Data Bites
Interested in Big Data and how it drives technological innovation? Curious about Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) but not sure what they are or why they matter? Join Data Bites — a weekly seminar series led and organized by Alex Galkin and hosted by the City St George’s Research Centre for Adaptive Computing Systems and Machine Learning in the Department of Computer Science.
Each Data Bites session features talks from leading specialists and practitioners in data-driven research, technology, and innovation. Discover exciting developments in Big Data, AI, and analytics; explore real-world applications; and learn how they are transforming industries and society.
Data Bites provides a welcoming, interactive environment where students can ask questions, share ideas, and network with experts.
Over the years, Data Bites has become a recognised hub for collaboration and knowledge exchange between academia and industry. Students gain first-hand insights from professionals at major organisations such as Amazon, Thomson Reuters, the Home Office, Lloyds Banking Group, J.P. Morgan, Ofcom, Goldman Sachs, and many others — from start-ups to global consultancies.
These sessions offer a unique opportunity to engage with thought leaders, discuss ethical and technical challenges, and explore exciting career pathways — including internships and graduate roles.
For researchers and professionals, Data Bites is the ideal platform to showcase innovative work, share insights, and connect with a vibrant community of data enthusiasts and academics.
Data Bites Events:
Previous Events
Events 2025-26
Thursday, 9 April 2026
Speaker: AMEX GBT, Ellen Forrest and Janasobini Vetharuban
Event title: Innovation in Analytics: What It Looks Like at Amex GBT
Thursday, 26 March 2026
Speaker: Geovation
Event title: Geovation – part of Ordnance Survey: How Startup Businesses Use Data to Achieve Success
Thursday, 19 March 2026
Speaker: PA Consulting
Event title: Launching Your Data Career – An Insight into the World of Consulting
Thursday, 12 March 2026
Speaker: EDF Energy
Event title: Innovation in Energy: AI, Analytics, and Career Pathways
Thursday, 26 February 2026
Speaker: Annalect (part of Omnicom Media Group)
Event title: Overview of Data Science Applications to Marketing Measurement
Thursday, 19 February 2026
Speaker: AITIS (AITI Solutions)
Event title: AI in Medical Imaging – Insights & Innovations
Thursday, 12 February 2026
Speaker: Daniel Sikar, Research Student (Department of Computer Science), City St George's, University of London
Event title: The Industry-to-MSc-to-PhD Journey in Data Science
Thursday, 5 February 2026
Speaker: Moiz Sakarwala, TikTok
Event title: How Data Science Powers Modern Marketing Measurement
Thursday, 29 January 2026 - Cancelled
Speaker: PA Consulting
Event title: Launching Your Data Career – An Insight into the World of Consulting
Friday Dec 12 2025
Speaker: The Crown Estate
Event title: Creating a climate for change – an act of balance
Friday Nov 28 2025
Speaker: Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), The UK's Biggest Public Service Department
Event title: Powering Public Services: Data Engineering at DWP Digital
Friday Nov 21 2025
Speaker: JMAN Group (Ruth Keppeler)
Event title: Data-Driven Value Creation in Private Equity
Friday Nov 14 2025
Speaker: Databricks
Event title: From Analytics to Agents: Getting Started with GenAI on Databricks
Friday Oct 31 2025
Speaker: CAPCO
Event title: Agentic Data Management and its relevance to the financial services industry
Friday Oct 24 2025
Speaker: Sainsbury’s
Event title: Scaling Personalisation with AI at Sainsbury’s
Friday Oct 17 2025
Speaker: M&G
Event title: From Data to Decisions: How AI is Transforming Asset Management
Friday Oct 10 2025
Speaker: Greg Slabaugh, Professor and Director of the Digital Environment Research Institute (DERI), Queen Mary University of London
Event title: Generative AI for High-Fidelity Reconstruction under Limited Views
Friday Oct 3 2025
Speaker: Michalis A. Michael, CEO of listening247
Event title: AI Powered Insights - Marketing Research Reconfigured
Events 2024-25
| Date | Event title | Speakers |
|---|---|---|
| Friday, April 11, 2025, 17:00-18:00 | RAG Applications in Industry |
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| Friday, April 4, 2025, 17:00–18:00 | Futures |
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Modelling natural catastrophes to help fight climate change |
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| Safe and Powerful AI in investment management |
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| Friday, March 14, 2025, 17:00–18:00 | Power of Data Governance and Why Getting It Right Matters |
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| Friday, February 28, 2025, 17:00 - 18:00 | Load Forecasting on the Electricity Network |
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| Friday, February 21, 2025, 17:00 - 18:00 | How EDF Built Data Foundations for AI Success |
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| Friday, February 14, 2025, 17:00 - 18:00 | Data Science for the Built Environment |
