In recent years IBM have regularly invited a group of Warwick computer science students to an 'open day' event held at
their research centre at Hursley. A couple of weeks ago a coach-full of our students (from 1st years to 4th years) attended this year's event. One of those attending, Alex Wilson, picks up the story ...

"After arriving in Hursley we were shown around the beautiful grounds of Hursley House before being introduced to IBM staff and facilities. The Galileo Centre, where we spent most of the day, was filled with interesting exhibitions and demonstrations of technology such as facial profiling and uses of RFID tags. The staff gave us presentations on current technologies and uses, such as in the SMARTer planet scheme – including one employee who had integrated public monitoring with his house through Twitter! During lunch we were able to have personal chats with IBM’s Master Innovators, the people who design the new innovations in technology.

The last part of the day was splitting into groups and working on our own “innovations” – we gave a presentation on uses and how we’d implement it to the rest of the students who came and IBM’s own panel of judges. The winning team received iPods as prizes. The entire day was very fun, interesting, and well worth doing again. A big thank you to IBM for their time and hospitality!"

(Outside Image credit Simon Greig, release under Creative Commons)