Human-Centred Computing News

Last Tuesday, students studying Computer Science received their results. The Head of Department, Prof. Artur Czumaj, congratulated all CS students on their achievements and handed out departmental prizes. Dr. Irene Glendinning handed out BCS prizes for best projects.

The BCS prizes were given to:

Nicolas Townsend - Best Third year BSc Project
James Michael - Best Third year MEng project

The Department prizes were:

David Beckingsale - Best overall graduating BSc student in Computer Science
Stephen Roberts - Best overall graduating MEng student in Computer Science
Christopher Ball - Third-year Project Prize

On Friday, about 22 Year 9 students from six local schools visited the department to get a taster session of programming. The students, most of whom had never done 'real' programming before, were shown how programming is useful in everyday life in everything from video games to mapping disaster zones using mobile phones.

They were a lively group who then worked at an example of programming in the ‘World of Wombats’ - mostly with enthusiasm and lots of questions. Most of them achieved what we hoped for in the short time they had – though they still had several ‘challenges’ to finish. Did we put them off or turn them on? We hope to see some of them again in four and a half years time!

This was part of a full day at the university, organised by the Widening Participation team, in which five other departments held similar events in order to inspire young people to consider a degree at university.

Over a hundred students gathered last week in the Panorama Room for a reception, poster display and then Award Ceremony for the Warwick Advantage Awards. They were all winners of Awards of various kinds in recognition of outstanding extra-curricular contributions to life at Warwick and the local community.

We were delighted that four Award winners were from Computer Science. Main Awards were presented to Phillip Taylor (CS3) and Hoi Zin (Jackie) Tran (DM3). Gold Awards were gained by two Computer and Business Studies students Samantha Edwards and Nikhita Giridhar (pictured above). Among many activities over her first two years at Warwick Samantha has visited numerous local schools (a different one each week!) as one of the Warwick Technology Volunteers to introduce the programming environment Scratch to pupils and teachers. Interestingly Nikhita, a final year student, commented, "I think it counted significantly towards my getting a job offer from Goldman Sachs that I done so many extra-curricular things during my time at Warwick."

The Warwick Advantage Award provides the opportunity to achieve University recognition and reward for the time and effort that students put into societies, sports clubs, campaigns, committees, volunteering, events, URSS research, work experience & everything else that isn't a degree requirement. Find out more at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/advantage/awards/