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| Friday, February 7, 2025, 17:00 - 18:00 | Effective AI Product Delivery Starts with Discovery |
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| Friday, January 31, 2025, 17:00-18:00 | Geovation – part of Ordnance Survey – how are startup businesses using data to achieve success |
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| Wednesday, December 11, 17:00 - 18:00 | The Price is Right: Analytics at Motorway |
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| Wednesday, December 4, 17:00 - 18:00 | Learning data science in the age of AIV |
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| Wednesday, 27 November, 17:00 - 18:00 | Can AI make AI responsible? |
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| Wednesday, November 20, 17:00 - 18:00 | Getting value from data and the role of a data strategy |
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| Wednesday, November 13, 17:00 - 18:00 | AITIS Data Science Projects, City/AITIS Internships and Collaborations |
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| Wednesday, October 30, 17:00 - 18:00 | Accelerating Your Career with Data |
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| Wednesday, October 23, 17:00 - 18:00 | How Data Drives Performance and Business Decisions in a Highly Dynamic Operating Environment |
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| Wednesday, October 16, 13:30 - 14:30 | The Lie of AI |
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| Wednesday, October 9, 17:00 - 18:00 | Will LLMs be eclipsed by SLMs? |
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| Wednesday, October 2, 17:00 - 18:00 | MathWorks tools for AI |
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Events 2023-24
| Date | Event Title | Speakers |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday, April 11, 13:30 - 15:00 | A journey through data with NTT DATA |
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| Thursday, April 4, 13:00 - 14:00 | Moving On Up with Motorway: Getting your Transport user definitions right for Data Science applications |
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| Thursday, March 28, 13:30 - 15:00 | Insurance in the age of AI |
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| Thursday, March 21, 13:30 - 15:00 | RETFound - A foundation model for ophthalmology |
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| Thursday, March 14, 13:30 - 15:00 | Bringing AI to Life (Assurance) |
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| Thursday, February 29, 13:30 - 15:00 | Get set for Graphs! |
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| Thursday, February 22, 13:30 - 15:00 | How to stop AI taking your analyst job |
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| Thursday, February 15, 13:30 - 15:00 | How to Improve Relevance in Search Marketing Leveraging AI-powered Ad Solutions |
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| Thursday, February 8, 13:30 - 15:00 | Embedding data analytics in policy design |
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| Thursday, February 1, 13:30 - 15:00 | Extracting patterns of causality from the scientific literature |
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| Wednesday, December 13, 14:00 - 15:30 | Using Machine Learning techniques to improve how we manage public consultations responses |
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| Wednesday, December 6, 14:00 - 15:30 | Multidisciplinary Teaming to Navigate the Personalisation Paradox: Balancing Data Privacy and Analytical Insight |
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| Wednesday, November 29, 14:00 - 15:30 | Best practices for training models and managing experiments with Databricks Machine Learning |
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| Wednesday, November 22, 14:00 - 15:30 | Using Data Science to Measure and Maximise Commercial Value Created from Marketing |
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| Wednesday, November 15, 14:00 - 15:30 | Safe & Responsible ML/AI: Designing and embedding Ethics & governance best practice for Data Science |
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| Wednesday, November 1, 14:00 - 15:30 | Applied AI innovation within healthcare, construction safety and environmental monitoring |
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| Wednesday, October 25, 14:00 - 15:30 | Where AI delivers real business value |
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| Wednesday, October 18, 14:00 - 15:30 | Connecting the Dots: Recent Progress using Graph Neural Networks |
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| Wednesday, October 11, 14:00 - 15:30 | Risks and Opportunities in Investment Management’s AI Arms Race |
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| Wednesday, October 4, 14:00 - 15:30 | AI for Insights beyond GPT-4 |
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| Tuesday, July 11 at 15:00 | Mapping migration and more: Data visualisation for the Greater London Authority |
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| Tuesday June 27 at 15:00 | Oculomics and the potential of AI in ophthalmology |
