2018 was our 11th anniversary, and we were hosted at The University of Sheffield, with support from Sheffield Hallam University. Our headline sponsor was Google, who were back for the 11th year running. This was our first colloquium with Helen Miles in the chair (with Hannah Dee as deputy, and support from Amanda Clare) and she did a great job.
The main day was hosted by The University of Sheffield, and the socials (including an extra social event the evening before) were hosted by Sheffield Hallam University. The pre-event social included a QR-code-based treasure hunt around Sheffield set up by some Hallam students which really seved to break the ice.
We had 203 people registered, and as usual we all had 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 here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/handee/sets/72157695301730515.
Other major sponsors were:
- IBM, our silver sponsor
- ARM, who sponsored lunch
- Bloomberg, who were our “Coffee and Cake” sponsor
- ScottLogic and SkyBet, who sponsored our end-of-day socials
Speakers:
- Tanja Lichtensteiger, software development manager for Leeds Beckett University, speaker for tech diversity and winner of the 2018 FDM Everywoman in Tech Team Leader Award.
- Professor Eleni Vasilaki from The University of Sheffield
- Gillian Arnold from BCSWomen and Tectre
- Professor Luigina Ciolfi from Sheffield Hallam
Poster contests winners:
The first year contest, sponsored by Google, had the following winners:
- 1st: Jade Cutler, Bath, “Exoskeletons: Getting the Disabled Back on Their Feet”
- 2nd: Marian Kenna, Bath, “The Iron Man Suit: Fiction to Reality?”
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:
- 1st: Wanyue Zhang, UCL, “Refocusing on the future: deep Learning and light field imaging”
- 2nd: Aliza Exelby, Bath, “An Investigation Into the Further Applications of the Blockchain”
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:
- 1st: Jane Parker, Bath, “Developing an Interactive Campus Map for the University of Bath”
- 2nd: Chloe Collins, St Andrews, “An Examination of the Cookie Directive”
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:
- 1st: Rachael Botham, Bath, “Extracting 3D Models from 2D Photographs using 3D Morphable Models”
- 2nd: Hend Alghazaly, University of Sheffield, “Early Detection of Memory Loss”
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. This was sponsored by STFC.
- 1st: Mariam Perez, Sheffield Hallam University, “Knitting, the expression of coding in its 3D form”
- 2nd: Fatema Alkhanazi, Durham, “Why partition what you can contain”