This year students and staff of the Centre for Complexity Centre went to Ravenstor in beautiful Peak District for the annual retreat. As usual, fantastic talks from both PhD students filled the three days of the retreat. The best four talks, given by Michael Pearce, Gian Lorenzo Spisso, Tim Pollington and Jim Skinner, were awarded prizes. We also had the chance to get useful advice on starting/writing as you go/finishing your PhD and to see some excellent presentations from external speakers. Tobias Galla from the University of Manchester offered a great perspective on being an interdisciplinary researcher, whereas the Complexity alumni Marcus Ong and Dan Sprague from Spectra Analytics shared their experience as data scientists. This year saw the return of the Warwick Annual Research Projects (WARPs) which provided again a great opportunity for collaboration and work on interesting projects, such as using reinforcement learning to win a game of Spoof. In the free time, we managed to explore the area and to enjoy some Bakewell tart.
We look forward to the next retreat when we will celebrate ten years of the Centre of Complexity Science!