On October the 18th, the artificial intelligence and informatics team had their first ever away day.
The away day, which Mark Basham (director of AI&I) hopes to become an annual event, was an opportunity for the team as well as the IT team and the new PhD cohort to get to know one another.
The day was filled with team building activities such as quizzes and an escape room. The highlight of the day, however was “strictly code dancing”. Participants were grouped into teams and tasked with building lego robots and then coding a choreographed dance to a piece of music of their choice using the programme scratch. The dancing was then judged by Anna Simmonds, Marcus Gallagher-Jones, Chris Arter, Lauren Eyssen and Bethany Acquah who all work in different teams at the Franklin.
Gabryel, a Research Software Associate for the AI&I team said “It was a great opportunity to mix with different teams and the PhD students because often we are working in our own little teams on different projects and so this allows us to all work together in a way we sometimes don’t get to during our day to day. I also really like the activities we did.”
Laura, head of research software engineering and one of the organisers of the day said about the day,
“It was enormous fun to organise this Away Day and really nice to see it come off as a success. I think it is really important to have these events because it allows us to break from the day-to-day activities which allows us to reconnect with what we enjoy about our field. It also gives us space to be creative and work closely as a team. I learnt a lot designing and organising the challenge and thank all the experts and team captains for helping solve technical problems on the day.”
A big thank you to Laura Shemilt and Michelle Darrow who organised the day.
From left to right: Katie Beirns, Joe Thrush, Matthew Selby, Dr Michele Darrow, Dr Joss Whittle and Becky Csöndör
From left to right: Niaz Khan, Angharad Smith, Jess Stone, Dr Neville Yee, Laura Crawford and Gabryel Mason-Williams
From left to right: Cameron Avery Roberts, Patricia Smith, Dr Elaine Ho, Dr Alex Lubbock, Dr Silvia da Graça Ramos and Lara Fragapane
