https://www.facebook.com/events/495653777253176/

The Oxford Guild is very excited to welcome Larry Hirst CBE, former Chairman of IBM EMEA, to speak on Thursday 7th May. This will be an incredibly insightful talk and is not one to be missed, especially for anyone interested in technology, business, or issues of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. The event will include a Q&A session open to the floor, and promises to cover a wide range of topics, as Larry discusses his high-profile and varied career. ALL ARE WELCOME!

DATE: Thursday 7th May 2015 (2nd Week)
TIME: 6:40pm
VENUE: Habakkuk Room, Jesus College
REGISTER YOUR INTEREST HERE: http://tinyurl.com/LarryHirstIBMGuildTalk

Until his retirement from IBM in July 2010, Larry Hirst was chairman of IBM Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). He represented IBM to the European Commission and other authorities such as NATO and the EDA on issues of international public policy and business regulation. During his time as Chairman, IBM EMEA revenues grew to $35bn, with a workforce of 110,000 people. Previous roles in his 33-year career included Chairman of IBM Netherlands (2002-2010), the leadership of IBM’s business in the UK, Ireland, Netherlands and South Africa (2002-2008).
Larry is passionate about the issues of diversity and inclusion and is an Ambassador to the Everywoman company (https://www.everywoman.com/) and Black British Business Awards (http://www.thebbbawards.com/), as well as a supporter of groups including the Asian Business Networks Association, the European Women’s Achievement Award, the Afro Caribbean Group, Stonewall, Whitehall in Industry, Asian Business Women, and Investors in Diversity.
Larry was appointed C.B.E. in 2006, in recognition of Services to the IT industry.

This event will be particularly insightful for anyone considering a career in technology or business, and there will be a Q&A session as part of the event.

We look forward to seeing you there!

As part of this year’s community outreach program, Oxford Brookes University’s 150th anniversary, and as a way showing our appreciation to all participants, clinicians, researchers, members of the public and organisations that have supported our work, we will be holding an open day on Saturday, 30th of May 2015. Over the past decade, the Movement Science Group, which now falls within the Centre for Rehabilitation at Oxford Brookes University, has conducted extensive research on a variety of topics related to rehabilitation and physical activity. Topics include measuring and understanding movement in those with movement difficulties, exercising benefits in people with neurological conditions, and developing novel rehabilitation strategies.

So many of us are desperately busy doing what’s immediately in front of us rather than the things that make a real difference.

Ben will tell the story of the GB men’s rowing 8+ in the build up to the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where they won the gold medal, and how they challenged everything to make the boat go faster. For Ben it was the culmination of nine years in the national team.

Ben’s story is a call to action, challenging you to examine how you spend your time in a way that ensures you are travelling in the direction that you want to go.

About the Speaker
Ben Hunt-David MBE
BEN HUNT-DAVIS MBE

Former Brookes student, Ben Hunt- Davis is a performance coach, speaker and author. Ben has been involved in five Olympic Games – three as a competitor and two as a member of the headquarters team. He was also Chairman of the Organising Committee for both the 2011 World Rowing Junior Championships and the 2013 Rowing World Cup. He now runs a performance consulting company helping companies to make their ‘boats go faster’. His first book is entitled Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?

Two hour cycle ride with Max as he reveals some surprising facts about the science of cycling. Ride and demonstration.
Please show up 10 minutes before departure at The Story Museum. The ride will finish back at The Story Museum.

Author and cyclist Max Gaskin explores the science of cycling from hydrogen to helmets!
6.30pm – 7.30pm £8/£5 concessions

International table tennis player, broadcaster and writer, Matthew Syed will reflect on the psychology of performance.

