The 2013 Winchester Science Festival will have a distinctive University of Southampton flavour when the three-day event kicks off this coming weekend.
From 20-22 July, venues in the City of Winchester will resonate with science, music and comedy events including hands-on workshops to inform and entertain. This year’s festival is sponsored by the University.
Leading Southampton academics including bubble physicist and broadcaster Dr Helen Czerski and web science pioneer Dame Professor Wendy Hall will share their expertise through individual sessions.
On Saturday, 20 July, Dr Czerski will explore why she thinks our daily environment is a science toy box and why we should all play with toys more often through her session ‘A World of Science Toys’. The session starts at 10.00am in the Performance Hall and tickets are required.
On Monday, 22 July, Dame Wendy will share her experiences as one of the world’s first computer scientists to undertake serious research into multimedia and hypermedia where she remains at the forefront of development. The influence of her work has been significant in many areas including digital libraries, the development of the Semantic Web, and the emerging research discipline of Web Science. This session starts at 12.00 noon in the Performance Hall and tickets are required.
“I’m delighted that the University of Southampton is sponsoring this year’s Winchester Science Festival and I’m particularly delighted to be taking part in the event myself,” says Dame Wendy. “What I love about the Festival environment is the appetite for science; from children all the way through to senior citizens, the audiences, as well as the topics, are so diverse and people just love it.”
Other individual academics from the University taking part in the Festival include:
• ‘Stronger, Greener, Faster’ with outreach Ambassador Ben Littlefield from Chemistry. Saturday, 20 July, 3.00pm and Sunday, 21 July at 10.00am and 4.00pm in the Learning Room. Admission is free.
• No Margin for Error – Dr Lisa McNeil, Reader in Ocean and Earth Science. Sunday, 21 July, 12.00 noon in the Performance Hall. Tickets are required for this session.
• Global Challenges: Multidisciplinary Solutions –Dr James Dyke. Sunday, 21 July, 12.00 noon in the Learning Room. Admission is free.
• Drilling in Antarctica: The Lake Ellsworth Project – Dr Ed Waugh, post-doctoral researcher at the National Oceanography Centre. Saturday, 20 July, 4.00pm in the Learning Room. Admission is free.
• How Science Shaped Music – Dr Matthew Wright from the University’s Institute of Sound and Vibration Research. Sunday, 22 July, 15.00 pm in the Learning Room. Admission is free.
A further group of academics and students from the University will add to the festivities with touring Roadshows full of hands-on and interactive science activities for all ages.
Find full details of the event at http://winchesterscifest.org