New Computer Science Laboratory

The Lovelace Laboratory is the new teaching laboratory purpose-built for Computer Science undergraduate education.   It currently has 21 work stations on their own network which can be detached from the University's, allowing for experimentation with operating systems and networking as well as ordinary programming.  There is also space for collaborative work.  Specialist teaching also takes place in the laboratory.  With the strong collaboration of Computing Services, we have been able to offer students a networking environment that lets them develop their skills safely.

Opening of Lovelace Laboratory (3W 1.2A)
11:15 for 11:30 Wednesday 24 March

Just as we do not expect train drivers to practice on the approaches to Paddington, we should not expect computer scientists to do all their work on general-purpose facilities, and so it is appropriate that the University should have a special-purpose teaching facility, which can be configured in a variety of ways, some of which we, and in particular our colleagues in the Computing Services, would not see as appropriate on the wider University’s facilities.

This new laboratory is named after Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace, who was a colleague of, and principal documenter of, Charles Babbage the computing pioneer of the 19th century. While this is a practical laboratory, I hope students will remember that Ada is famous for having found an error in a program by pure thought processes, not having a working computer to hand, and remember that thought has its place alongside practice.

Augusta Ada Byron, later to be Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, was born on 10 December 1815, the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron. "Her mother's obsession with rooting out any of the insanity of which she accused Lord Byron was one of the reasons that Lovelace was taught mathematics from an early age": one of her tutors was the Mary Somerville after whom the Oxford college is named. Though she collaborated closely with Babbage, customs of the day prevented aristocratic women from openly doing science. However, translation was clearly lady-like, and much of what we know about Babbage Analytic Engine comes form the “Translator’s Notes” she inserted in her translator for Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs of an otherwise pretty poor description by a visiting Piedmontese artillery general. _{(Wikipedia, 24 March 2010, Ada Lovelace, Available, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace)}

Though it has been running for a few months, we are formally opening the laboratory on 24 March, because this is Lovelace Day.

Ada has had many things more intellectual than a simple day named after her, not least the programming language of that name, which is all the more remarkable as the Americans do not have a great tradition of naming things after the British aristocracy. Another intellectual endeavour named after her is the annual Lovelace Colloquium, run by BCSWomen in support of undergraduate and taught postgraduate women in computer science. This year, ten undergraduate students from Bath have been invited to present posters at the colloquium, which will be on 8 April  in Cardiff. Only 38 women in the whole of the UK have been invited to present posters, so this is quite an achievement for us. It is the second consecutive year in which our students have had more poster submissions accepted than those at any other UK university.

_{(Ada King, Condesa de Lovelace (1838), Online image, The Ada Picture Gallery, 25 March 2010, Commons Wikipedia)}

"BCSWomen would like to acknowledge the support the University of Bath Department of Compute r Science has provided to this national group and its events, in particular the 2010 BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium. We're very pleased to say that this year the students from University of Bath make up the largest number of entries to the annual Lovelace Colloquium Poster Competition, with 10 submissions. We in BCS, the Chartered Institute of IT, and BCSWomen, look forward to seeing these poster entries at the colloquium on Thursday 8th April 2010 and wish all poster presenters the best of luck in their competition categories.

As well as supporting BCSWomen and the Lovelace Colloquium, we are very pleased to acknowledge the active support the University of Bath Department of Computer Science provides to its female students. This level of positive support and active encouragement is so often lacking in the often male-dominated world of IT and computing, it is so good to see this positive community in Bath." Mikhaila Burgess, BCSWomen

Monika Seisenberger will be attending the opening of the new laboratory as a BCSWomen representative.