Our departmental application for an Athena SWAN Bronze award was accepted by the Equality Challenge Unit. The purpose of the Athena SWAN Charter is to recognise commitment to the advancement of gender equality in academia, to address unequal gender representation across academic disciplines, professional and support functions and to remove the obstacles faced by women.

Join HackXLR8: the official hackathon of London Tech Week at ExCel, London. Team up and collaborate with designers, startups and developers to create an app or prototype for an IoT, Smart Mobility or GreenTech solution.

The winners will pitch their ideas on the main stage of TechXLR8 and be awarded with great prizes.

We are now looking to appoint a lecturer in Computer Science to help develop our participation in the Institute of Coding (www.instituteofcoding.org), a new, exciting, national initiative that brings together over 60 universities, industry, training providers and professional bodies to address the UK’s digital skills gaps.

We are particularly seeking applicants with a growing reputation for research in Data Analytics/Data Science, who will also contribute to one or more of the interdisciplinary research themes of the Birkbeck Knowledge Lab (www.klab.bbk.ac.uk/research) and the Birkbeck Institute for Data Analytics (www.bida.bbk.ac.uk).

Full details

We are now looking to appoint a senior lecturer in Computer Science to provide leadership in our participation in the Institute of Coding (www.instituteofcoding.org), a new, exciting, national initiative that brings together over 60 universities, industry, training providers and professional bodies to address the UK’s digital skills gaps.

We are particularly seeking applicants with a growing reputation for research in Data Analytics/Data Science, who will also contribute to one or more of the interdisciplinary research themes of the Birkbeck Knowledge Lab (www.klab.bbk.ac.uk/research) and the Birkbeck Institute for Data Analytics (www.bida.bbk.ac.uk).

Full details

The Department for Education highlights Birkbeck’s expertise in widening participation and outreach on day that Institute of Coding announced by Prime Minister at Davos.

Birkbeck will share its experience of widening participation and outreach within the new Institute of Coding, a consortium of more than 60 universities, businesses and industry experts set to receive £20 million to tackle the UK’s digital skills gap.

The consortium is formed of businesses including IBM, Cisco, BT and Microsoft, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), 25 universities (led by University of Bath), and professional bodies such as the British Computer Society and CREST.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum 2018 in Davos, Prime Minister Theresa May spoke about how the Institute of Coding, a key part of the government’s efforts to drive up digital skills through the Industrial Strategy, will equip people of all ages with the skills they need.

Participating in the foundation of the new Institute of Coding will build on the continued success of the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, which celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2017 making it one of the UK’s longest-established departments of computing. The department’s mission remains the same, to provide programmes suited to those in work looking to attain computing skills, build confidence and professional networks, and advance their knowledge. It is expected that participation in the Institute of Coding will afford new opportunities for the department to expand its provision for those at work, out of work, and to provide bespoke programmes for graduates of subjects other than Computing wishing to change career to roles required by the global digital economy.

Considered in historical terms or in light of contemporary reports, women, people returning to work and people from BME backgrounds are particularly underrepresented within the computing sector. Women currently represent just five per cent of computer scientists. Fair participation in computing and business was the theme of Dame Stephanie Shirley’s Andrew and Kathleen Booth Lecture in November 2017, and the department has made substantial progress to ensure its own participation structures are robustly fit for purpose in the coming years.

Professor Mark Levene said: “Our participation in the Institute of Coding will seek to address underrepresentation in computing careers and provide further opportunities for lifelong learners and those who wish to up-skill in their career; however it will also provide the opportunity to learn from other institutions committed to tackling these issues. We welcome the opportunity for this type of knowledge exchange between businesses, universities and professional organisations to the benefit of students and the UK economy.”

SherlockML will demonstrate their Development Environment for Data Science to MSc Data Science students on Wednesday Feb. 14th in Labs 404+405, from 6PM to 7:30PM.

Birkbeck (Department of Computer Science and Information Sytems, School of Business, Economics and Informatics) has been chosen as one of the UK universities to form the new Institute of Coding announced by the Prime Minister at the World Economic Forum 2018, where she pledged £20m from HEFCE together with £20m in matched funding.The IoC consortium is formed of 25 universities, businesses including IBM, Cisco, BT and Microsoft, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and professional bodies such as the British Computer Society and CREST and will teach digital skills such as artificial intelligence and cyber security. Birkbeck was chosen together with the Open University because of our specialist skills in widening participation and outreach.

Prime Minister announces £20m Institute of Coding

Birkbeck part of major new UK skills initiative

Institute of Coding website

We are seeking an enthusiastic, motivated manager to work closely with staff in the Department and School in co-ordinating the activities of Birkbeck’s contribution to the Institute of Coding (IoC). Full details

Michael J. Fox Foundation, the world’s largest non-profit funder of Parkinson’s research, has awarded George Roussos more than £100,000 to enable analysis of data from people with Parkinson’s Disease. Prof. Roussos from Birkbeck's Department of Computer Sceince and Information Systems, will use the money to help build on smartphone and wearable-device apps that record information on a patient’s motor symptoms of PD, including tremors, rigidity and posture instability. As reported in Metro. Further details.

The Department of Computer Science and Information Systems is seeking to appoint one full-time and one part-time post-doctoral researchers on an externally funded interdisciplinary project to develop a scalable computational Data Science Toolbox for the high-frequency assessment of Parkinson’s Disease. Full details are here