In2scienceUK Placement Week at CASA

CASA academics were delighted to participate in the In2scienceUK scheme empowering young people by giving them an insight into STEM, hosting a group of seven sixth form pupils from a mixture of schools in Bloomsbury from 15-19 August, including a half-day field trip to Brixton. 

The week was themed around ideas relating to neighbourhoods, change, and data. Sessions covered were about complexity, about gentrification, about Arduino sensors, and about maps as story-telling devices. Students were introduced to tools such as NetLogo (to explore how emergence (and the concept of feedback in particular) can be a useful tool for understanding how neighbourhoods might change thanks to nothing more than a slight preference for ‘people like us’) and QGIS (to make maps based on our walk around Brixton). Our aim was to share with the next generation some of our excitement about what is possible in an interdisciplinary research environment where architects, computer scientists, artists and planners (amongst many others!) work together.

The week was organised and led by Dr Jon Reades, and featured contributions from Prof Elsa Arcaute, Prof Adam Dennett, Prof Duncan Wilson, Dr Leah Lovett & Dr Duncan Hay, and Manny (PhD student).