2017 was our 10th anniversary, and we were hosted at Aberystwyth University! Our headline sponsor was Google, who were back for the 10th year running. As a 10th anniversary celebration, an extra social event was held the evening before, featuring an awesome Hackathon run by ScottLogic. We had 205 people registered, and it was a superb day of talks, posters, discussion, networking, and slightly too much cake. You can see a full set of photos from the event on flickr.
Other major sponsors were:
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GE, who sponsored lunch.
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Bloomberg, who were our “Coffee and Cake” sponsor.
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ScottLogic and Thoughtworks, who sponsored the food and the bar tab at our end-of-day social
Speakers:
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Dr Sue Black OBE, Honorary Professor at UCL, founder of BCSWomen and TechMums, and the leader of the campaign to save Bletchley Park.
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Carrie Anne Philbin (Raspberry Pi Foundation) about Finding your Tribe.
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Milka Horozova (Google), a previous Lovelace Colloquium finalist, about career and experiences.
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Christine Zarges (Aberystwyth University) on her research with nature-inspired computing.
Poster contests winners:
The first year contest, sponsored by Google, had the following winners:
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First place (£300) went to Frida Lindblad of Edinburgh Napier University with a poster entitled “Making complexity simple in the world of technology”
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Second place (£200) went to Aliza Exelby of the University of Bath with a poster entitled “An examination of the effects of growing up in a digital age”
The second year contest (also open to students on a year in industry, or in their third year of a four year degree) was sponsored by JP Morgan, and had the following winners:
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First place (£300) went to Elise Ratcliffe from the University of Bath, with a poster entitled “Cryptography for website design”
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Second place (£200) went to Rachael Paines of the Open University, with a poster about “Where’s all the kit gone? Developing a bespoke equipment management system”
The final year contest (also open to students in the penultimate year of integrated Masters, e.g. an MEng course) was sponsored by IBM, and had the following winners:
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Joint first place (£300) went to Iveta Dulova of University of St Andrews with a poster entitled “Mobile device based framework for the prediction of early signs of mental health deviations”, and Hannah Khoo from Greenwich University with the poster “Analysing attacks on the CAN bus to determine how they can affect a vehicle”
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Joint second place (£200) went to Louise North from the University of Bath with a poster about “Optimising the energy efficiency of code using static program analysis techniques”, and Anna Rae Hughes from Sussex Univresity with the poster “Safeguarding homelessness in a cashless society”
The contest for MSc students (or students in the fourth year of an integrated Masters, e.g. an MEng course) was sponsored by Amazon, and the winners were:
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First place (£300) went to Caroline Haigh of Southampton University, with a poster about “Nul points and null values: using machine learning techniques to model Eurovision song contest outcomes”
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Second place (£200) went to Isabel Whistlecroft of Southampton University, with a poster entitled “Can algorithms emulate abstract art?”
All attendees are asked to vote for the people’s choice award by selecting their two favourite posters. These votes are tallied up and the top one from each category won the People’s Choice award.
- First year Annette Reid, University of Bath – “Ada Loved Lace”: how computer science and the textile industry influence each other
- Second year Emma James, University of Bath – Can machine learning trump hate?
- Final year Rosie Hyde, Middlesex University – Can stress and anxiety be tracked through wearable technology?
- MSc Leah Clarke, Durham University – Who will win Wimbledon 2017? Using deep learning to predict tennis matches