Martin Skrodzki

Background

Martin Skrodzki is an Assistant Professor with a special focus on education at the Intelligent Systems department of the faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science. Martin has a background in mathematics and computer science, with a special interest in anything to do with the intersection and interplay of these different but closely related disciplines. For instance, from both a research and education perspective, Martin is highly interested in illustration, that is, any one way a mathematical idea is given physical form, through e.g. computer visualization, 3D printing, or the use of virtual reality. This is why, in his own education, Martin often makes use of visualizations, introducing his students to the wonderous world of experiential mathematics.

Towards IDEE 

When Martin first heard about the IDEE theme ‘Retention of Knowledge and Skills’, he felt a strong connection to the theme. Something that Martin notices frequently is that students struggle to retain, transfer and apply knowledge and skills that they have acquired during previous BSc courses in later courses of their program. For instance, all students of the BSc Computer Science and Engineering take the course Linear Algebra. But when asked to apply what they have learned here – in a course such as Computer Graphics – they ask questions the very answers to which they have studied but mere months before. Martin sees IDEE as a wonderful opportunity, not only to investigate this phenomenon in an interdisciplinary and interfaculty team of colleagues, but to use this to improve engineering education at large at TU Delft.    

As part of IDEE 

“IDEE connects very nicely to my interests in both research and education. I have done quite a lot of work on mathematical illustration and its use to enhance students’ mathematical understanding. IDEE is an avenue to further explore the relation between mathematical illustration and its impact on students’ learning experience and outcome.”  

Did you know that ...? 

• Martin loves working on interdisciplinary projects such as IDEE. In an interdisciplinary setting, everybody speaks their own language as it were, namely the language of their own discipline, and it can be quite a challenge to find and create a common ground from which to work together effectively. Whereas this might be tiresome to some, Martin in fact very much enjoys the challenge of finding the right words and translating between different contexts.  

• Martin has already published several articles in the field of research on teaching and education. See for instance:  

• Martin Skrodzki and Henriette Lipschütz. “Vector Fields and Paul Klee – A Summer School Course for Gifted High-School Students.” Proceedings of Bridges 2020, 2020, pp. 246–253.  

• Martin Skrodzki, Ulrike Bath, Kevin Guo, and Konrad Polthier. “A Leap Forward: A User Study on Gestural Geometry Exploration.” Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, 13(4), 2019, pp. 369–382. 

• Henriette Lipschütz, Martin Skrodzki. "Graph Theory and Arts: A Course Retrospective", Proceedings of Bridges 2023: Mathematics, Art, Music, Architecture, Culture.