Apurva Srinivas

Reliable and enthusiastic Masters' graduate in Psychology with the aim to employ the skills learned from the first degree of biomedical engineering. Aim to develop further expertise in the cognitive neuropsychological aspects of individuals and varied cognitive mental disorders alongside increasing social awareness regarding mental health.

I completed an internship with "Volunteering Matters", the UK-based Non-profit Organization for the project titled "Clackmannanshire Befriending Project". The internship involved working with a vulnerable young person (aged 8 to 18 years) for a specific period of time and trying to mitigate their reason of distress. I got the opportunity to work with a 10-year-old ADHD young person for a period of 8 months. Throughout the whole process, I have trained appropriately on topics such as child protection, child abuse, sensitive information disclosure, confidentiality, etc. This made me gain experience in understanding the child protection laws, establishing good communication with the young people, performing active listening, forming a strong foundation with vulnerable children for them to speak confidently, etc. 

From the year 2020, I'm involved in a student-run initiative titled "Nightline" at the University of Stirling. Nightline is an anonymous listening service that offers a safe platform for their in-house students to express their emotions due to varied sensitive issues, academic peer pressure, etc. The students interact with trusted volunteers who remain anonymous throughout. The volunteers will undergo detailed training on how to deal with different types of calls (For e.g. listening calls, sexual assault calls, etc.,), protocol to follow during emergency situations, provide temporary intervention serviced for students with history or prevailing mental disorder, etc. In addition to this, I remain one of the core committee members and look after the IT and Information Services of the association. My responsibilities involve maintaining a database for volunteers, scheduling their shifts, assisting in monitoring the training and welfare of volunteers, managing the official website of Stirling Nightline, etc. I have been involved with Nightline for more than a year and the service remains a major turning point in my career. I gained experience in dealing with sensitive issues such as sexual assault, domestic and child abuse, depression, anxiety, suicide, etc. The platform enabled me to gain skills such as non-judgemental listening, being empathetic towards people, being non-directive, etc. 

My recent experience is working as a project intern in "The Banyan - Mental Health Center, Chennai" for a study that investigated the impact of COVID 19 on homeless shelters for vulnerable children and adults in Chennai. The project required me to travel to a number of homeless shelters in Chennai and assess the psychosocial impact of COVID 19 on the management, livelihood, and education of vulnerable homeless children and adults. The survey made me gain practical first-hand experience in interacting with rural and homeless children, adults, trauma-affected women, and elderly, etc. My responsibilities included conducting different qualitative techniques of data collection such as semi-structured interviews, surveys, group discussions, etc. with the in-shelter occupants regarding their plight during peak months of COVID; Audio record interviews and group discussions for documenting responses accordingly; Assist in analyzing the collected responses to determine the appropriate statistical analysis to be performed; Collect feedback from shelter coordinators regarding the way data collection took place. In addition to this, I was involved in conducting support group sessions regarding trauma and care for NALAM social workers (A unit of BANYAN). The sessions involved educating the local social workers regarding trauma and its characteristics. Initially, a survey was conducted to assess the existing knowledge of participants regarding trauma before proceeding with group sessions. I assisted in developing some interactive methods of making the workers understand trauma in general from their own past professional encounters. These involved conducting Just a Minute (JAM) sessions, trauma recovery activities, etc. The group sessions personally made me learn some deeper insights regarding varied traumatic events such as domestic abuse, child abuse, bereavement, etc.

On the technical side, I have experience working with statistical analysis tools, namely SPSS, R studio, etc, and mixed methods analysis software such as NVivo. My UG thesis titled "Analysis of EEG Signals for different Hand Movements" and Master’s Dissertation titled “Investigation of Joint Action Planning in Human-Robot Interaction” helped me gain experience in working with EEG and MATLAB data processing software. The studies introduced me to varied statistical analyses such as t-tests, ANOVA, Principal Component Analysis, Correlation, etc. Additionally, I possess working proficiency in Hindi, Tamil, and English Languages with a beginner tag in Kannada. I am passionate about learning new languages and completed A1 in German. I started my pathway in research in 2018 and the projects I have worked on so far made me learn to manage to work in a collaborative environment. My publications equipped me to develop good reading and writing skills. 

I did my bachelor’s in biomedical engineering with my mainstream of interest as Cognitive Neuroscience. My passion and inquisitiveness towards exploring the human mind and the psychosocial aspects associated with it enabled me to have a career shift from Engineering to Psychology. This took me to the University of Stirling, Scotland for the M.Sc.,Psychology (Conversion) course.