The Oxford Architecture Society lecture series

Lisa Finlay is coming to speak to us from Heatherwick Studio.
Established by Thomas Heatherwick in 1994, Heatherwick Studio is recognised for its work in architecture, urban infrastructure, sculpture, design and strategic thinking. At the heart of the studio’s work is a profound commitment to finding innovative design solutions, with a dedication to artistic thinking and the latent potential of materials and craftsmanship. In the twenty years of its existence, Heatherwick Studio has worked in many countries, with a wide range of commissioners and in a variety of regulatory environments.

The first OxArch workshop of the series ‘Behind Architecture: The Essentials’ is set to bring us back to the analogue process of representation. ‘Architecture in Watercolours’ presents an opportunity to begin the year with a little experimentation.

Anisha Meggi (currently studying her PhD) works with watercolour to capture the essence of a project with the physical and theoretical layering of watercolour paint and model making.

Come join us on the 4th floor of Abercrombie on Thursday at 4pm, if you’re interested in learning a new skill or pushing further what you already know about watercolour.

We will be providing some watercolour trays, watercolour paper and brushes. However, if you have you’re own watercolour sets, please feel free to bring them in.

Prices:
£7 for members
£9 for non members

Part 3 of a three-part mini-series on notation: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic.

Part 1 was Reading Slough and London Paddington: the persistent lure of spelling reform (July 16th). Part 2 was Writing little messages in Italian: the social origins of music notation (August 20th).

Free entry, no need to book. You’re welcome to come along just to listen, or to take part actively in the discussion. The meeting room will be indicated on the display screen just inside the Town Hall entrance lobby.

Conceptions of Enlightenment is a one-day conference concluding in a public lecture at 5pm. The lecture will be delivered by Dennis Rasmussen (Tufts University, Boston), author of The Pragmatic Enlightenment (CUP, 2014).

Over the last century, historians and philosophers have used the term ‘Enlightenment’ in diverse ways. Was it primarily a philosophical movement, or did it involve a much wider change of outlook and sensibility in the course of the eighteenth century? Did its origins and centre lie in England, the Netherlands, France, or Scotland? Did it establish the human rights and freedoms we now value, or did it in practice subject humanity to rigidly rational systems of control? Did it give a voice to women and colonial subjects, or did it reinforce male domination and European hegemony over the rest of the world? Did it prepare the way for the French Revolution and the Reign of terror, or is its heritage to be found in the American Declaration of Independence?

To discuss such questions, a number of leading scholars of the Enlightenment will introduce the work of some of the historians and philosophers who have been most influential in shaping this much-debated concept.

3D character animation online with Mixamo/Adobe
On June 1st of this year Adobe announced its purchase of the company Mixamo.
This evening John Twycross – Senior Lecturer in Digital Media Production, Faculty of Technology, Design and Environment, Oxford Brookes University – will demonstrate some of the features of the current Mixamo website, look at how this currently integrates into game engines and discuss the implications of this for designers.

The Mixamo online service provides a motion capture library, character generation and automated rigging. It is exciting because it makes character animation accessible to all. It also clearly signals Adobe’s commitment to gain a foothold in the 3D character animation field and expanding Photoshop’s 3D features.

Oxford Fashion Society is delighted to bring you our first speaker of the year, FELICITY HAYWARD! Join us on the 12th November for a very special event with the international model, ASOS stylist and artist. There will be top style tips, insights into her amazing world of fashion, and a chance for any questions, as well as a (FREE!) drinks reception following the event!

Felicity has had an amazing and varied career, from being ASOS’s go-to gal for all things CURVE, to gracing the cover of I-D and Noctis magazines (and countless others), to her nearly 40k followers on Instagram, and she’ll be joining us to tell us all about it! For anyone interested in modelling, styling, fashion, or just a great evening out, this event is an absoloute must!

Tickets are £3 on the door and include FREE DRINKS afterwards!
Join the Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/990444424351368/

See you all there!

OFS love X

Adobe specialists Richard Curtis and Niels Stevens are coming to Film Oxford for a special presentation on the new features of Creative Cloud for photographers, designers and film makers.

