About this event
Imperial College London African Caribbean Society and Imperial College London Department of Computing have teamed up to host the African Caribbean Hackathon (AC-HACK), an event to celebrate African Caribbean Computer Scientists and showcase African Caribbean talent and culture. Head over to the event webpage here for more details and announcements. African Caribbean Ethnic Computer Scientists are invited to take part in two challenges in a fun 24hr coding frenzy. Throughout the event there will be an array of inspirational talks, panel discussions, opportunities to network and fun activities. When the dust settles a range of prizes will be awarded to the best performing teams based on their submitted code and presentation. Register interest and the challenge organisers will soon be in contact. Please join our slack channel to chat with organisers + find team mates: https://join.slack.com/t/achackworkspace/shared_invite/zt-1euygotc6-dQNqTWDGtr088isVfPP0Hw
Why AC Hack?
Diversity
Celebrate the diverse talent already in the tech field. Encourage more diverse talent to enter the tech industry. Prove that diversity is integral to the success of the industry.
Networking
Meet a tonne of new people from all backgrounds. Get new ideas and skills from your teammates.
Skills
A programming vet? Use this opportunity to show off and share your skills. Need to brush up on your skills or just starting out? No worries!! Join our coding bootcamp before the hack where you’ll get loads of help from our incredible mentors.
Networking
Meet a tonne of new people from all backgrounds. Get new ideas and skills from your teammates.
Speakers
Listen to some inspirational speakers over the weekend. Get career advice, industry experience and tech tips.
Prizes
Nothing like a little friendly competition? Can’t give too much away but you never know what you could leave with…
Speakers
Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock MBE
Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock is a scientist and broadcaster referred to as the BBC’s‘face of space’. She is the presenter of the astronomical institution The Sky atNight, has fronted a number of space documentaries, and regularly appears onscience and non-science programmes.
From a modest background and diagnosed with dyslexia, Maggie overcame thenaysayers to study at Imperial College where she obtained her degree in Physicsand a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. After her studies, she toured the UKspeaking to inner-city schools about what scientists do and why and how to be onewith the aim of inspiring the next generation of physicists.
Since then she has spent her career making novel, bespoke instrumentation inboth the industrial and academic environments. These instruments have rangedfrom hand-held land mine detectors to an optical subsystem for the James WebbSpace Telescope (the replacement for the Hubble space telescope). She has workedfor the MoD on missile warning systems, and for aerospace giant EADS on a rangeof projects to monitor the earth’s atmosphere.
Maggie is a research fellow and an Honorary Research Associate at UniversityCollege London, and continues her work to engage the public with science. Sheaugments her ‘Tours of the Universe’ presentations to young and old with regularTV and radio appearances.As well as fronting The Sky at Night, Maggie has appeared in programmesincluding Stargazing Live, The Science of Doctor Who, and In Orbit: HowSatellites Rule Our World. An engaging and passionate speaker, Maggie’senthusiasm for science and learning is infectious. As well as looking at the wondersof space and what it can teach us, she also tackles science education and publicunderstanding, and women in science and engineering.
Shakir Mohamed, DeepMind London
I am a scientist and engineer in the fields of statistical machine learning and artificial intelligence. I am most interested in research that combines multiple disciplines and views of machine learning and its applications. I shape my efforts around three conceptual pillars: Probabilistic Foundations of Learning and Intelligence, Addressing Global Challenges, and Transformation. I work towards developing methods focussed on probabilistic reasoning that lead to systems for agent-based decision-making. I work towards the application of machine learning to global challenges in healthcare and environment, and towards social Transformation that supports greater diversity, responsibility, and freedom. I love exploring and writing about the connections between different computational, epistemological, and social paradigms and maintain a blog at blog.shakirm.com.
I am a senior staff research scientist at DeepMind, London, having joined in 2013, where we work towards the goal of developing intelligent and general-purpose learning systems. I also lead a non-profit organisation called the Deep Learning Indaba, whose mission is to Strengthen African Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. I’m an Associate Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge, and an Honorary Professor in the Department of Computer Science at University College London (UCL).
I was a programme chair for DALI2019, a programme co-chair for ICLR2019, the Senior Programme Chair for ICLR2020 and the General Chair for ICLR2021. I am a member of the Royal Society’s Diversity Committee (2020-2023), and was elected to the Board of Directors of ICML andd ICLR in 2019.
Before moving to London, I held a Junior Research Fellowship from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) as part of the programme on Neural Computation and Adaptive Perception. I was based in Vancouver at the University of British Columbia in the Laboratory for Computational Intelligence (LCI) with Nando de Freitas. I completed my PhD with Zoubin Ghahramani at the University of Cambridge, where I was a Commonwealth Scholar to the United Kingdom and a member of St John’s College. I am from South Africa, and completed my previous degrees in Electrical and Information Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
About Imperial College African Caribbean Society
Founded in 1998, the Imperial College African Caribbean Society aims to enhance awareness of both African and Caribbean culture by organising events which showcase different elements of our heritage. If you are keen to celebrate Africa and the Caribbean or you want to be part of an active, fun-filled society at Imperial then come and embrace the culture, food, music, history while enjoying the fun, laughter, friendships!
The people are what make the Imperial College African Caribbean Society so special. We are one of the largest and most diverse cultural societies at Imperial but we are also a close family. So it doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from, everyone is welcome!