Ada Lovelace Day Live! 2018, our annual ‘science cabaret’ in celebration of women in STEM, was held at The IET on the evening of Tuesday 9 October. Playing host to the UK’s most fabulous women in STEM, ALD Live is an entertaining evening of geekery, comedy and music suitable for everyone over the age of 12. If you’d like a taster, our videos from this year are available on YouTube along with videos from 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013!
Book stall and signings
We once again had the fabulous Vivian Archer from Newham Books on hand to sell you the very best science books by or about women, including Ursula Martin’s new book Ada Lovelace: The Making of a Computer Scientist. And we were delighted to say that science journalist Sue Nelson was signing copies of her new book about aviator and member of the Mercury 13, Wally Funk’s Race for Space. The book stall and signings were available from 6:30pm until the performance started at about 7:30pm.
Bar sponsored by Shopify
We were very happy to say that ecommerce platform Shopify are sponsoring the cash bar, so the first 100 adults to arrive were each given a token for one free drink. Yet another fabulous reason to get there early!
Our awesome speakers
Professor Sunetra Gupta
Sunetra Gupta is a novelist, and Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford with an interest in infectious disease agents that are responsible for malaria, HIV, influenza and bacterial meningitis. She has been awarded the Scientific Medal by the Zoological Society of London and the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award for her scientific research. Her novels have been awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Southern Arts Literature Prize, shortlisted for the Crossword Award, and longlisted for the Orange Prize and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Photo by Charlie Lee Potter.
Twitter: @SunetraGupta
Web: https://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-sunetra-gupta
http://www.shooting-stars-women-scientists.com/
http://www.sunetragupta.com/
https://www.eeid.ox.ac.uk/
Dr Chanuki Seresinhe
Dr Chanuki Illushka Seresinhe is a data science researcher at the Data Science Lab, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick and the Alan Turing Institute. Chanuki’s research entails using big online datasets and deep learning to understand how beautiful environments affect human wellbeing. Her research has been featured in the press worldwide including the Economist, Wired, The Times, BBC, Spiegel Online, Guardian, Telegraph and Scientific American. Before returning to university, Chanuki had a diverse career that included running her own digital design consultancy for over eight years in London. Photo by Jo Hansford.
Twitter: @thoughtsymmetry
Web: thoughtsymmetry.com
Dr Susannah Maidment
Dr Susannah Maidment is a dinosaur researcher and the curator of dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum in London. Her research focuses on the relationships of the bird-hipped dinosaurs, how dinosaurs walked and moved, and dinosaur diversity in the Upper Jurassic, 150 million years ago. Prior to working at the Natural History Museum, she was Senior Lecturer in Geology at the University of Brighton, a Research Fellow at Imperial College London, and also spent two years living overseas and working as an Exploration Geologist in the oil industry. She has a PhD in vertebrate palaeontology from the University of Cambridge, and a degree in Geology from Imperial College London.
Twitter: @tweetisaurus
Web: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/departments-and-staff/staff-directory/susannah-maidment.html
Dr Hilary Costello
Dr Hilary Costello is an engineer with research and development experience in high-altitude aerospace, renewable energy, geo-engineering and science communication. She began her engineering studies at the University of Alberta, Canada where she completed a Mechanical Engineering degree. During her degree she developed a strong interest in hydro-electric, solar and wind generation and worked briefly in the renewable energy sector. Once accepted for a PhD at Cambridge, she moved to the UK to specialise in the field of fluid-structure interaction. Specifically, she studied the stability of very long elastic structures being excited by wind or water, and a phenomenon called flutter, which can cause dramatic vibrations leading to the failure of the structure. Her work related to the Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) project which studied the possibility and impacts of geo-engineering. Having completed her PhD she moved into industry and has been working for 4 years developing new aerospace technology designed to operate in the harsh environment of the stratosphere.
