This year’s Ada Lovelace Day Live! our annual ‘science cabaret’ in celebration of women in STEM, will be held at Conway Hall on the evening of 13 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 women and men, and girls and boys over the age of 12.
Tickets cost £20 (general entry), £5 (concessions), and are available now! Concession tickets can be bought by students, unemployed, disabled, pensioners, under-18s, and anyone else who usually gets a discount.
Doors open at 6:30pm, and there will be a cash bar available in the foyer. The performance starts at 7.30pm and will conclude by 9.30pm-ish (there is the chance we may overrun!).
If you’d like to enjoy a taster, take a look at our videos from 2014 and 2013!
Our speakers this year are:
Abigail Hutty
Abbie Hutty is senior spacecraft structures engineer on Airbus’ ExoMars Rover Project. She gained her master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at Surrey University where she received several awards and prizes for her achievements, including for her master’s thesis on the use of composites in spacecraft structures. She joined Astrium at Stevenage, now Airbus Defence and Space, as a mechanical engineer in 2010, and now leads a team of specialists in the design of the ExoMars Rover Vehicle Structure. In 2013, she was selected as the IMechE’s Young Member of the Year and later named as the IET’s Young Woman Engineer of the Year.
Dr Jen Gupta
Dr Jen Gupta is an astrophysicist and science communicator based in the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth. Jen loves to talk about space to anyone who will listen, and in her spare time can be found presenting planetarium shows at the Winchester Science Centre and helping to organise the Winchester Science Festival.
Dr Suze Kundu
Dr Sujata Kundu is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Materials at Imperial College London. A nanochemist both literally and professionally, Suze’s research focuses on materials that can capture solar energy. She gives regular public lectures, is a presenter on the Discovery Channel, and is a contributor for Forbes Science and Standard Issue Magazine.
Photo: Ed Prosser, Royal Institution
Professor Elaine Chew
Elaine Chew is Professor of Digital Media at Queen Mary University of London where she is affiliated with the Centre for Digital Music. A classically trained pianist and operations researcher, she uses mathematical and computational models, with scientific visualisation, to explain what musicians do. She was a 2005 (US) National Science Foundation-nominated honoree of the Presidential Early Career Award For Scientists And Engineers and 2007-2008 recipient of the Edward, Frances, and Shirley B. Daniels Fellowship at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She has the unique honour of having appeared twice in Ignobel presentations: as pianist in the Duct Tape Opera and as scientist-musician in a technical analysis of PDQ Bach.
Photo: Brian Morri
Professor Uta Frith
Uta Frith was born and educated in Germany. From 1968 to 2006 she was a research scientist funded by the Medical Research Council. She is now Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Development at UCL. She is best known for her work on autism and dyslexia. Recently, Uta has expanded her interests in science communication and is keen to promote women in
science.
Lucy Haken
Science television producer/director Lucy Haken is the series producer of this year’s Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, ‘How to Survive in Space’. She produced the BBC’s Britain from Above with Andrew Marr, worked with David Attenborough on the Horizon special ‘How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?’, and has produced countless documentaries for National Geographic, Channel 4 and Discovery from all over the world. Lucy has a first in pharmacology from Cambridge, and a master’s degree in science communication from Imperial College London.
Suw Charman-Anderson
Suw Charman-Anderson is the founder of Ada Lovelace Day, an international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths. Suw is also a social technologist and, as one of the UK’s social media pioneers, has worked with clients worldwide. A freelance journalist, she has written about social media, technology and publishing for The Guardian, CIO Magazine and Forbes. She also co-founded the Open Rights Group in 2005.
Photo: Paul Clarke
Helen Arney
Once again, we are delighted to confirm that comedian Helen Arney will be our compère for the evening. This will be Helen’s fifth Ada Lovelace Day Live!, and she has been one of the driving forces behind it. We’re very happy to have her back!
Helen is a self-professed geek songstress, who writes maths and science-inspired comedy songs and performs across the UK as herself, and with “Festival of the Spoken Nerd”.
Photo: Steve Ullathorne
Sydney Padua book signing
Comic book author Sydney Padua will also be signing copies of her amazing book, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, for attendees only. Copies will be available to buy, or you can bring your own!
Scholarships
Thanks to our sponsor Slack, we will be offering a number of scholarships to people who would otherwise not be able to attend due to financial issues. SOLD OUT.
Venue
We are very grateful to our venue partner this year, the Conway Hall Ethical Society. At over two hundred years old, it is the last remaining freethought society in the world, and the only ethical society in the UK. The Society is an educational charity whose object is the advancement of study, research and education in humanist ethical principles. Conway Hall provide a range of activities, open to all, including lectures, exhibitions, performances, debates, courses and classical music concerts. There’s even a library & archives too!
Conway Hall
25 Red Lion Square
London WC1R 4RL
Website: conwayhall.org.uk
Twitter: @conwayhall