Ada Lovelace Day Challenge at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

Ada Lovelace Day is an international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths. To celebrate, RAL will be hosting a hybrid (online and in-person) computing challenge day for classes of students from Year 8 or 9.

The event is designed to introduce students to the excitement of computing – teams will be given a (top secret!) challenge and will spend the day using Arduinos and computer programming to find a solution.

The day will also include a behind-the-scenes tour of our scientific computing facilities (in-person for those on site, virtual for those joining us online), as well as a short careers talk.

After an introduction, given in person and streamed live , each team (on-site) or school (online) will be introduced to their mentors, who will help and support the teams throughout the day. Students joining us from school will need access to a computer with internet access to complete the exercises. The activities can be completed entirely virtually, using a browser.

The day has been designed to be flexible so that school breaks can be accommodated – and if you would like, you can join for the tour and careers talk (14:20-14:50) without taking part in the exercise: please tick that option when registering.

During this event, each class will work with mentors from Rutherford Appleton Laboratory – this means that our capacity is limited by the number of mentors we have available. We will let all schools know if they have been successful in obtaining places by 5 July 2023 after registration closes on 4 July 2023.

When registering, please indicate whether you would like to join us in-person or online. If you have any questions, please email visitral@stfc.ac.uk