Description :

Talk and Wikipedia edit-a-thon celebrating Women in STEM.   

Happy Birthday, Ada Lovelace: the first computer programmer

Date : 13 October 2015

Time : 18:00 - 22:00

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, is widely regarded as the world's first computer programmer, yet computing today is a male dominated field with typically 15%-20% women in the industry and taking higher computing qualifications.

In this talk celebrating the 200th anniversary of Ada Lovelace’s birth, Professor Carron Shankland* of the University of Stirling will explore the story of Ada Lovelace, how she got interested in computers, what computer she was programming, and her contribution to computing.

Wikipedia edit-a-thon celebrating Women in STEM

Time : To follow above presentation

Help will be on hand to start editing, so bring your laptops and a sense of curiosity about women in science and related fields from Cambridge and beyond. The aim is to raise the visibility of inspiring women and other groups who are under-represented on Wikipedia through telling some great stories (and learning a lot along the way).

*Carron Shankland is a Professor of Computing Science at the University of Stirling, and deputy head of the school of Natural Sciences. She is Chair of BCS Women in Computing Research Group and a member of the University of Stirling Centre for Gender and Feminist Studies. Her research lies in the intersection of computer science, mathematics and biology: understanding the behaviour of biological systems through mathematical and computational models. 

Prof Shankland is passionate about the promotion of careers in science for women, leading a programme of actions at Stirling designed to achieve a gender balance in senior positions.

*

We have now stopped taking bookings for these events.