Monthly Archives: May 2022

24May/22

GRADnet Online Workshop: The Application of Neural networks to Image Recognition – really insightful!

On 19 and 20 May over 30 postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers attended the GRADnet online workshop:  The Application of Neural networks to Image Recognition.

The course was aimed at anyone interested in modern data science and AI.  The focus was the implementation (in Python) of neural networks and applying them in order to classify images. Delegates were taught how to first build some simple networks with a few convolutional layers, then how to exploit popular deep neural networks such as Xception, VGG16, Resnet and MobileNet.  

Thank you to Dr Michal Gnacik, Senior Lecturer in the School of Mathematics and Physics at University of Portsmouth who designed and delivered the course on behalf of GRADnet.  

Attendees had the opportunity to look at the transfer-learning and hyper-parameters tuning and how to use them to achieve high-accuracy predictions.  Comet ML was used to track, compare, explain, and optimize their experiments.   Kaggle image datasets helped recognise emotions from the images of people’s faces and delegates looked at how deep learning can be used in converting speech to text using established systems such as DeepSpeech or Silero.

Delegates found the course “really interesting” and “useful”.  One student said “Thank you so much for the course. It has been really insightful and I can’t wait to have a go at the exercises!”.

GRADnet and the School of Mathematics and Physics at Portsmouth plan to collaborate once again and run this course in person in 2022-23!  Look out for the GRADnet Training Programme 2022-23 which will be launched in September.

 

 

17May/22

GRADnet Workshop: “A guide to virtual networking” incredibly useful!

GRADnet is delighted to be collaborating again with Skillfluence to deliver professional skills courses to SEPnet postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers to help them develop their transferrable skills in the workplace. 

Thank you to Dr Hannah Roberts who delivered a 3-hour workshop over two afternoons on 10 & 17 May to help postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers to:

  • Set up a main professional social media platform and have an all-star profile using scaffolding templates.
  • Consciously expand their network in under 15 minutes per day and become visible.
  • Learn how to introduce themselves and follow-up on opportunities using simple easy to follow scripts whilst maintaining integrity.
  • Measure and test their progress to ensure the time spent on social media is paying dividends.

Attendees found the workshop “very informative”, a “great help” and “incredibly useful”.

Hannah is a career coach and professional skills trainer. During her extensive academic and industrial career, she took research from concept to start-up. Since 2018, she has been a qualified and regulated coach; trained in Talent Dynamics profiling. Specialising in team dynamics, career planning, online networking and social media skills, research planning, commercialisation and management tools. Hannah has a particular passion for diversity and inclusion and women’s leadership development.

Next year GRADnet will be offering an online 1-day workshop on “Social Media for Researchers” on 7 February 2023.  Look out for our 2022-23 Training Programme which will be launched in September 2022.

 

09May/22

There are reasons girls don’t study physics – and they don’t include not liking maths

SEPnet Director of Outreach and Public Engagement, Dr Olivia Keenan, and Senior Outreach Fellow at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth, Dr Jen Gupta have authored an article for The Conversation outlining SEPnet’s response to the comments made recently to the Commons Science and Technology Committee on girls and Physics. 

Olivia and Jen lay out the evidence around girls aptitude in physics and maths and discuss the research into the real reasons fewer girls than boys pursue physics to A-level and beyond. 

Please share this article with your networks to raise the importance of this issue. The full article can be read through The Conversation