School of Computing Science

Outreach

Ada Scotland Festival

The Ada Scotland Festival aims to champion gender diversity in Computing Science, and is comprised of a series of events aimed at women of all ages – but especially school-age girls – every October. While the Festival’s partners deliver events and activities across Scotland during the main festival, it’s always tricky to include everyone: in the Highlands, for example, the distances required to travel to an event can be prohibitive. With this in mind, our Festival Manager, Anna Doyle, hatched a plan to run a mini-festival in Inverness and to bus in school kids from across the Highlands for a day of hands-on computing activities. And so, Anna and Matt travelled up to Inverness in mid-February to put this plan into action.

The kids travelled from as far afield as Ardnamurchan High School, Dornoch Academy, and Grantown Grammar, and were treated to lunch (plus an endless supply of biscuits) to see them through the day’s activities. These activities – featuring Spheros, micro:bits, and video game nanobots – were delivered by partners including the Scottish AI Alliance, Barclays, UHI, Skills Development Scotland, and the SQA. The feedback from teachers and pupils alike was brilliant, and we aim to run a similar event in the Highlands next year, as well as expanding to establish a mini-festival in the Borders in 2024.

SmartSTEMS collaboration – widening access to STEM education

SmartSTEMS is a Scottish charity that aims to ensure young people – regardless of gender, background, ethnicity, or religion – have equal and fair access to STEM education and career opportunities. Working in collaboration with education and industry, SmartSTEMS facilitate the delivery of ‘hub events’, designed to engage young people aged 10-14 in STEM activities. On 14 December, the School of Computing Science’s Anna Doyle and Dr Matthew Barr hosted the University’s first SmartSTEMS hub event, building on our previous Ada Scotland Festival collaborations. The hub event involved colleagues from Engineering, Maths & Statistics, and Computing Science delivering hands-on workshops to 130 school children across a number of campus venues, including the ARC. Workshops were also delivered by industry partners including JP Morgan, Turnkey, and Howden.

In addition to the workshops, there were employer stalls, prizes, and presentations, including a talk from Megan Gallagher, who recently graduated from our Graduate Apprenticeship in Software Engineering and continues to work as a software engineer at Leidos. Another former Graduate Apprentice, Andrew Blair – now pursuing a PhD in the School of Computing Science – delivered a much talked about session with Pepper the robot.

Anna and Matt are now talking to SmartSTEMS about another, larger event, aimed at slightly a older age group. Please do get in touch (Anna.Doyle@glasgow.ac.uk or Matthew.Barr@glasgow.ac.uk) if you’d be interested in taking part!

Blair Drummond Zoo and Safari Park Collaboration & Educational Impact

Dr Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas research and develop new animal-computer systems. She has been working with Blair Drummond Zoo and Safari park since 2021. She has published papers from this collaboration, one at ISS'23 on giraffes, which won an honourable mention award. So far, she has been developing technologies viewable by the public and designed to increase visitor education and for animals to investigate their behaviours with computer devices and featuring on their website  https://www.blairdrummond.com/conservation/research/ 

When she has technologies in the zoo, the zoo sometimes puts up signs about the technologies if they are viewable by the public. She received a fellowship from the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2023 to work with the zoo to develop these to help towards Scottish educational offerings and she has given talks/written for the British Association for Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA), the regulating body on technologies developed at zoos, as part of this work on how to build zoo tech. She has also participated in the Glasgow Science Festival looking at animal tech for children. Further, her research with them has been featured on STV news, The Scotsman, etc. Finally, PhD, interns and Level 4/5 students have been involved in this collaboration and won best thesis awards for their research at the zoo.

Above are some photos to give an idea of the technologies her group develops; a tangible touch-based device for giraffes that plays audio to giraffes when licked/head-butted and a chimpanzee heating device so they can warm up and stay outside longer triggered by standing on a projected square of light (they use it sometimes to warm their mouths hence the photo!).