Author Archives: Suw

US Senate honours Ada Lovelace

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US Senator Ron Wyden has introduced a resolution honouring Ada Lovelace and recognising Ada Lovelace Day to the Senate, the upper chamber of the United States Congress. The senator, who represents Oregon, submitted S.Res.592 – A resolution designating October 9, 2018, as “National Ada Lovelace Day” and honoring the life and legacy of Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer.

The statement is a Simple Resolution, which is “used to express nonbinding positions of the Senate”. These resolutions often “express public gratitude for distinguished contributions; dramatize the virtues of individuals, groups, and causes; and perpetuate the remembrance of significant events” says a congressional report. “During the past two centuries, commemoratives have become an integral part of the American political tradition,” the report says.

We are delighted that Ada Lovelace’s achievements have been recognised in this way, and that the Senate chose to support our mission of raising the profile of women in STEM by giving Ada Lovelace Day itself official status in the US.

The full text of the resolution (PDF) reads:

115TH CONGRESS
2D SESSION
S. RES.

Designating October 9, 2018, as ‘‘National Ada Lovelace Day’’ and honoring the life and legacy of Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

Mr. WYDEN (for himself and Mrs. FISCHER) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on [25 July 2018]

RESOLUTION

Designating October 9, 2018, as ‘‘National Ada Lovelace Day’’ and honoring the life and legacy of Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer.

Whereas Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace, now known as Ada Lovelace, was born on December 10, 1815, in London, United Kingdom;

Whereas, from a young age, Lovelace displayed a gift for mathematics, languages, and the sciences;

Whereas, at the age of 17, Lovelace began to study mathematics under the guidance of scientist and translator Mary Somerville and, later, logician Augustus de Morgan;

Whereas, in 1833, Lovelace was introduced to inventor and mechanical engineer, Charles Babbage, and began to study his designs for the Analytical Engine, a mechanical computer;

Whereas Lovelace was the first person to recognize that the Analytical Engine could be used to manipulate symbols and letters and was the first person to theorize that the Analytical Engine could be used to create music and graphics;

Whereas, in 1843, Lovelace published step-by-step instructions for using the Analytical Engine to calculate Bernoulli numbers ‘‘without having been worked out by human head and hands first’’;

Whereas these insights gave Lovelace an unparalleled vision of the future of computer science, and she stated that ‘‘[a] new, a vast and a powerful language is [being] developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind’’;

Whereas the work of Lovelace went widely unrecognized until the 1950s, when her papers were republished, and their significance and her contributions to the fields of computer science and mathematics were finally acknowledged;

Whereas, in the 1980s, to honor the contributions of Lovelace, the Department of Defense named its newly created computer language ‘‘Ada’’ after Lovelace;

Whereas the second Tuesday in October is annually celebrated as Ada Lovelace Day and is intended to honor women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and their accomplishments and contributions to academia and the world; and

Whereas Ada Lovelace died on November 27, 1852, leaving behind a legacy of poetic science and reasoning, in which the arts and sciences are woven together to find new insights:

Now, therefore, be it

1 Resolved, That the Senate—
2 (1) designates October 9, 2018, as ‘‘National
3 Ada Lovelace Day’’; and
4 (2) honors the life and contributions of Ada
5 Lovelace, a leading woman in science and mathematics and the first computer programmer.

Senator Wyden tweeted:

And the British Embassy in Washington tweeted:

Join us on 9 October for Ada Lovelace Day!

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Want to inspire girls to love code?
Or celebrate women in STEM?

Join people around the world in celebrating the tenth Ada Lovelace Day on Tuesday 9 October and organise your own, independent event for girls or women in tech!

Every year, dozens of groups host their own events to mark the day, create new female role models, and support and encourage girls and women into STEM. These events take many forms — from conferences to Wikipedia ‘edit-a-thons’ to pub quizzes — and appeal to all ages, from girls to university students, to women with well-established careers.

We’ve had events in cities from A Coruña to Zoetermeer, taking in Addis Ababa, Brasilia, Curitiba, Daejeon, Enugu, Florence, Granada, Halley Research Station, Ísafjörður, Johannesburg, Kathmandu, Ljubljana, Maharashtra, New York, Ockham, Pune, Quartu Sant’Elena, Recife, Sheboygan, Tunis, Ulster, Vilnius, Wellington, and York on the way. We only need someone in Xai-Xai, Xalapa, Xinghua or Xo’jayli to organise an event this year and we’ll have a full alphabet!