Don’t miss this opportunity to see the latest features in the new release of Adobe Creative Cloud 2015, including Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere, After Effects, Speedgrade and more. Learn about what’s new in this 2015 release that will help you do everything you do more efficiently using the latest innovations and modern standards. Get answers to your questions and get inspired by film makers and photographers who are creating amazing work.

Professor Carl Heneghan will deliver an interactive workshop, taking an evidence-based approach to answering your own clinical questions.

With over 20 year’s experience in clinical epidemiology, Professor Heneghan has over 200 peer reviewed publications that all started with a clinical question.

The Symposium, celebrating Ada Lovelace’s 200th birthday on 10 December 2015, is aimed at a broad audience of those interested in the history and culture of mathematics and computer science, presenting current scholarship on Lovelace’s life and work, and linking her ideas to contemporary thinking about mathematics, computing and artificial intelligence.

The Symposium takes place in the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford, with a reception at the new Weston Library (Bodleian) and dinner at Balliol College on 9 December.

Other activities will include a workshop for early career researchers, and a ‘Music and Machines’ event. For more information and for the full line up of speakers please visit: http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/adalovelace/symposium/

*Registration*

Standard Registration, December 9-10: £40
Gala Dinner Ticket, December 9: £50

You can register and pay via the University of Oxford online-shop: http://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&catid=70&prodid=386

Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, we have a limited number of student funded places available to cover registration and the conference dinner. These are open to students studying in UK universities in 2015-16. For more information please visit: http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/adalovelace/symposium/

Acclaimed mathematician Marcus du Sautoy gives the second of the Weinrebe Lecture Series, on the theme of ‘Variations on Biography’, hosted by the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing.

As a cornerstone initiative of the Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities, we are proposing a new format for presenting and elaborating thinking on what urban governance does, when it succeed and fails, and how it can be re-organized to meet the challenges of the 21st century. We put academics on the cutting edge of global urban scholarship face-to-face with established innovative practitioners—architects, activists, policy makers, and artists.

Through a series of rigorous yet accessible public dialogues they will grapple with the intellectual and everyday implications of their theories and practices on cities to produce visionary but grounded research and intervention strategies for the future of city life.
Each debate will be preceded by a small panel of academics and practitioners presenting papers that speak to the same key issues. Building on the long-standing Oxford tradition of public debate, we hope to encourage productive engagement between intellectuals and practitioners that is too often missing from discussions of the city.

As a cornerstone initiative of the Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities, we are proposing a new format for presenting and elaborating thinking on what urban governance does, when it succeed and fails, and how it can be re-organized to meet the challenges of the 21st century. We put academics on the cutting edge of global urban scholarship face-to-face with established innovative practitioners—architects, activists, policy makers, and artists.

Through a series of rigorous yet accessible public dialogues they will grapple with the intellectual and everyday implications of their theories and practices on cities to produce visionary but grounded research and intervention strategies for the future of city life.
Each debate will be preceded by a small panel of academics and practitioners presenting papers that speak to the same key issues. Building on the long-standing Oxford tradition of public debate, we hope to encourage productive engagement between intellectuals and practitioners that is too often missing from discussions of the city.

This conference is intended to challenge the commonly held view of the prolonged gap in the progress of Western civilisation’s understanding of the natural world between the theories of the Ancient Greeks, led in particular by Aristotle and Plato, and the formation of the modern world view leading to the heliocentric theory of the Solar System and the theories of mechanics and gravity. These modern theories were in fact the result of centuries of empirical and theoretical work, which was conducted mainly in the universities of Europe and in particular at Oxford and which replaced in turn the Aristotelian world view of antiquity and then the literally biblical view of the Church. The conference will review the contributions of these medieval scholars working in Oxford and is intended to demonstrate the evolution of this activity from its theoretical, theological origins into the activity using mathematics and experimental observations which forms the basis of modern physics.

