London Hopper Colloquium 2023

London Hopper Colloquium 2023

Featuring women speakers talking about their research, a spotlight competition open to postgraduate students, and opportunities to network with other new researchers in computing, this year’s event was held in person in Holborn, London. We heard from women about their work on innovations that will change the world, fact checking, verification, and natural language generation.

Event organisers

• Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh
• Elaine Pimentel
• Estibaliz Fraca Santamaria
• Kiran Ahmed

The event started with a warm welcome from Louise Brown (BCS Women and University of Nottingham) followed by Caroline Wardle (UCL) sharing the history of the London Hopper.

Guest speakers, Marianna Obrist, Nadia Barthouze, Maria A Schett, and Elaine Chew shared insight insight into their research.

During the afternoon, researchers showcased their spotlight competition entries. Manon Flageat won the Speaker Prize, Cara Lynch won the People’s Choice Prize and Shreya Iyer was the runner up winner. 

"It was inspiring to be in a room full of women and non-binary researchers, presenting their work in a variety of fields. What really stuck with me from the invited speakers' talks was the interdisciplinarity of their research, in some cases forging whole new paths for themselves with their disparate passions." Cara Lynch  

“The conference left me with a resounding takeaway: "People, passion, and perseverance" hold the key to progress. The diverse range of topics discussed not only expanded my knowledge but also unveiled numerous exciting applications of AI.” Shreya Iyer 

“I thoroughly enjoyed participating in the London Hopper Colloquium. The talks were all extremely engaging, and I appreciated the opportunity to explore the research areas of both the speakers and the other finalists.

It provided me with new perspectives on Computing research, as well as valuable insights into my own work. Moreover, the Colloquium was a great opportunity to connect with women researchers and students from various Computing fields. I am grateful to the organisers at UCL and BCS for orchestrating such a nice event, and I would definitely encourage women students and researchers to seize the opportunity to participate in future iterations!” Manon Flageat 

London Hopper Colloquium 2023 Programme

09:30 - 10:00: Arrival, Coffee and Registration

10:00 - 10:05: Welcome from the Organizing Committee (Ahmed, Fraca Santamaria, Pimentel, Sadrzadeh)

10:05 - 10:10: Welcome from Louise Brown (BCS Women and Nottingham)

10:10-10:15: London Hopper History (Caroline Wardle, UCL)

10:15 - 10:45: First Speaker: Marianna Obrist (HCI, UCL and co-founder of OWidgets LTD) and a novel scent-delivery technology

10:45 - 11:15: Second Speaker: Nadia Barthouze (UCLIC, UCL) discussing body posture and movement as a modality for recognising, modulating and measuring human affective states in HCI

11:15 - 11:30: Coffee Break

11:30 - 12:30: Research Spotlight Presentations

12:30 - 13:45: Lunch break (Participants vote and judges meet privately to choose the Spotlight winners)

13:45 - 14:15: Third Speaker: Maria A Schett (Google) and Project Oak: Proving Privacy to Users With Enclaves

14:15 - 14:45: Fourth Speaker: Maria Conte-Real (UCL, Winner of Hopper's Spotlight 2021)

14:45-15:00: Coffee Break

15:00-15:30: Fifth Speaker: Elaine Chew, Operations Researcher and pianist. Professor of Engineering at King's College London

15:30 - 16:00: Spotlight Prize Presentation

Research Spotlight competition  

The Research Spotlight competition focuses on female research Masters  and PhD students, providing them with a friendly forum for communicating the essence of their work.

This will be via 3-5 minutes (depending on the number of accepted submissions) in-person presentations during Hopper 2023.

Presentation topics may be from any research area within the field of computing, and may encompass interdisciplinary studies connected to computing. There will be 10-12 spotlight presentations, split between two thirty-minute sessions.

Prizes will be awarded for the best research spotlight presentations and each entrant will also receive a prize.

Prizes

The following three prizes will be awarded:

Speaker prize (chosen by the judges):

• £150

• Invitation to be a speaker in the following year's London Hopper.

• 1-year membership of BCS

Runner up Prize (chosen by the judges)

• £150

People's Choice Prize (chosen by popular vote of the attendees)

• £150

Finalist Prizes: The following finalist prize* will be given to each finalist who makes a presentation but who does not win one of the 3 speaker prizes.

• £30

Supporters of the 2023 Colloquium

UCL Computer Science is a global leader in research in experimental computer science. The 2014 Research Excellence Framework evaluation ranked UCL first place for computer science; 61% of its research is rated ‘world-leading’ and 96% of its research is rated ‘internationally excellent’. UCL Computer Science research has made a deep, lasting and sustained impact on all aspects of society. Code written at UCL is used across all 3G mobile networks; medical image computing now means faster prostate cancer diagnosis and has developed cutting edge software for neurosurgery; a human-centred computer security approach has transformed UK government’s delivery of online security. Our degrees reflect the ever-increasing importance of fields such as virtual environments, financial computing, and machine learning; and new programmes in Web Science and Business Analytics reflect latest trends in technology and industry. Computer Science enjoys a rich history – it established the first connection to the precursor of the Internet outside the US – and continues to create innovative technologies that change lives with computers.

The BCS Academy of Computing is the Learned Society within BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, and is dedicated to advancing computing as an academic discipline. By developing and supporting a cohesive community inclusive of scholars, researchers, educators and professionals with a shared commitment to the advancement of computing, the Academy aims to nurture ingenuity, inventiveness and innovation in computing. It is through our range of activities that we promote excellence in the creation, study and application of knowledge in computing. BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, promotes wider social and economic progress through the advancement of information technology science and practice. Bringing together industry, academics, practitioners and government to share knowledge, we promote new thinking, inform the design of new curricula, shape public policy and inform the public.