Prof Emma McCoy
Emma McCoy is the Vice-Dean (Education) for the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Professor of Statistics in the Mathematics Department at Imperial College London. She is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society where she is member of both their Council and Academic Affairs Advisory Group. She is also a member of the Royal Society’s Advisory Committee for Mathematics Education (ACME) and the Royal Society’s steering group on the Dynamics of Data Science. She is a regular Royal Institution Masterclass leader and has acted as a mathematics subject expert for discussions on reform of the KS4 qualifications and the KS3/4 National Curriculum. Her research interests include Time Series, Wavelets and Causal Inference, with a particular interest in transport studies and she leads Grand Challenge II in the Lloyds Register Foundation/Alan Turing Institute ‘Data-Centric Engineering’ Programme on ‘Monitoring of Complex Systems’.
Dr Diva Amon
Dr Diva Amon is a Trinidadian deep-sea biologist who studies chemosynthetic habitats and human impacts on the deep ocean. She is currently undertaking a Marie Skłodowska-Curie research fellowship at the Natural History Museum in London. In 2013, she completed her PhD at the University of Southampton, after which, she spent three years at the University of Hawai’i, researching the largely unknown abyssal fauna of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an area targeted for deep-sea mining in the Pacific Ocean. Throughout her career, Diva has participated in deep-sea expeditions around the world, exploring and studying previously unknown habitats, while trying her best to communicate the wonders of the deep ocean. Diva is also a co-founder of the non-profit NGO, SpeSeas. Photo by Novus Select.
Twitter: @DivaAmon
Instagram: @diva_amon
Web: divaamon.com
Natasha Simons
Natasha Simons is a freelance science presenter and content developer who designs and performs science demonstrations to engage, intrigue and amuse. She has performed to audiences of all ages in schools, festivals and the occasional shopping mall in the UK and abroad. Natasha has written and performed shows for the Royal Institution of Great Britain and the Science Museum and worked on the demonstration team for the famous Ri Christmas Lectures: her adventures include a setting up a building sized Rube Goldberg machine, persuading a cow, a sheep and a goat into a lift, and igniting over 1000 flammable balloons in the name of science.
Helen Arney
Once again, we were delighted to confirm that comedian Helen Arney was our compère for the evening.
Science presenter, comedian and geek songstress Helen Arney appears on TV, radio and in theatres across the world. You might have seen her explaining physics while riding a rollercoaster for BBC Coast, singing the periodic table on Channel 4 News, hosting Outrageous Acts Of Science on Discovery or smashing wine glasses with the power of her voice in Festival of the Spoken Nerd – whose third show “You Can’t Polish A Nerd” is released on DVD and download just one week after Ada Lovelace Day 2018. Photo by Paul Clarke.
Twitter: @helenarney
Web: helenarney.com
Don’t forget to sign up to our newsletter, follow us on Twitter, or like our Facebook page to be kept up to date with news about ALD Live! and all our other work.
Venue
We are very grateful to our venue partner, The IET Women’s Network. The IET is one of the world’s leading professional societies for the engineering and technology community, with more than 150,000 members in 127 countries and offices in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. The IET provides a global knowledge network to facilitate the exchange of ideas and promote the positive role of science, engineering and technology in the world.
Website: www.theiet.org/women
Twitter: @IETWomenNetwork
How do I get to The IET?
The IET has comprehensive travel information on its website.
Is the venue accessible?
Yes, and The IET has information about accessibility on its website. If you have particular accessibility questions that are not answered here, please email us and we will get back to you as soon as we can.
With thanks to our sponsors
We would like to thank The IET for being our venue partner for 2018, as well as Shopify, Clarivate Analytics, Digital Science, F Hinds, SchoolDash, UCL Engineering, Valerie Polichar, Present Indicative and Meromorf Press for their support this year.
We are always looking for sponsors, so please take a look at our sponsorship prospectus or get in touch for more information.
Support us
If you’d like to become a regular supporter, please take a look at our Patreon project where you can donate a monthly sum from $1 (66p).
We also have a shop where you can buy books, posters, prints, cards, T-shirts and notebooks.