Registration to attend this conference is free, but must be confirmed using the Conference booking form by Monday 22nd February.

How is the technology behind driverless cars designed and implemented? How does an autonomous vehicle interpret a complex and dynamic real world environment, and what are the ethical and social implications of taking humans out of the equation? Dr Ingmar Posner, Associate Professor in Information Engineering at the University of Oxford, looks at the current climate and future challenges of implementing autonomous transport.

This is the monthly meeting of the Oxford AI Meetup group.
The talks include an analysis of Deep Mind’s AlphaGo software that has just beaten the world champion in their first match.

It’s been a terrible time for the glorious game: corruption, escalating prices and shrinking grass roots involvement. Could a more scientific approach to everything from the offside rule to deciding who hosts World Cups make it fairer and more watchable? Join hardcore Arsenal fan Marcus du Sautoy, Leeds supporter Jim Al-Khalili and statistician David Spiegelhalter as they’re refereed by follower of Grimsby Town and Manchester City Quentin Cooper to see if science really can save football…

Science Oxford staff will be on hand at half-time with oranges and a little hands-on fun.

Our monthly meetup includes
Alpha Go : How did Deep Mind beat the world champion and just how big an achievement is it?
Fun with Recurrent Neural Networks
The Latest AI news

IN[SCI]TE is a new interdisciplinary science, technology, and engineering conference, which will take place on Monday and Tuesday of 0th Week Trinity Term 2016. IN[SCI]TE is run by undergrads, and the talks will be both delivered by and aimed at undergrads.

The aims for IN[SCI]TE are to broaden the knowledge and awareness of science undergrads outside their field of study, to provide a setting for undergrads to give a talk at a scientific conference during their degree, and to inspire future scientists to enter areas of work that cross the boundaries in science.

We are now accepting applications for speakers! Submit an application at inscite.co/speakers/, or send the facebook page a message if you have any questions.

To keep up to date with the conference, like us on facebook.com/insciteco, and follow us @insciteco.

A Talk by Konstantin Kudryavtsev, Head of Technical Relations at Ethcore
This will be about the Ethereum ecosystem and the blockchain

Adobe’s Richard Curtis will join us in Oxford to provide a guided tour of Photoshop’s 3d tools. He will demonstrate how to work with virtual models to enhance photos, explain 3d printing functions, look at the character posing for stills and more. This “Deep DIve” session is an opportunity to explore in detail this powerful, under used aspect of this classic software package.

TUE, 24 MAY AT 14:00, OXFORD
Strachey Lecture – Quantum Supremacy – Dr Scott Aaronson (MIT, UT Austin)

Quantum Supremacy
In the near future, it will likely become possible to perform special-purpose quantum computations that, while not immediately useful for anything, are plausibly hard to simulate using a classical computer. These “quantum supremacy experiments” would be a scientific milestone—decisively answering quantum computing skeptics, while casting doubt on one of the foundational tenets of computer science, the Extended Church-Turing Thesis. At the same time, these experiments also raise fascinating questions for computational complexity theorists: for example, on what grounds should we believe that a given quantum system really is hard to simulate classically?
Does classical simulation become easier as a quantum system becomes noisier? and how do we verify the results of such an experiment? In this lecture, I’ll discuss recent results and open problems about these questions, using three proposed “quantum supremacy experiments”
as examples: BosonSampling, IQP / commuting Hamiltonians, and random quantum circuits.
Based partly on joint work with Alex Arkhipov and with Lijie Chen.

Hosted by the University of Oxford’s Department of Computer Science. The Strachey Lectures are generously supported by OxFORD Asset Management.
The lecture will followed by refreshments. Doors open at 1.30 pm.

Writer Robert Penn discusses his love affair with cycling and how the journey to build his dream bike ended in a freewheeling pilgrimage.

Legendary British athlete Roger Black MBE discusses lessons learned throughout his career as well as his thoughts on Team GB’s prospects at Rio 2016.