The Women in Computing group at Middlesex, coordinated by Kelly Androutsopoulos, was founded in 2014 . The purpose of this group is to bring together Middlesex-affiliated women who are studying or interested in Computing and to share common interests, concerns and ambitions. We have over 40 members. We post events or interest and communicate via the following facebook group (closed group). Please feel free to join if you are interested: https://www.facebook.com/groups/womenComputingmdx/
One of our aims is to help undergraduate students participate in the BCS Lovelace Colloquium, which is an annual one day conference for women students of Computing. The colloquium provides a forum for undegraduate and masters students to discuss their own work in the form of a poster contest, with cash prizes provided by industry sponsors. Also, it provides a series of inspiring talks from women in computing in industry and academia and a chance for networking and obtaining career advice.
This year, the BCS Lovelace Colloquium was held on the 11-12th April at Aberystwyth University, and had around 200 participants. We had 6 undergraduate students participating from Computer Science, three from the first year, two from the second and one from the third. The topics of the posters were varied, e.g. one described a Robot that a student built for Eurobot and how it could build a moon base autonomously, another was on Virtual Reality and looked at its affect on the body, while another considered the ethical issues with autonomous systems. This year, Rosie Hyde, a third year student, won the People’s Choice Award (where all attendees vote for their two favourite posters) for her poster titled “Can Stress and Anxiety be Tracked Through Wearable Technology?” which is based on her final year project.
