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Public lectures in Computer Science

We hold a number of public lectures each year in Computer Science. These fall into two categories - the Roundhouse Lecture Series, and a series of lectures given by speakers from industry. The nature of the lectures is to inform and engage those who work and study Computer Science, as well as those who have an interest in the discipline.

Upcoming lectures

Wednesday 11 November 2015, 18.30, Ron Cooke Hub

Pioneers of Computer ScienceSir Tony Hoare FRS FREng

Our last Roundhouse Lectures:

A Computer Science Roundhouse Public Lecture: Wednesday 20 May 2015

Let us play: Artificial and human intelligence in games

Professor Peter Cowling and Dr Paul Cairns
Department of Computer Science, University of York

Digital games are socially, culturally and economically important - bigger than film or music - with a UK industry valued at over £3 billion. The UK government and the games industry have over £30 million invested currently for research into games and digital creativity led by the University of York, in the NEMOGIGGI and Digital Creativity Hub (DC Hub) projects.

We will talk about:

  • how we have used search approaches based on random simulations (so called Monte Carlo approaches) to make better Artificial Intelligence (AI) for games; 
  • work done at York to investigate immersive and social experiences that players have while playing, using the tools of human-computer interaction (HCI); 
  • a glimpse of the future of games research at York and the tantalising prospects of games as a tool to understand and help people, do science, provide new cultural experiences, and provide economic prosperity through working with the games industry.

White Board to White Coats: some adventures in taking image analysis research from the laboratory to clinical practice

Professor Sir Michael Brady FRS, FMedSci, FREng
Professor of Oncological Imaging, University of Oxford

I present some of our experiences in developing image analysis systems designed for clinical applications from the Laboratory right through to clinical practice. These include breast cancer (mammographic density and CAD), image fusion (e.g. CT/MRI/PET), and fatty liver disease. The talk is aimed at a broad audience (Computer Science, Physics, Engineering, Clinical Medicine) but will also provide a number of details that may interest researchers in image analysis. I also describe our recent work aimed at Cloud deployment of the software we have developed. The research draws upon the Oxford Cancer Imaging Centre, and my companies featured in this talk are Volpara, Mirada Medical, Perspectum Diagnostics, and ScreenPoint.

Can slime mould compute?

Wednesday 29 January 2014, 6.30pm

Speaker: Professor Susan Stepney, Department of Computer Science

If you have a PC, tablet, or smartphone, you have used a computer. But some people use billiard balls, beams of light, sticks of wood, chemicals, bacteria, slime moulds, spaghetti, even black holes, as computers (although some of these only in theory!). How can these things be computers? What can they do? Can they do things your smartphone can't? And why are these people using such peculiar things to compute with, anyway?