Computer Science at Warwick University
On the 7th December, 10 students from Year 12 and Year 13 attended multiple lectures about “Computer Science in Action” at Warwick University. The inspirational day of Computer Science demonstrated cutting edge fields from Artificial Intelligence, software development and algorithms to smart cities. The day also featured a special session with hints and tips for examination success. Five renowned speakers from universities, industries and the media revealed computer science at its very best and we all had a whole lot of fun along the way.
We arrived at Warwick at 9.45am and were given the opportunity to peruse the differing architecture as well as the buzzing campus life with many students rushing to attend their next lecture. We then entered Warwick Arts centre and took our front row seats within Butterworth Lecture Hall.
Dr Matthew Leeke from the University of Warwick gave us a fascinating insight into Smart Cities of the future and explained how one of his students had created an algorithm and app to help people become more energy cost efficient by tracking and predicting future global positioning co-ordinates. Dr Emma Byrne then talked about recently voiced fears that Artificial Intelligence could be about to make a great and dangerous leap forward and why this is already more advanced than most people realise!
Lunch at the university allowed us to take in more campus life and clearly represented how dynamic student life is at Warwick. We then had an inspirational lecture from Graham Cluley who helped develop Dr Solomon’s antivirus toolkit and he explained an astonishing fact that over 400,000 pieces of malware are created on a daily basis.
We were then given the most important open problem to solve in Computer Science by Leslie Goldberg from the University of Oxford, P versus NP algorithm, which carries a £1m prize currently. Our final thought provoking presentation was from Dr Conor McBride of Strathclyde University who persuaded us that functional programming is the future of Computer Science and why we must be involved. Altogether, we had a motivational experience and would like to thank Warwick University for inviting us as well as Mr. Hawkins who helped put the trip together.
Inder Panesar, 12MMI.