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| Tuesday, June 20 at 15:00 | Recommendation system in the wild |
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| Wednesday, April 12 at 16:00 - 17:30 | Uniting Graphs & Multimodal Machine Learning for Automated Home Diagnostics |
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| Wednesday, April 5 at 16:00 - 17:30 | What makes an employable data scientist? |
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| Wednesday, March 29 at 16:00 - 17:30 | From decision-making to communication: Data Visualisation during the pandemic. |
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| Wednesday, March 22 at 16:00 - 17:30 | How to Transition Your Career into Data Science? |
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| Wednesday, March 15 at 16:00 - 17:30 | 5 lessons from 20 years working with data |
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| Wednesday, March 1 at 16:00 - 17:30 | Data Driven Decisions to Combat Climate Change |
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| Wednesday, February 22 at 16:00 - 17:30 | Delivering Data Science Solutions - An NLP Project Use Case |
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| Wednesday, February 15 at 16:00 - 17:30 | Generative AI for videos |
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| Wednesday, February 8 at 16:00 - 17:30 | Machine Learning in the real world. Design ML-driven systems that work, really |
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| Wednesday, February 1 at 16:00 - 17:30 | Beyond the market-predicting magic box: best practices for data science in financial markets |
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Events 2022-23
| Date | Event Title | Speakers |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday, December 13th at 9:30 - 11:00 | Data Science projects at Delta Capita |
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| Tuesday, December 6th at 10:00 - 11:00 | Machine learning is easy, everything else is hard |
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| Tuesday November 22nd at 10:00 | Semantic Data - an Introduction to Knowledge Graphs |
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| Tuesday November 15th at 10:00 | AI Model Explainability used for Chronic Wound Diagnosis in Healthcare |
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| Tuesday November 1st at 16:00 | Geovation: Innovation challenges and accelerators |
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| Tuesday October 25th at 16:00 | Getting value from data – what it takes to make a project successful |
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| Tuesday October 18th at 16:00 | AI for CX and Influencer Management |
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| Tuesday October 11th at 16:00 | Pixel Perfect Photos using Deep Learning |
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| Tuesday October 4th at 16:00 | City DS’ Trailblazing Machine Learning Pathways in FinTech |
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| Friday, July 29 at 16:00 | Oculomics: Using eye scans to understand systemic disease |
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| Friday, July 15 at 16:00 | Trustworthy AI – How Technology, Standards and People Interact to Make AI Safe and Secure for Everyone |
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| Friday, July 8 at 16:00 | What goes on behind the scenes in a Data Science team working in the eCommerce space |
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| Wednesday, 29th June at 16:00 | Computer Vision in Retail |
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| Friday, June 17 at 16:00 | Explainable AI for assisted living |
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| April 8, 6:00 pm | Neural-Symbolic AI: Achieving reasoning with artificial neural networks |
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| April 1, 6:00 pm | Fixing Insurance For Good & The Art of Data Magic |
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| March 25, 6:00 pm | Data Science at dunnhumby |
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| March 18, 6:00 pm | Dude, Where's My Car? and Other Problems in Applied Machine Learning |
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| March 3rd, 6 - 7 pm | Early careers - Stepping into your first role with confidence |
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Innovation challenges and accelerators – how they work, how you can be involved and what data they use |
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Navigating your future career: how all career journeys inevitably lead to data |
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The CXM Use Case of AI |
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Events 2021-22
| Date | Event Title | Speakers |
|---|---|---|
| December 10, 5:00 pm | Launching an Ai-Start Up in COVID – mad or inspired? |
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| December 3, 5:00 pm | Kaggle grandmasters need not apply |
