As part of the Discover STEM@Kent lecture series the School of Computing will be hosting two lectures, open to students, staff and the wider community, looking at technology and the modern world.

In the first lecture Dr Tomas Petricek will discuss ‘Making Data Relevant in an Age of Fake News’

When: Monday 20 January at 15.00-16.00

Where: Cornwallis Central Lecture Theatre 1

Governments and journalists have access to increasing amounts of raw data about the world, making it possible to produce factual reports based on solid evidence. At the same time post-truth politics means that data and facts are becoming less relevant in public debate. Can more transparent, open and engaging ways of working with data reverse this dangerous trend? In this talk, Tomas will discuss how novel research on tools for data exploration and data visualization can help. Along the way, he will show a number of fun examples, looking at data about the UK government spending, Olympic medals and financial markets. Open to all, just come along.

In the second lecture Dr Colin Johnson will deliver a lecture entitled ‘Will a Robot take my Job? Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work’.

When: Wednesday 5 February at 17.00-19.00

Where: Grimond Lecture Theatre 3.

A new industrial revolution is upon us, as intelligent machines take the place of humans across the economy. The impact of this could be vast – from increasingly sophisticated robots carrying out manual work, to artificial intelligence doing work in the law and accounting, through to robots working in the most human of jobs such as health and social care. This talk will examine whether the hype around AI is justified, which areas of work this will revolutionise, and which jobs will be untouched.

Please book for this event via the Eventbrite website

A Mexican wave in a football stadium, a heartbeat, the motion of slime mould, and oxidation wave in certain chemical reactions are all examples of excitable waves.

We’re very pleased to welcome Professor Paul Sutcliffe from Durham University as our guest speaker at the SMSAS Public Lecture on 15 January 2020. His talk will describe the mathematical modelling of excitable waves and how this can be used to understand some unusual wave patterns created recently in chemical experiments that produce a happy reaction.

When: Wednesday 15 January 2020, 18.00 -19.00

Where: Sibson Lecture Theatre 3

To book your free place please do so via Eventbrite 

You are warmly invited to attend the next E-Learning Forum titled ‘Tracking student progress and activity in Moodle’.

When: Tuesday 28 January from 12.00 – 13.30

Where: UELT Seminar Room

In this session we will:

• Provide an overview of the Moodle Completion Tracking facility
• Demonstrate how student activity and progress can be tracked within a module and how academic staff can use this facility to control the flow and cadence of course materials automatically.
• Demonstrate the impact that Completion Tracking has had in several modules already trialling the facility.

To book a place, please complete the online booking form 

The new exhibition in Colyer-Fergusson Gallery celebrates the bicentenary of the birth of Sir John Tenniel, cartoonist and illustrator of the first publication of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland.’

The display, which is open until Friday 28 February, presents a series of images which brought so vividly to life many of the characters in Carroll’s classic tale – Alice, the Hatter, the White Rabbit, the Mock Turtle – as the Music department prepares to perform a nineteenth-century ‘Musical Dream Play’ adaptation of the novel, first performed in 1886 and overseen by the author himself.

The exhibition is free to attend and open during normal working hours, with disabled access. Come and take a walk through pages of the novel and step into Alice’s world…

‘The changing environment for research: the civic, regional and global university’

We are delighted to announce that registration has opened for the fifth Eastern Arc Conference.

Featuring speakers from Research England, the ESRC, the Wellcome Trust, the  Global Academy and the UPP Foundation, as well as colleagues involved in the first phase of EARC, the conference will explore the changing environment for research in the UK, including:

• the revival of the civic university ethos,
• the regionalism of research funding, and
• the need to engage globally to meet the challenges for sustainable development.

We will also look at the fundamental nature of research collaboration: should we rethink how we work together?

The programme is available on the registration page or as this pdf .

When: Friday 21 February 2020

Where: Wivenhoe House on the University of Essex campus.

The event is free and open to all, however, places are limited, so do register your interest as soon as you can.

Background to the Eastern Arc

Eastern Arc is a research consortium comprising the universities of  East Anglia (UEA), Essex and Kent, With radical founding principles and an open outlook shaped by the travel, trade and migration that defines the southern North Sea region, the three established the consortium in 2013. In its first phase, the focus was on Digital Humanities, Quantitative Social Sciences and Synthetic Biology, supported by leads, fellows and PhD students in each area. It led to significant external funding, and a number of strong links and networks between the three universities.

As we enter our second phase, we are developing a Strategy that seeks to put sustainable development at the heart of our research collaboration, for the benefit of our regional, national and global communities. This will be launched at the conference.