The enthusiasm with which people across so many countries have adopted Ada Lovelace Day, and the work that they have put in to organise their own events, shows just how widespread the desire is to support and inspire girls and women in STEM. Everyone who organises or attends an event is part of a global movement to champion girls and women in STEM and change the way we think about women in science, technology, engineering and maths.

You can be a part of this global movement by organising your own Ada Lovelace Day event this year. To help you, we’ve put together an Organiser Pack, along with some resources such as blank fliers. We’ve also created a new mailing list just for indie event organisers where we’ll share news and information as it comes in. And you can follow us on Twitter or Facebook to stay up-to-date with all our indie event news.

So, let’s get going and make 2018, our tenth Ada Lovelace Day, the biggest  yet!

 

Supported by

Ep 20: The maths of image processing, treating cataracts with lasers and astronomer Caroline Herschel

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Welcome to the Ada Lovelace Day podcast, highlighting the work of women in STEM. Each month, we talk to women from around the STEM world about their careers, as well as talking to women and men, about historic and modern women’s achievements, discoveries, and inventions.

Small note

We’d hoped to get this episode out at the end of last year, but technical and scheduling difficulties got in the way! This episode will be the last for a while, as we are focusing other projects.

In this episode

00:42: Dr Carola Schönlieb talks about how she uses maths to develop new ways to process images. 

31:47: We look at the invention of the Laserphaco Probe, a device that uses lasers to remove cataracts, by Dr Patricia Bath.

35:35: Hilary Harper-Abernethy talks about the life and works of astronomer Caroline Herschel.

Our interviewees

Dr Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb

Dr Carola Schoenlieb

Dr Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb is a Reader in Applied and Computational Analysis, head of the Cambridge Image Analysis (CIA) group at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), University of Cambridge. She specialises in the mathematics of digital image and video processing using partial differential equations and variational methods. Her team’s research includes the modelling and analysis of these methods, as well as developing their real-world applications.

She has won several prizes, including the London Mathematical Society’s Whitehead Prize in 2016 “for her spectacular contributions to the mathematics of image analysis”, and the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2017. She is the 2018 Mary Cartwright Lecturer of the London Mathematical Society, and has been a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute since 2016.

Hilary Harper-Abernethy

Hilary Harper-Abernethy is a is an amateur astronomer and member of Liverpool Astronomical Society and Society for the History of Astronomy. Her particular passions are the moons of this solar system and the stories of influential astronomers and women in science. She is also a folk singer, and enjoys researching the long oral tradition of English folk music. Professionally she is acknowledged as a passionate advocate of mental health and wellbeing, with more than 30 years’ experience as a public health specialist and nurse. She has a track record of initiating cultural and policy change and a successful history of developing and implementing strategy. This has involved leading needs assessments, designing and commissioning mental health services and leading public mental health and suicide prevention strategy. Hilary is joint author of Social Prescribing for Mental Health – A Guide to Commissioning and Delivery (Department of Health 2009).

The picture shows Harper-Abernethy at the Herschel museum in Bath, England, standing next to one of Caroline Herschel’s dresses.

Hilary was talking about German astronomer Caroline Herschel. Born in 1750, Herschel discovered several comets, was the first woman to be awarded a Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and to be made an Honorary Member of the Royal Astronomical Society. Here initial astronomical work involved the organising her brother, William Herchel’s, observations but she became a keen astronomer in her own right, discovering new nebulae, comets, and writing the Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars.

Discovery of the month

This month we look at the invention of the Laserphaco Probe, a device that uses lasers to remove cataracts, by Dr Patricia Bath.

Thanks to our sponsor

This podcast is brought to you thanks to the generous support of ARM, our exclusive semiconductor industry sponsor. You can learn more about ARM on their website at ARM.com and you can follow them on Twitter at @ARMHoldings.

Credits

Episode edited by Andrew Marks.

Our links

Virgin Media Business #VOOM 2018 Winners

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semifinal judgesThis week saw the culmination of months of work for 80 companies and start-ups who entered the Virgin Media Business #VOOM 2018 pitching competition. Eager entrepreneurs uploaded their pitch to the #VOOM website, where their supporters could vote for them and support them financially through crowdfunding.

Suw spent Monday 21st May up in Manchester judging the semi-finals, alongside Rosanne Gray from Virgin Unite, Phil Geraghty from Crowdfunder, and Luke Pharaoh from Virgin Start Up. Together, we were the the pitch judges for the Spark & StartUp category, for entrepreneurs and companies with 0 to 19 employees. We listened to nearly 40 two minute pitches and had a four minute Q&A with each entrant before they went on to be grilled by specialist judges on finance, marketing, and business planning & leadership.

