On 19 December 2022, our PhD student Maedeh Nasri (MSc in Computer Science) won the Wild Card Award for Interdisciplinary Research by the Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, for her paper on a data-driven approach towards better social inclusion for all children on playgrounds.

Unique to this approach is the attention to and respect for children’s individual differences, e.g. autism or hearing loss (Developmental Psychology and Child Psychiatry). Aiming to welcome and facilitate all children on a given playground, a system was developed to collect sensor data (Computer Science) on children’s movements during their recess. Next, this data was integrated with data obtained from the physical environment (Architecture), the playground policies and culture (Governance), in order to adapt all levels surrounding a child.

With this publication, Maedeh bridges different disciplines and developed this novel approach within the “Breaking the Cycle” project funded by NWO and Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for BOLD Cities.