UCL Computer Science EDI Award winners 2023

This year, there were a total of 19 nominations across 4 categories with 12 winners, which highlighted the incredible EDI activity happening outside of the committee and working groups.

The winners

Top three EDI activities for BSc students

• Nandini Chavda: Carrying out schools outreach work teaching primary school children how to code. 
• Imaad Zaffar: Supporting equality for disabilities and assisting the hosting of other teams at EDI related events.
• Morgane Ohlig: Led on workshops to evaluate why there was underrepresentation of UG women in programming tutor roles.

Top three EDI activities for MEng students

• Sree Sanakkayala: launched the Engineering Coalition mentoring Programme for underrepresented students. 
• Joint second: Sachi Lad and Kamil Ebanks: Supporting positive initiatives in the dept and publishing an excellent final year project with Microsoft.

Top three EDI activities for PhD students

• Sophie Martin: Proactive member of the Race Equality Working group, supporting events and leading on activity, participating in the Black History Month event 2022, Race Equality Week Event 2023,  and Speed Networking Event 2023.  
• Oscar Key: Integral member of the LGBTQ+ working group at UCL Computer Science and a member of the LGBTQ+ Allies Network. Oscar has led on many positive initiatives such as organising events and working on the LGBTQ+.
• Shu Zhong and Lisa Issouzi: Launched the PhD discord channel and delivered PhD social events. 

Top three EDI group activities across all cohorts

• Jay Dwyer-Joyce, Maria Corte-Real Santos, Kyle Beadle, and Chimdi Igwe delivered inspirational talks at the International Women's Day event and Thinking Black schools outreach visit.     
• UCLIC PhD students, Ceylan Besevli, Giada Brianza, Jing Xue, Shu Zhong, Zak Morgan, Jitesh Joshi, Katherine Wang, Merlin Kelly, Mark Quinlan, and Guangyu Ren participated in the Thinking Black on-campus visit running workshops for state school Black British students.
• Tina Hou, Dongyeon Park, and Minhui Cai launched an accessibility software to enable amputees and single arm users to use computers with their feet. They built this technology with Microsoft, IBM and Intel. 

Commenting on her award, Cybersecurity PhD student, Maria Corte-Real Santos, said:

“During my time at UCL, I have really enjoyed participating in various EDI events, for example during International Woman's Day, where I participated in the panel talks, the London Hopper Colloquium, where I gave a talk about my research as the winner of the speaker's prize the previous year, and various outreach events for young women in STEM. It has been rewarding to help encourage others to pursue their passions and meet other inspiring women in science. It is an honour to receive this award."

Computer Science MEng student, Sachi Lad said:

"I was very grateful to become Student Representative for my cohort, thus having access to a platform to be able to promote initiatives based on my experiences and the perspectives of my peers. Additionally, this gave me confidence to be able to convey my ideas with my team to produce an impactful project with Microsoft, and these experiences have been the highlight of this academic year!"

Computer Science MEng student, Kamil Ebanks says:

"I am truly honoured and grateful to receive this joint second place award. I want to express my deepest appreciation to the department for recognising my efforts in supporting positive initiatives and for acknowledging the hard work I put into my final year project with Microsoft."

The awards recognise the outstanding contributions of the UCL Computer Science student community and symbolise the strong commitment to creating an inclusive environment. 

The department would like to thank all the winners and runners up for their positive contributions and look forward to the next set of Student Awards in 2024.