Ada Lovelace Day 2025

This year, Warwick's Ada Lovelace Day celebration took place on Wednesday 22 October 2025. Thank you all for coming! If you attended, please let us know what you thought in our our short, anonymous, feedback form.

The schedule was as follows (see further below for more information about the speakers:

2 pm	Katerina Hristova (researcher, writer and mathematician)
2.30 pm	Chitua Ibezim (machine learning and AI engineer)
3 pm	Coffee & tea break
3.30 pm	Ayesha Irfan (math. physics Phd student and data scientist)
4 pm	Sara Kalvala (Reader in computer science)
4.30 pm	Panel discussion and socializing

What is Ada Lovelace Day?

Ada Lovelace Day is an annual celebration of women's achievements in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM). Each year, the relevant Warwick student societies hold their own Ada Lovelace Day celebration to showcase the lives and work of female scientists.

The event is open to all, irrespective of gender, so please do come along!

Who was Ada Lovelace?

Ada Lovelace (1815 – 1852) is regarded by many as the first computer programmer.

Through her tutor Mary Somerville, she met and became friends with Charles Babbage, who was working on the Analytical Engine, the first computer.

She was commissioned to produce a translation of a lecture he gave from Italian, and augmented this translation significantly with her own notes; these contained the first algorithm for implementation on a computer ever published.

More about this year's speakers:

Katerina Hristova holds a PhD in Pure Mathematics from the University of Warwick. She then worked as a Senior Research Associate at the University of East Anglia, a technical writer and a mathematics tutor, before discovering cryptography and formal verification. She worked as a cryptography researcher and formal verification engineer in Nethermind, working on the formalisation of coding theory and SNARKs, before returning to academia as a Research Associate in the Formalisation of Mathematics at Imperial College London. Katerina's website

Chitua Ibezim is a Machine Learning and AI Engineer at Lloyds Banking Group, where she develops and delivers Generative AI use cases. During her time at the bank, she has contributed to a range of impactful projects with her most one focusing on transaction classification to enhance customer insights and experience.

Chitua holds a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Birmingham and an MSc in Data Analytics from the University of Warwick. Passionate about the intersection of data, technology, and real-world impact, she continues to explore how AI can drive meaningful change in the financial sector and beyond.

Ayesha Irfan:

I am a final year PhD student in Mathematical Physics at the University of Bristol working under Prof. Nina Snaith. Following a machine learning internship at the Oxford Maths department, I decided to pursue a career as a Data Scientist and I currently work for a data intelligence company called Naimuri alongside my PhD.

I was born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan and moved to the UK when I was 6 years old. I did an undergraduate in Physics at the University of Warwick - it was an incredible time that shaped my future immeasurably. I was told many times that my passions in life could not be juggled, but I am very glad that I stayed in both the tech world and the academic one. I live exactly the life I always dreamed I would, and I love helping others achieve the exact same.

Sara Kalvala is a Reader in the Department of Computer Science. Her research interests include the application of logical frameworks to reason about the correctness of software (in particular compilers) and also Computational Biology, particularly the use of simulation methods to understand cellular processes. Sara's website