The 15th BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium was held as a virtual conference, again. It was jointly organised by people from Aberystwyth University (Hannah Dee and Amanda Clare), London South Bank University (Safia Barikzai) and Lancaster University (Lucy Hunt), with admirable support from Olivia Wolfheart and Mandy Bauer at the BCS. It was held online, via Discord, Teams and Gather.Town on 13th April 2022.
2022 virtual Lovelace group shot
Our headline sponsor was Ocado Technology, lunch was sponsored by NMI, and we had student prizes sponsored by STFC, the Intelligence Services (MI5, MI6 and GCHQ), Amazon, JP Morgan, and Oxford University’s AIMS doctoral training centre. Socials were sponsored by Airbus and AND Digital.
The day started with a keynote from Rebecca George OBE delivered live on Teams.
As the event was online, our talks were presented on Youtube for maximum attendee flexibility. This also means you can watch them on our channel now, if you want!
Here are the links to our main talks:
- What is Quality? (Nicola Martin, Adarga)
- Using speech analytics and AI to detect dementia in a person’s speech and language (Heidi Christensen, University of Sheffield)
- A day in the life of a Software Developer (Muna Venning, NMI)
- Robotic Manipulation (Silvia Cruciani, Ocado Technology)
We also had our “Skills Buffet” of shorter ~10 minute talks on topics like Professional body membership, Communication Skills, Careers Fairs, etc. (We don’t expect all attendees will want to watch all the short talks, in the same people don’t try everything on offer at a buffet). Here are links to these:
- Communication skills for women (Anna Klosowska, NMI) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7_Kll3zwAw
- Consciously Navigate Your Career – Career advice I would give to my younger self (Bhavisha Patel, Ocado Technology) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9420Y4vsA0
- How to get the most out of employer stands and careers fairs (Amanda Clare, Aber University) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yppBHLQITg
- How to nail your interview (Fay Benefield, NMI) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zKbmhInJJA
- Applying for a PhD at a CDT (Benedetta Mussati, University of Oxford) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TYrWHyaGyM
- How to get the most out of a professional body (Hannah Dee, Aberystwyth University) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFlIwc3zVLE
As with last year, we also had a short Pilates video from Rachel Hubbard, to encourage everyone to stand up and get moving!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgOlCjk2B8o
Our panel, at the end of the day, featured women at various stages in their career journey. Edel Sherratt from Aberystwyth University gave the academic perspective, Natalia Miller from Moonpig is a senior engineer, Alex Stanhope from Airbus is in a graduate job just out of university, and Darya Koskeroglu is a current undergrad, currently on placement with STFC. As ever the conversation was wide ranging, taking in all aspects of tech careers from the perspective of women in the workplace.
Poster contests
If you’d like to see what topics were presented by students at the event, Abstracts for all the finalists across all poster contests are collected together in this Abstract Book.
Our first year contest was sponsored by the Intelligence Services (MI5, MI6 and GCHQ) and prizes were as follows:
- Keisha Owino of Middlesex University wins 1st place in the First and Foundation category, for her poster entitled Can you see me? How social medial algorithms affect black individuals
- Kashvi Panta of Durham University wins 2nd place in the First and Foundation category, for her poster entitled Could giving a machine a mind allow it to read ours?
Our second year contest was sponsored by Amazon, and prizes were as follows:
- Megan Ratcliffe of Durham University (currently on placement with STFC) wins 1st place in the Second year category, for her poster entitled Molecular Dynamics: A Powerful Tool in the Fight Against COVID-19 and Beyond
- Agnieszka Kowalska of Middlesex University wins 2nd place in the Second year category, for her poster entitled Using AI to address the phenomenon known as the paradox of choice
The best final year contest was sponsored by JP Morgan and prizese went to:
- Ashley Hoi-Ting Au of University of Warwick wins 1st place in the Final year category, for her poster entitled Improving Scalability and Security of IoT environment by blockchain technology
- Aleksandra Madej of Keele University wins 2nd place in the Final year category, for her poster entitled Do mobile apps really keep our data private?
The best MSc poster award is sponsored by Oxford University’s AIMS doctoral training centre and prizes went to:
- Andreea Zaharia of University of Cambridge wins 1st place in the MSc category, for her poster entitled Federated learning for advertisement timing
- Anna Weir of Cardiff University wins 2nd place in the MSc category, for her poster entitled CoVacSenti – a Sentiment Analysis System for the COVID-19 Vaccine Based on Twitter
Our people’s choice award is sponsored by STFC and prizes went to:
- Molly Ives of University of Bath wins 1st place in the People’s Choice category, for her poster entitled CSI or CS-AI? Using Machine Learning to classify blood spatters.
- Alys Byrde of Birmingham City University wins 2nd place in the People’s Choice category, for her poster entitled “I’d Blush If I Could”: verbal abuse of AI-based voice assistants
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- First place in the First year category: Can you see me? How social media algorithms affect black individuals by Keisha Owino of Middlesex University
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- Second place in the best First year category: Could giving a machine a mind allow it to read ours? by Kashvi Panta of Durham University
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- First place in the best second year contest goes to Megan Ratcliffe of Durham University (currently on placement with @STFC_Matters ) with Molecular Dynamics: A Powerful Tool in the Fight Against COVID-19 and Beyond
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- Second place in the best second year contest goes to Agnieszka Kowalska of Middlesex University for Using AI to address the phenomenon known as the paradox of choice
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- First place in the best final year contest goes to Ashley Hoi-Ting Au of the University of Warwick for Improving Scalability and Security of IoT environment by blockchain technology
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- Second place in the best final year contest goes to Aleksandra Madej of Keele University for Do mobile apps really keep our data private?
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- Second place in the best MSc student contest goes to Anna Weir of Cardiff University for CoVacSenti – a Sentiment Analysis System for the COVID-19 Vaccine Based on Twitter
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- First place in the best MSc student contest goes to Andreea Zaharia of the University of Cambridge with Federated learning for advertisement timing
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- First place in the people’s choice award goes to Molly Ives, a final year student from the University of Bath, for “CSI or CS-AI? Using Machine Learning to classify blood spatters.”
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- And second place in the people’s choice award goes to Alys Byrde of Birmingham City University for “”I’d Blush If I Could”: verbal abuse of AI-based voice assistants”
