The development of technology is accelerating in many fields and affecting multiple aspects of our day-to-day lives. Meanwhile, both AI and universities are black boxes, but they don’t need to be. A series of four workshops aimed at mutual learning, networking and grant writing aimed at researchers interested in emerging technologies are to be held at UWE Bristol.
Please contact Aleksandra (aleksandra.michalec@uwe.ac.uk) or Mehdi (mehdi.sobhani@uwe.ac.uk) for more information.
There’s still time to sign up for two FREE events, hosted by UWE at the Bristol and Bath Science Park tomorrow (please note the change of venue; these events were originally scheduled to be held at UWE):
Women Like Me – Boosting mentoring for women in STEM in the West of England
Wednesday 3rd April, 12:00-14:00
This event brings together our leading players in women’s mentoring across the West of England, to explore how we can support each other and learn from best practice. Organised by UWE Bristol’s Women Like Me project for engineering mentoring, the network also connects with Women in Science and Engineering Bristol, the Women’s Engineering Society centenary and Curiosity Connections Bristol.
Extraordinary Women in Engineering: A WES Wikithon – UWE Bristol
Wednesday 3rd April: Training 09:30-10:00 | Wikithon drop in 10:00-14:00
Come and join us to develop your digital skills and learn more about editing Wikipedia. Help to celebrate brilliant women engineers by creating and improving their pages on the world’s favourite online historical record.
Complete beginners and experienced editors, all are welcome to attend – we’ll provide training for anyone new to editing. If you already have some wiki editing experience, we can help you improve your skills and learn a few new tricks. If you’ve spotted an article that needs improving, bring along your queries and we’ll see what we can do to help. Suggestions for articles to improve and create will also be provided, along with research resources.
On 22nd March , Chris Skidmore MP, Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, toured Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) and the University Enterprise Zone (UEZ) as part of a visit to UWE Bristol.
He received a guided tour of the UEZ and a tour of the Assisted Robotics Laboratory, Nuclear Decommissioning Suite and Driverless Car Workshop and Simulator.
Read more on the UWE Bristol news page.
12:00 – 13:00 Tuesday 2 April 2019
Online Webinar
Join Dr Jo Michell, Associate Professor in Economics, Professor Alan Winfield, Professor of Robot Ethics and Professor Sanja Dogramadzi, Professor in Medical Robotics, as they discuss the rise and rise of robots in the workforce. How will this impact on our economy? What ethical questions are raised by the robot revolution and how far away are we from a post-work society?
The Bristol Business Engagement Centre at the Bristol Business School aims to address these questions, amongst others, and leave you with a better understanding of the impact artificial intelligence could have on our society and the business of being human.
For more information see the UWE Bristol event listing.
Dr Steve Wright, Associate Professor in Aerospace Engineering in UWE’s Department of Engineering Design and Mathemetics, has been featured in a video which can be viewed on The Telegraph website, talking about recent safety concerns with Boeing 737 Max aeroplanes.
Watch the video to find out how the new anti-stall system could have been responsible for the crashes.
A Mighty Girl have collated a set of free downloadable posters of women role models in STEM, created by the podcast Nevertheless, which celebrates women transforming teaching and learning through technology.
Featuring Cynthia Breazeal, Rosalind Franklin, Mae Jemison, Maria De Penha, Juliana Rotich, Hayat Sindi, Tu Youyou and Gladys West, there’s a broad range of women to choose from to enthuse and inspire the next generation.
With thanks to Aimee Atkinson for highlighting this resource.
The work of Professor Melvyn Smith and Professor Lyndon Smith of the Centre for Machine Vision, Bristol Robotics Laboratory has been featured in the news this week.
They are using facial recognition technology to assess the emotional state of pigs, with hopes that the project, based at the Rural College (SRUC) Pig Research Centre in Scotland, will lead to improvements in animal wellbeing.
Pigs communicate with each other using facial expressions, so researchers are now capturing 3D and 2D facial images of the breeding sow population to be analysed at UWE’s Centre for Machine Vision, where techniques for automatic identification of a range of emotions are under development.
“Machine vision technology offers the potential to realise a low-cost, non-intrusive and practical means to biometrically identify individual animals on the farm.
“Our work has already demonstrated a 97% accuracy at facial recognition in pigs. Our next step will be, for the first time, to explore the potential for using machine vision to automatically recognise facial expressions that are linked with core emotion states, such as happiness or distress, in the identified pigs.”