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| November 26, 5:00 pm | An introduction to data platforms for data scientists |
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| November 19, 5:00 pm | Data Science Consultancy in Financial Services |
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| November 5, 5:00 pm | DeepLegos: Building blocks in deep networks for computer vision |
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| October 29, 5:00 pm | How to optimise advertisement budget allocation and some lessons from production ML |
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| October 15, 5:00 pm | Opportunities in the AI Revolution: Driving Environmentally and Socially Responsible Investing |
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| October 8, 5:00 pm | Tricking AI – Perhaps It’s Not As Intelligent As You Think? | |
| October 22, 5:00 pm |
AITIS Data Science projects in Healthcare (wounds) and Construction Safety |
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Events 2020-21
| Date | Event Title | Speakers |
|---|---|---|
| 10th August, 4pm | Validation and clinical applicability of a deep learning system for retinal disease | Pearse Keane, NIHR Clinician Scientist at Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London |
| 20th July, 4 pm | Harnessing the virtual realm for successful real world artificial intelligence | Alison B Lowndes, Artificial Intelligence DevRel | NVIDIA | EMEA |
| 24th June 2021, 4pm | Data Science at Tesco | Alisdair Wallis, Data Science Manager at Tesco |
| 9 April 2021, 5:30 pm | Beyond visualisation wizardry: the role of interaction in data visualisation | Charles Perin, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada |
| 1 April 2021, 5:00pm | Data analytics through a keyhole! | Karen Jean-Francois, Analytics consultant and manager Hayley Alcock, Data analyst |
| 26 March 2021, 5.30pm | Let’s talk about Cloud technology versus on-premise | Bhagya Annapareddy, Principal Data Engineer at QuantumBlack, a Mckinsey Company |
| 19 March 2021, 5:30pm | No-Code AI for Citizen Data Scientists | Patrice Neff, Co-founder at Squirro |
| 12 March 2021, 5:30pm | An introduction to data platforms for data scientists | James Lupton, CTO for Cynozure |
| 5 March 2021, 5:30pm | What they don't teach you about data science | David Asboth, Data Scientist |
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24 February 2021, 4:00pm | Case Study: The Battle of Small Investors against Wall Street - A different take on the GME Saga | Michalis A. Michael, CEO at DigitalMR Ltd, a tech company in A.I. |
| 19 February 2021, 5.30pm | How AI standards help companies to manage AI risks systematically | Jörg Firnkorn, Research Lead at neurocat GmbH, Berlin, Germany |
| 12 February 2021, 5:30pm | Building reliable models for infrastructures that impact millions of lives? | Quy Vu, Mott MacDonald |
| 5 February 2021, 5.30pm | Data Science for private equity | Andrew Gibbs-Bravo (Analyst, Data Science at Birch Hill Equity Partners) |
| 29 January 2021, 5:30pm | From Academia to Industry, what to prepare for | Sepehr Jalali, the Conversational AI Team Lead at MediaTek Research UK |
| 22 January 2021, 5:30pm | Yuvoh Analytics Presents the Application of Big Data and AI in the Real Estate Sector | 1. Manish Shah, Yuvoh Analytics 2. Alex Moss, Course Director MSc in Global Finance, Director Real Estate Research Centre at the Business School formerly known as Cass |
| 10 December 2020, 6pm | Unleashing the power of data in the TV streaming business | Sarah Moore, Data Intelligence Director at Sky |
| 3 December 2020, 6pm | Facilitating Rigorous Data Science through Visualisation | Cagatay Turkay, Associate Professor, Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick |
| 26 November 2020, 6pm | Uncovering patterns of corruption in public procurement (in collaboration with Alan Turing and the University of Warwick) | Billy Zhao, EF Education First, Data Scientist |
| 19 November 2020 | Data Science: the future of trading and socially responsible investing | Daniel Philps, Head of Rothko Investment Strategies |
| 12 November 2020 | An introduction to Data Science in Investment Banking (Q&A) | Stephanie Pestell Jury, IBD ECM Strats Associate at Goldman Sachs. |
| 29 October 2020 | King of Data Science | Ianne Weber and Rupali Singhal, Senior Marketing Analysts at King |
| 22 October 2020 | Use British Library Digital Collections and Data for your next Data Science / AI project! | Mahendra Mahey, British Library Labs, BL Labs Manager |
| 15 October 2020 | AI when you need it most: computer vision for speedy accident and disaster recovery | Toby Staines, Applied Researcher, Tractable |
| 8 October 2020 | Data Science as a career | Peter Simon, Lead Data Scientist, financial markets, DataRobot |
| 1st October 2020 | Recent progress in computational photography using deep learning | Dr Gregory G. Slabaugh, Professor, and Director of the Digital Environment Research Institute (DERI) at Queen Mary University of London |
Events 2019-20
| Date | Event Title | Speakers |
|---|---|---|
| 12th August 2020 | How to Not Think Like a Data Scientist | Lara Chammas |
