As part of Science Week we held a fantastic STEAM Festival for parents, pupils and local schools, jam packed with lectures, a careers fair, live experiments and exhibitions. The theme was artificial intelligence and whether it is changing the world for the better.
Our lecture series was very well attended – clearly a popular topic! The first lecture was given by our Physics teacher & Digital Strategy Lead, Mr Llewellin, and sparked lots of conversation regarding learning about AI as part of the curriculum as well as developments which will impact our lives and new apps we can already test out! Our Head of Maths, Mr Brewin gave a fascinating history of AI, from rebirth of knowledge and perfection of the mind toward enlightenment, to the creation of autonomous machines to house human consciousness. The lecture made everyone think and started a slight existential crisis as we tried to work out how to use machines to enhance our humanity, whilst differentiating us from them. Our final lecture was by Managing Director at Accenture Digital, Conor McGovern, and took a positive slant on artificial intelligence as offering us the opportunity to extend human capabilities and showing us how pervasive machine learning already has become.
We had a hugely popular careers fair with exhibitors from a variety of STEAM professions. Huge thanks to all of our exhibitors:
Kit Carter, Solicitor, Carpmaels and Ransford LLP
Valerie Charlton, Design Director, Sebastian Conran Associates
Jennifer Geary, Chief Risk & Operations Officer, Asto (powered by Santander)
Titus Hill, Executive Producer – BT Sport Rugby, Sunset + Vine
Punita Hossain, Management Consultant/Non Exec Director
Sharon Lee, MICE CEng, Associate Director Project and Programme Management, Arup UK
Nicola Osinaike, IT Internal Audit Manager, Government Internal Audit Agency (GIAA)
Nigel Triner, Technical Director, Jacobs
Olivia van Lieshout (Sydenham alumna), Airline Captain, easyJet
Preya Wylie, Head of Support & Customer Success, pi-top
Ayo Abbas, Senior Marketing Communications Lead, pi-top
Women of the future STEM Ambassadors:
Laura Whelan, Programme Principal, Fibre First, Openreach
Alice Mooney, Business Manager to the MD of Service Delivery, Openreach
Hurvashee Gya, Risk Graduate in Conduct, Compliance and Operational Risk, Lloyds Banking Group
Haadiyah Fakira, Risk Graduate in Conduct, Compliance and Operational Risk, Lloyds Banking Group
Siobhan Randell, Education and Engagement Manager, WhiteHat
Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London
Oxford Brookes University
The University of Leeds
The University of Surrey
Looking forward to next year already!
