Researc/hers Code

In this episode, Victoria and Olatz talk to Dr Emma Hodcroft on her research in tracking the evolution of the new coronavirus, SARS-Cov-2, and her journey into computer science and bioinformatics. Emma is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Basel and co-developer for the Nextstrain project. She is an expert in phylogenetics and has previously worked on HIV, plant and fruit fly genetics. You can read more about Emma's research on her website: http://emmahodcroft.com and on Twitter: https://twitter.com/firefoxx66  

We talk to Alexandra Lautarescu about open science, what makes good science, and what we can do as researchers and funders to promote and practise open science. Alex is a doctoral researcher at King's College London working on fetal and neonatal brain development. She is an open science advocate, passionate about making science more open in the research community and to the public. You can read more about her research and outreach at https://www.alautarescu.com and follow her on twitter @AleLautarescu If you are interested in the articles mentioned in this episode go to www.researcherscode.com/episode-10

What is imposter syndrome? Do you feel like an "imposter"? How do we tackle imposter syndrome? In this special episode, we talk to Professor Katherine Hawley, philospoher at the University of St. Andrews about imposter syndrome, why people get it, what we can do to support others with imposter syndrome and how we can tackle it as a society in the workplace and beyond. As well as Imposter Syndrome, Katherine also researches on Trust. You can read her work here.

Victoria Carr of ResearcHers Code has teamed up with Vicki Tipton from KCL Careers to bring you Part 2 of two episodes interviewing women who moved from the academia into the tech industry. Listen to Part 1 -> https://www.researcherscode.com/episode-7 Listen to Part 2 -> https://www.researcherscode.com/episode-8

Victoria Carr of ResearcHers Code has teamed up with Vicki Tipton from KCL Careers to bring you the first part of two episodes interviewing women who moved from the academia into the tech industry. We are joined by Chloe Tartan, Ella Fitzsimmons and Charlotte Fereday, who each have PhDs in different backgrounds (photonics, religious studies and language and linguistics respectively!) and are now working in tech roles. We discuss their journey from academia to their current job, what skills they've learnt during their PhDs that have helped them break into the tech space and what new skills they learnt on the job. Join us in the new year for the 2nd part of this conversation which focuses on diversity, barriers faced and top tips for researchers wanting to go into the tech sector. Listen to Part 1 -> https://www.researcherscode.com/episode-7

Olatz and Victoria chat to Dr Katie Seaborn, a postdoctoral scientist at the RIKEN Centre for Advanced Intelligence Project in Tokyo. Katie is currently researching into how elderly people interact and have conversations with robots that help prevent the onset of dementia. Katie is an expert in designing interactive games and user experience, specifically making games more accessible to humans. Growing up, she enjoyed drawing and illustration, but once the internet took off she discovered her love of digital design.

We chat to Dr Flora Tasse, Head of Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality at Streem. She completed a PhD in computer science at the University of Cambridge and was also founder and CEO of Selerio, a start-up in augmented reality. It all started when Flora watched Jurassic Park when she was eight years old. Amazed by the realistic nature of the computer-generated dinosaurs, Flora decided she wanted to work in computer graphics. By the age of eleven, she was already programming a PC with the help of a big Visual Basic manual. Flora's childhood dream begun to be realised when she created her first computer-generated crowd of people for her Masters' project at the University of Cape Town. Her love of research as well as her knack for coding visualisations led her to apply to many PhD programmes at top universities. Despite facing mostly rejections, she received offers from both Oxford and Cambridge. During and after her PhD at Cambridge, she worked for Google and Microsoft. Excited by what the tech sector had to offer, she left academia and founded her own augmented reality start-up.

Victoria Carr talks to Dr Ilana Wisby, CEO of Oxford Quantum Circuits, a spin-out company from the University of Oxford building and designing quantum computers. Ilana's path to the quantum realm was not exactly linear. As an accomplished pianist and flautist, Ilana had aspirations to study music but decided to study a Physics undergraduate degree with a Minor in Music at Royal Holloway University. She then pursued a PhD in Quantum Physics and subsequently landed herself working in the start-up world. Ilana is a natural networker. To others the word "networking" might sound uncomfortable. But networking isn't about striking up a "forced" conversation at academic conferences. Instead it can be a meet-up for lunch or a catch-up over coffee. Anyone can be a networker.  

We interview Dr Emma Byrne, science communicator and author of "Swearing Is Good For You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language". Emma's scientific career so far has been pretty remarkable. Before becoming a freelancer, Emma did a PhD in Artificial Intelligence and was a postdoctoral researcher in Computational Neuroscience. This is a packed show brimming with Emma's expertise and advice. If you are curious about the science of swearing, parallels between a PhD and parenting, combinatorial explosions, evolutionary computation, bias in AI, how you break into science communication, how to write a non-fiction book and everything else, then you're in for a treat.

On this episode, we talk to inventor Dr Tempest Van Schaik, a Machine Learning Engineer at Microsoft. She is currently working on Project Fizzyo with University College London and Great Ormand Street Hospital helping children with Cystic Fibrosis. Tempest is a "full-stack" aficionado with expertise from designing agricultural soil testing kits in small start-ups to data science applications for healthcare in big tech companies. When she's not busy building the future, she creates art and illustration. While growing up in South Africa, Tempest's creativity and innate curiosity led her to find her passion for applying engineering to healthcare. We explore her journey through her studies in medical and electrical engineering at Wits University in Johannesburg, and her move to London to embark on a PhD and a tech career.

We interview Dr Caroline Morton, a GP Registrar based in East London, who is also teaching programming courses to medical and biomedical students at Imperial College London. We chat about why coding is important in medicine, how the NHS is embracing digitisation and tips for teaching coding to beginners. Caroline also shares resources throughout this episode on learning to code which can be found here

Co-hosts, Victoria Carr and Olatz Mompeo, interview Dr Kerstin Haase, postdoctoral researcher at the Francis Crick Institute in London, on using computer science to track mutations in cancer genomes.

Victoria Carr interviews Dr Chanuki Seresinhe, data scientist at the Alan Turing Institute, specialising in using big online datasets and deep learning to understand how the aesthetics of the environment affects human well-being.

Victoria Carr talks to Professor Marika Taylor, Professor in Theoretical Physics and Head of Applied Mathematics at the University of Southampton, and Research Fellow at the Turing Institute. ​Marika talks about her PhD on the theory of black holes at the University of Cambridge with the eminent, late physicist, Professor Stephen Hawking. Her major work focusses on using the holographic principle to explain quantum effects in black holes.

Victoria Carr chats to Dr Raia Hadsell, a senior research scientist working on deep learning at Google DeepMind. After completing an undergraduate degree in religion and philosophy, Raia decided to pursue research in artificial intelligence - similarly intellectually challenging and thought-provoking, but more concrete in method. Since then, she has forged a successful career in artificial intelligence, pushing the boundaries of knowledge in AI navigation and making significant scientific contributions to deep learning algorithms, and mammalian navigation.

In this first episode, Victoria Carr speaks to Dr Milena Tsvetkova, a computational social scientist and Assistant Professor at the London School of Economics. Milena talks about her research in modelling diversity in society and social interactions online, and the importance of teaching computer science at university.