Professor Melvyn Smith, UWE Bristol
Lyndon has been filmed by the BBC this week, giving a simulated demo of pig face recognition using deep learning, while the story has been featured online by the BBC, The Times, the Daily Mail, the Metro, the Irish Times and the Irish Examiner, among others and covered on Radio 4’s Farming Today (starting at 9:47).
A recent event at our Women Like Me funder, the Royal Academy of Engineering, explored “the benefits and challenges of a more joined-up approach to inspiring the next generation of engineers”.
Reflections on the event, and what an effective STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) engagement strategy actually looks like, are now available from The Engineer.
Header image: Royal Academy of Engineering on Twitter.
As our Royal Academy of Engineering funded project, Women Like Me, draws to a close for this year, we are hosting a celebration event at UWE Bristol:
Wednesday 3rd April 2019
12-2 pm
Bristol and Bath Science Park, main cafe entrance (NB this is a change of venue from the original listing)
FREE
Women Like Me – Boosting mentoring for women in STEM in the West of England
The West of England is home to an impressive list of STEM industries, and all are working to improve participation for women in STEM. As well as recruiting more women into STEM, we also need to think about retaining our talented workforce. Mentoring Schemes can help to do just that, with research showing that mentoring from other experienced women is a key factor in creating a welcoming workplace culture.
This event brings together our leading players in women’s mentoring across the West of England, to explore how we can support each other and learn from best practice. Organised by UWE Bristol’s Women Like Me project for engineering mentoring, the network also connects with Women in Science and Engineering Bristol, the Women’s Engineering Society centenary and Curiosity Connections Bristol.
The event includes lunch and a keynote talk on women’s mentoring, followed by a workshop to develop further connections between mentoring schemes.
Please sign up to come and join us!
Are you a female academic professional with children, working at UWE Bristol? Second year Business and Human Resource Management students (supervised by Dr Vanda Papafilippou, chair of our Women Like Me partner the WISE Bristol Hub) are conducting research into the impact of motherhood on career progression as part of their assessment coursework for the Research Methods for Human Resource Management module.
Please see below for details of the project and how you can get involved:
The impacts of motherhood on the career progression of female academics in a post 1992 institution
The aim of the project is to gain an understanding of the impact of motherhood on the career progression of female academics. Your participation entails attending a one to one semi-structured interview with one of our research team. The interview questions will focus on: (i) your career history (background information); (ii) the impact of motherhood on your career progression (iii) The challenges that you have faced with regards to networking, high workloads, work-life balance and organisational culture. It is anticipated that the interview will last for approximately one hour and it will be conducted during working hours within the University of the West of England. If you are happy to take part in the interview, please could you email lucy2.downes@live.uwe.ac.uk, within 2 weeks, so that we can arrange a convenient time and date to meet.
With your permission, we would like to record the interview using a Dictaphone. Field notes will also be taken during the meeting. After the meeting the recordings and notes will be used to transcribe the data. Pseudonyms will be used anonymise data, all names, institutions and anything that can reveal your identity will be carefully removed and replaced with generic terms such as participant 1, University 1. All data will be stored on UWE password protected computers, files will also be password protected and only members of the research team will have access to it. A confidentiality header page will be used to inform tutors and markers of the confidential nature of the information. Recordings will be deleted as soon as they have been transcribed and files will be deleted once the research has been marked and marks have been confirmed. It is your right to withdraw from the study without having to state a reason, by e-mailing lucy2.downes@live.uwe.ac.uk. We do, however, ask that you notify us by 12th April 2019 as any information collected will be used towards a marked assessment. This will allow for your data to be removed prior to the assessment.
The project has been reviewed and has received ethics approval by our personal tutor Vanda Papafilippou at the University of the West of England. Your involvement in this project will be voluntary. If you have any questions, please email ourselves: lucy2.downes@live.uwe.ac.uk or Dr Vanda Papafilippou (research supervisor: Email: Vanda.Papafilippou@uwe.ac.uk; Telephone: 0117 32 87984) We look forward to hearing from you.
With best wishes,
Lucy Downes, Grace Humpry, Victoria Campion, Jade Kelley, Sanna-Karoliina Rahko
2nd Year undergraduates- Business and Human Resource Management
