This year was marked by the considerable interest from both the public and the media in many of the artificial intelligence and machine learning events, testament to both the fascination and the concern we all feel with our growing interaction and reliance on machines.
On the first day of the Festival, the event ‘Will artificial intelligence be superior to the human brain’ was a sell-out and every spare seat was taken. The interest continued in the second week, when the BBC World Service sent their ‘Click’ team to the Festival for a special outside broadcast focused on artificial intelligence, and later when Professor Kevin Warwick appeared on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch to talk about his event, ‘Turing’s imitation game’ which involved trying to distinguish between a human and a machine during a conversation.
Many more events proved as popular with the public, including those related to robotics, genome editing, chocolate, human relationships, neuroscience, psychology, astronomy, and all the hands-on events offering interactive experiences, including the adults-only event at the Guildhall.
Festival highlights included, the ever-popular demonstration lecture by Dr Peter Wothers at the Department of Chemistry, who tantalised audiences with bangs and flashes demonstrating some remarkable properties of water. Steve Mould also held the audience spellbound with his science pranks, as did Nick Steur with his mesmerising performance of A PIECE OF TIME at the Cambridge Junction – the performance included 32 synchronising metronomes and a pendulum set within a giant steel pyramid.
Nobel Laureate, Professor Sir John Gurdon gave the audience pause for thought when he showed his school report stating that ‘he will not listen, but will insist on doing his work in his own way’, during his look-back at 25 years of pioneering research at the Gurdon Institute.
Professor Stephen Hawking came along to his former PhD student’s talk on quantum computing, during which Professor Raymond Laflamme, co-founder and current director of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo in Canada, discussed the astonishing power of quantum computing, stating that 50 qubits (quantum bits) in a single quantum computer are equivalent to the power of all the computers in the world right now.
Another surprising outcome came from the event, ‘The future of genome editing’, during which an audience poll was held and it turned out that 50% of the audience would not consider having some kind of gene therapy. However, people’s interest and curiosity about this area of science is ever increasing, confirmed by the sheer numbers who visited Illumina’s workshops at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus yesterday, during which they were able to see how the combination of engineering, chemistry, genetics, and informatics is revolutionising the way DNA is looked at.
Engineering was another popular highlight of the Festival. None more so than the James Dyson Foundation engineering challenges at which participants had to take on a number of short tasks, including making a functioning chair out of nothing but cardboard. The Whittle Laboratory was also heaving with people curious to know how jet engines can produce such awesome power. Among the many events at the Whittle – famous for developing the jet engine – there were tours of the laboratories and a series of hands-on activities to show how turbomachines work.
Among the many new events at this year’s Festival, some of the most pleasing were the hands-on autism-friendly hour at the Guildhall, deemed “a huge success” by Science Festival Co-ordinator, Dr Lucinda Spokes. And the inaugural Research Horizons event, ‘Brain, body and mind: new directions in the neuroscience and philosophy of consciousness’ which investigated the meaning of consciousness from a philosophical and neuroscience perspective.
On the final day of the Festival, and to mark Addenbrooke’s 250th anniversary, thousands of people visited the Cambridge Biomedical Campus to attend talks, demonstrations and exhibitions showcasing the medical research taking place in Cambridge.
For the first time this year, the Festival also hosted a public dinner at Corpus Christi College, during which diner’s senses were tested and teased with a series of courses that were not quite what they seemed. Diners were confounded by several unusual, sensory surprises, such as ice cream that turned out to be goats cheese and melted chocolate that was actually crushed black olive. The finale of the dinner was a small berry pill that completely altered diner’s taste buds, so much so that the meal ended with people devouring lemons like they were succulent, sweet desserts.
Dr Spokes said: “By far this has been the busiest Science Festival ever. It’s also been one of the most successful. This is thanks to the hundreds of speakers, event co-ordinators, University Departments at Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin, research institutes, companies, charities, schools, our amazing volunteers, and the generosity of the University of Cambridge and our sponsors.
“The success of these events is also due to the thousands of visitors who attended the talks, debates and performances and those who got involved with the hands-on, interactive experiences – they all make the Science Festival what it is! We’re now looking forward to the 2017 Festival and welcoming many old and new faces to another two weeks of Cambridge science.”
Further information can be found at: www.sciencefestival.cam.ac.uk
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