Many Informatics folks, including me, enjoy occasional meals provided by the school, some in a meeting or social event, but perhaps more often as leftovers announced in the inf-people mailing list. Many of us are aware of some patterns, including catering suppliers, dietary options and serving time. Some, including me, might have been wondering why […]
Three months ago we opened for discussion a draft of our School Values, a proposed list developed by a group of about 25 people. There have been many contributions and views, often very thoughtful. It’s great to see that a large part of our School community is involved and actively helps to ground our shared […]
In the last week of May, I attended the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS) 2023 conference in person. This was the first in person conference after the pandemic, and the location of the event was London, which was an easy destination to reach but also an expensive destination to stay. AAMAS […]
People like to be surrounded by things they like. Having a workspace that you like makes you happier [1], more productive [2], and even behave more ethically [3]. Nobody wants to work in a soulless environment. Therefore the School of Informatics fully supports you personalising your office. You are welcome to hang posters or decorate […]
Our university is a very large organisation. With over 15,000 staff and nearly 50,000 students, it consists of many parts. The same holds for our School. It is not always easy to find the kind of help you are looking for. Whether it’s harassment, bullying, or mental health, here are all available support options in […]
As a PhD student in the School of Informatics, I’ve been researching gender bias in language and language technologies. Time and again, I’m surprised by how simple people try to make biased language. As Abeba Birhane stresses in her interview on the podcast The Good Robot, not everything can be conceptualized as a straightforward problem […]
Our School undertakes a culture survey of all School members every two years. We don’t do this annually because we feel all this would result in is survey fatigue. We know that completing the survey takes some time! So why do it? We think the best incentive for completing the survey is evidence that the […]
BCSWomen organises the annual Lovelace Colloquium: a day featuring talks, a careers panel, employer stands and a student poster contest. This year, three students from the University of Edinburgh made the trip to Sheffield, and Qiuye Zhang in fact won first place with her poster “Can Artificial Neural Networks Learn like Brains?” in the second […]
Values, with a capital V, are core principles that we, as a School, stand for. They are part of our School strategic plan, and are specific to our community. You may think this is a pointless exercise in bureaucracy. Why would we have to write these things down? There are three reasons why I think […]
People make the School of Informatics. Whether academic, professional services, or student, without people teaching and research would halt. And people are at their best when they feel they belong in the School’s culture. At the root of an inclusive culture lies fairness, which brings out the best in people. Fairness matters, as any child […]
