Thanks to funding, secured by Prof Andrew Ware, via the Journal Division of the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organisation, IJCAI, Technocamps, supported by First Campus, hosted a two night residential event for Year 12 pupils from across South East Wales.

The event was held at the Treforest campus of USW and based within the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Science.

Over the three day event the attendees took part in workshops and lectures focussing on Artificial Intelligence, these covered Big Data, Robotics, Ethics, Programming and Swarm Intelligence.

The lectures were delivered by academics from the University of South Wales and Swansea University, as well as PhD Researchers from USW. They included, Prof Andrew Ware, Dr Berti Muller, Dr Richard Ward, Rebecca Peters, Ieuan Griffiths and Eduard Incez from USW and Dr James Stovold from Swansea. Sera Evans from USW also delivered a session on Higher Education and University Choices. 

The aim of the Residential was to give pupils, with an interest in Computer Science, a realistic university experience, staying in the Halls of Residence and socialising with others from a variety of schools and colleges, as well as improving their knowledge and understanding of the subject. They were also given the opportunity to develop personal skills such as communication, presentation, team work, inventiveness and problem solving.

The pupils came from a variety of schools across South Wales including some from as far afield as Monmouth and Llanelli.  

Parents were invited to the final day where all pupils delivered presentations on the topics covered in the lectures and workshops. Prof Andrew Ware was very impressed by the standard of research that had gone into the presentations, and also thanked the student ambassadors from USW, who had worked on the event, for their enthusiasm and professionalism.

Pupils made the following comments at the end of the event:

“My favourite lecture was on Ethics, it was intellectually challenging and allowed for lots of audience engagement” 

“The event was very enjoyable”

“The cryptography challenge was my favourite activity, practical and hands on”

“I really enjoyed building the robot and solving the problems that came with it.”