If you want to watch the pitches, which alternate between the two categories, Spark & StartUp then Scale & Grow, and you can find them on Facebook:

The quality of the semi-finalists was incredibly high with some fantastic pitches for great businesses, some of them just ideas at this stage, some of them already established. Far too many of them deserved a place in the finals, so it was difficult to choose just three. In the end, we whittled it down to:

And in the Scale & Grow category, the judges chose:

  • Rejuce – beautiful juices from ugly fruit & veg!
  • Action Petz – where dogs’ dreams come true
  • Therapy Box – detecting and supporting communication disability

Junior EinsteinsThen on Wednesday morning at Tobacco Dock, the finalists gathered to make their pitch for one last time to five judges: Richard Reed, founder of Innocent Drinks, Sophie Morgan, serial entrepreneur and TV presenter, Susie Ma, The Apprentice finalist and founder of Tropic Skincare, Peter Kelly, managing director of Virgin Media Business, and, of course, Virgin Group founder, Sir Richard Branson.

Just as in the semis, the finalists had a two minute pitch and a short Q&A afterwards (you can watch the whole final on the Virgin Media Business #VOOM Facebook page – it starts at about 25 minutes in). The judges had the unenviable task of having to decide on the two winners, who were:

Category winnersSpark & StartUp: Tracey-Jane Cassidy – Junior Einsteins
Inspiring a love of science and learning in naturally curious children through hands-on interactive experiments at amazing science events. (left)

Scale & Grow: Rebecca Bright – Therapy Box
Therapy Box uses machine learning to diagnose, treat and support people with hidden communication disabilities. (right)

Partner awards also went to:

Paypal International Award: Lauren Hampshire – Milky Tees
Milky Tees are unique breastfeeding T-shirts with hidden zips at each side to help mums breastfeed easily, discreetly and stylishly!

Virgin Unite Impact Award: Joanna Wright – Organic Blooms
Picture 9 acres of organic cut flowers, add a handful of chickens and a team of amazing people, and you have the inspirational Organic Blooms.

The G Award: Gauthier Van Malderen – Perlego
Perlego is a textbook subscription service that is trying to make academic content more affordable.

Crowdfunder Award: Becky Ingham – Hookpod
Working to make longline fishing safe for marine wildlife, saving seabirds and potentially turtles from becoming bycatch in tuna fisheries.

Sir Mo Farah Going The Extra Mile Award: Nigel Blanchard – Heroes4Hire
A veterans only handymen service that recruits, trains and fully employs only ex-servicemen and women throughout the country.

Congratulations to all the winners and runners up!

Ada Lovelace Day became a #VOOM Partner because we believe that women make amazing entrepreneurs and we wanted to encourage more women to take part in a competition that would not only give them a chance to win financial support and access to amazing advisors, but that would help anyone who took part by raising their profile and helping them raise money through crowdfunding. We could not be more delighted that the list of winners ended up included five women out of seven awards.

Winners and judges

 

Win a ticket to Startup Grind London!

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Digital Science and Ada Lovelace Day are giving you a chance to win a ticket to attend Startup Grind’s Europe Conference in June, in London. To win a free ticket worth £298, just tell us why you want to attend!

The event takes place on 13th June 2018 and brings together 2,500 founders and investors and over 100 European startups. There will be more than 75 speakers across three stages, featuring a range of sessions including keynotes, educational workshops, and VC Q&As, covering this year’s hot topics, such as Blockchain, AI, to name a few.

How to enter
Using the hashtag #DigiSciComp and CC’ing @findingada and @digitalsci, tell us why you would like to attend the conference. Keep your answers short and sharp (you only have a few characters!). Think about what you may learn by attending – the more adventurous, the better!

Here are a couple of examples:

  • #DigiSciComp I want to attend the Startup Grind because I want to network with some of the most influential people in tech!  @findingada @digitalsci
  • #DigiSciComp I am keen to attend Startup Grind because I work on one of the hot topics, I want to hear from the leaders in that field. @findingada @digitalsci

Tweets must be received no later than the 28th of May 2018 at 12pm BST, and you can only enter once. Please make sure you follow @DigitalSci and @FindingAda on Twitter, as we will need to contact you directly if you win.

All eligible tweets shall be considered by our three-person judging panel comprising: Katy Alexander, Suw Charman-Anderson and Cameron Shephard. The panel will select the winner which will be announced on the 31st May

We’re really excited to see what you come up with – now get tweeting!
Please read the terms and conditions before entering.