| 22nd July 2020 | Transforming healthcare with artificial intelligence - lessons from ophthalmology | Pearse Keane, Moorfields Eye Hospital, London |
| 16th June 2020 | An introduction to Data Science in Investment Banking (Q&A) | Stephanie Pestell Jury, IBD ECM Strats Associate at Goldman Sachs |
| 9th June 2020 | Augmented Intelligence - the pragmatic approach to AI | Patrice Neff, Co-founder at Squirro |
| 2nd June 2020 | Fuelling the Artificial Intelligence Revolution with Gaming | Alison B Lowndes, AI DevRel | EMEA - NVIDIA |
| 26th May 2020 | Developing digital solutions to the mental health challenges of the 21st century | Tarek R Besold, Chief Science Officer @ Alpha Health |
| 19th May 2020 | Role of Data Engineers in Data Science | Bhagya Annapareddy, Principal(Jr) Data Engineer at QuantumBlack (Mckinsey & Co) |
| 12th May 2020 | Automatic Image Enhancement using Deep Local Parametric Filters | Dr Greg Slabaugh |
| 6th March 2020 | AI and Data Science in Financial Services | Claire Thompson (RBS - Head of Data Innovation & Al) |
| 21st February 2020 | The Non-Data Science Part of Data Science | James Lupton (CTO at Cynozure) |
| 14th February 2020 | Harnessing the power of transactional data | Karen Jean-Francois (Senior Analyst at Cardlytics) |
| 7th February 2020 | The Market Generator | Alexei Kondratyev (CCIB) |
| 31st January 2020 | Data Science at Deliveroo | Ela Osterberger (Deliveroo - Head of Data Science) |
| 24th January 2020 | Unleashing data to make better customer and business decisions within Sky | Sarah Moore (NOW TV SKY - Data Intelligence Director) |
| 5th December 2019 | Data Visualisation at dunnhumby | Rosie Prior and Jon Geraghty (dunnhumby) |
| 28th November 2019 | Ashley comes in to talk about life working for Reply, a Big Data consultancy |
Ashley Mason (Data Reply) Pavi Singh (Data Reply) |
| 21st November 2019 | A.I. Fund Managers: Research and Opportunities | Daniel Philps (Head of Rothko Investment Strategies) |
| 14th November 2019 | King of Data Science | Ianne Weber, Rupali Singhal (King) |
| 11th November 2019 | Deep Learning and Computer Vision in the Property Market - Making the 'Right' Move | Kevin Ryan (Rightmove) |
| 7th November 2019 |
Explain Yourself: Uncovering Symbolic Knowledge in Neural Networks (View the Explain Yourself event recording) | Simon Odense |
| 31st October 2019 | How Data Science is used at Delta Capita | Sylvia Smit, Thuy Nguyen, Ricardo Cruz, Khrystyna Adronova (Delta Capita) |
| 17th October 2019 | Lessons From The Deep End of Data Science (View the Lessons from the Deep End event recording) | David Asboth (Cox Automotive Data Solutions) |
| 26th September 2019 | AI Computational Photography (Presentation slides) | Dr Greg Slabaugh (Huawei Technologies Research and Development) |
| 3rd October 2019 | Applied data science in the wild: data science as a career (View the Applied Data Science in the Wild event recording) | Peter Simon (DataRobot) |
| 10th October 2019 |
Building chatbots for social good and NLP in the wild (View the AI for Good event recording) (Download the presentation slides) | Yanhong (Billy) Zhao (AI for Good) |
Events 2018-19
| Date | Event Title | Speakers |
|---|---|---|
| 5th April 2019 | King of Data Science | Ianne Weber, Rupali Singhal (KIing) |
| 22nd March 2019 | Are Data Scientists dying? - what we are doing wrong, and how to avoid it. (Seminar recording) | Ashley Mason, Christos Hadjinikolis (Data Reply) |
| 15th March 2019 | The Afterlife: Going beyond modelling (Seminar recording) | Devanshi Upreti (Ocado Technology) |
| 8th March 2019 | Deep Learning for Computational Photography (Seminar recording) | Greg Slabaugh |
| 22nd February 2019 | Data scientists: the bright hope of investment management (Seminar recording) | Dan Philps |
| 15th February 2019 | Robotics and AI in Extreme Environments | Ahmed Hadid (Hybird) |
| 8th February 2019 | Superpowers, not Skynet: Using AI in the real world (Seminar recording) | David Mitchell, Mikko Heikela (Futurice) |
| 1st February 2019 | Applied machine learning in 2019: automation, interpretability, and the AI-driven enterprise (Seminar recording) | Peter Simon (DataRobot) |
| 25th January 2018 | Driving decisions through evidence (Seminar recording) | Taniya Kawatra (Unilever) |
| 5th December 2018 | Built infrastructure makes our world go around, but how can we optimise it? (Seminar recording, Presentation slides) | William Needham, Quy Vu (from Mott MacDonald) |
| 28 November 2018 | Data Science in Practice (Seminar recording, Presentation slides) | Wojtek Kostelecki |
| 14th November 2018 | Artificial Intelligence in Ophthalmology - the Moorfields- DeepMind collaboration | Pearse A. Keane |
| 7th November 2018 | Learning and deciding from replayed experience | Elliot Ludvig |
| 31st October 2018 | How Data Science is used at Delta Capita | Sylvia Smit, Ricardo Cruz, Khrystyna Adronova |
| 17th October 2018 | Data Science at dunnhumby | Rosie Prior |
| 10th October 2018 | tbc | Oliver Armitage, Hailey Eustace |
| 3rd October 2018 | Using data science to offer a better customer experience | Joe Steer |
| 26th September 2018 | Building Safe Artificial Intelligence with OpenMined | Andrew Trask |
