Bush '85

Linda Bush '85
Linda Bush '85, director of STEM, Nursing, Business Studies, and Program Development for Smarthinking, Pearson’s online tutoring service, was recently profiled by the company for the work she's done with "mixed reality."
 

At Pearson, Bush helped create a HoloChemistry app. The app works with HoloLens, which she describes as "a special set of glasses or goggles through which you can see the world around you, but with two additional features: little cameras on the front that map the contours of objects in your environment and allow you to control the device with hand gestures, and transparent screens in front of your eyes on which holograms can be projected. Those holograms seem to actually take up space in your environment. While wearing the HoloLens, the holograms have presence in your world and you interact with them as though they are real physical objects."

Bush, who majored in chemistry at Bryn Mawr, brought this HoloLens technology to campus, where students participated in focus groups and tested their mixed reality programming skills.

From the article:

"Once they had HoloLens devices on campus, the instructional technology team at Bryn Mawr really made the most of them. Students jumped into the project with enthusiasm. There was tremendous interest in students learning programming and coding for mixed reality. Because of Pearson’s partnership with Microsoft, we were also able to sponsor some on-campus internship experiences. We learned a lot about app design from things the students built into their creations.

"It was very empowering for those young women to have a hands-on experience with cutting-edge technology. It meant a lot to them to know that they were among a relatively small number of people worldwide who have used and developed content for HoloLens. It also meant a lot to me and the whole Pearson team to be able to share our work with them."

Read Chemist Linda Bush on mixed reality and changing the way people learn on the Pearson Education website. 

Department of Chemistry