International Women in Engineering Day 2025

Summer, Monday 23rd June 2025

To celebrate International Women in Engineering Day, ECM hosted guests including drivers from the Iron Dames race team Marta Garcia and Vanina Ickx. We welcomed 30 local school girls and celebrated the achievements of women in engineering. The day included a series of sessions to promote engineering to young women and girls.

UK Uni Search at Brookes

Summer, Wednesday 18th June 2025

Oxford Brookes hosted the UK Uni Search event, welcoming thousands of prospective students from across the region. ECM staff and student ambassador ran a stand with one of the race cars and Spot the robot dog to greet visitors.

Year 10 Wycombe High School Visit

Summer, Wednesday 21st May 2025

A group of 200 Year 10 school girls from Wycombe High School visited the School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics. The students were given a welcome talk by Sam Kamperis about the range of courses offered in engineering and computer science. 

Throughout the remainder of the day groups toured the new building and its facilities, met the Oxford Brookes Racing team, took part in a treasure hunt around NHHB and went to an interactive maths workshop with James Maunder and Leon.

Cheney School Visit to Oxford Brookes

S2 Week 9, Wednesday 26th March 2025

52 Year 12 students from Cheney School and 13 Year 12 students from other schools visited Oxford Brookes for a day of activities and workshops.

This day included a welcome talk from Douglas, Sam and Gordana. James delivered a mathematics activity on polyhedra, there was a demonstration in robotics lab and a CAD activity in the computer labs. The same activity as the Northampton day on the 5th March ended the visit where teams built a hydraulic robotic arm from cardboard and syringes.

BCS Oxfordshire Branch Open Evening

S2 Week 8, Wednesday 19th March 2025

The BCS Oxfordshire Branch hosted an open evening at Oxford Brookes. There were 20 attendees who participated in discussions and networking sessions.

Tjeerd Olde Scheper presented Computing at Brookes including research and PG courses. The guests were given a tour of the facilities including the VR cave, robotics lab and an interactive CTF activity in the cyber lab. The OBR autonomous team also gave a presentation in the workshop.

Computer Game Making Workshop at Cheney

S2 Week 7, Tuesday 11th March 2025

Sam Kamperis, Leon, and Jordi visited Cheney School and worked with 13 Year 12 students on a computer game making workshop using Microsoft Makecode.

The workshop was well received with thanks from the school.

Northampton College Visit

S2 Week 6, Wednesday 5th March 2025

Over 70 Year 12 and Year 13 students from Northampton College visited Oxford Brookes for a day of workshops and campus tours.

This day included a welcome talk from Gordana, an interactive CFD class in the computer labs, demonstrations in robotics lab and engineering workshops, a presentation from the OBR team and a tour. The day ended with a competitive team activity where group built hydraulic robotic arms with cardboard and syringes

Brookes Science Bazaar

S2 Week 5, Saturday 1st March 2025

Hundreds of children and parents attended the Brookes Science Bazaar this month. ECM brought along the Spot the robot dog, a variety of interactive maths exhibits and the OBR team ran activities at a stand.

Brookes Engage - 2

S2 Week 0, Saturday 25th January 2025

At the second Brookes Engage Saturday, Nigel Crook delivered a talk Teaching robots right from wrong and Michael K continued the Microsoft Makecode workshop on programming an arcade game in python.

There were 10 year 12 students in attendance.

BCS Oxfordshire Branch Talk - AI for Smart Visitor Management

S2 Week -1, Wednesday 15th January 2025

Matthias Rolf delivered the talk AI for Smart Visitor Management

An artificial intelligence project, developed by experts at Oxford Brookes University, is helping one of Oxfordshire’s most prestigious tourist attractions enhance its customer service and visitor experience.

The partnership between Oxford Brookes and Blenheim Palace started in 2020 with 32-month-long Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) funded by InnovateUK, and has been continued into a 2-year consultancy project. The project is helping to transform the historic estate – famous as the birthplace of Winston Churchill – into a ‘smart’ visitor attraction by using Artificial Intelligence (AI).

There were 19 guests in person and another 20 online.

First Lego League Challenge Oxfordshire Regional 2025

S2 Week -1, Tuesday 14th January 2025

An exciting, hands-on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programme, FIRST LEGO League engages children and young people in meaningful learning.

Oxford Brookes hosted the Oxfordshire Regional tournament for the third consecutive year.

There were 31 teams each of upto 10 school students from 14 different schools in attendance. The children were aged 9 - 16 years old.

The count of children present was approximately 250.

A great number of staff from ECM and the wider university volunteered at the event.

Brookes Engage 2025 - 1

Winter, Saturday 11th January 2025

The first of two university wide Brookes Engage Saturdays. ECM contributed a computer science track to the programme. 

Sam gave an introduction to computer science and ran machine learning activities.

Michael K ran a Microsoft Makecode workshop on programming arcade computer games.

There were 11 year 12 school students in attendance.

IET Faraday Challenge

Winter, Thursday 9th January 2025

This annual competition consists of free, STEM activity days that introduce students to engineering, inspire them to consider engineering as a career and help to develop their practical and employability skills, including team-working, problem-solving and creative thinking.

The Challenge Day is designed to be cross-curricular covering science, technology, engineering and maths.

There were 18 year 8 school children accompanied by 3 teachers from the schools Abingdon, Fitzharrys and Larkmead.

Oxford Space Design Competition 2024

Week 8, Saturday 16th November 2024

Oxford Brookes hosted the Oxford Space Design Competition 2024, one of the regional UK Space Design Challenges.

The challenge is an industry simulation event, where the UKSDC packs in roles for students of all academic interests, with the only prerequisite being a passion for space! Whether you are a budding architect or engineer who wants to design space habitation in the Structures Department, or a young entrepreneur who wants to put their creative business vision to the test within the Business and Marketing Department, there is a role for everybody at the UKSDC. 

Oxford Brookes Racing Autonomous demoed the car and met the students. Spot the Robot Dog also visited the classrooms.

The event saw 160 school children in years 10 - 13 from ten different schools compete in four large groups of 40.

BCS Women in IT Event

Week 3, Wednesday 9th October 2024

Oxford Brookes hosted the BCS Oxfordshire 3rd annual Women in IT Event in Oxfordshire.

The hybrid event was held on Wednesday 9th October the day after Ada Lovelace day with talks from academia and industry followed by a networking session.

Talks took place from 18:00 – 19:30 in hybrid, after which there was an in person networking event.

The speakers were Simon Jones, Samia Kamal, Tereza Malacova, Rachel Keane and Vicki Pike.

BCS Women in IT recording

TDE ECM Summer School

Summer, Friday 5th July 2024

The TDE ECM Summer School was attended by 31 year 12 school students. Over four days the school delivered:

ECM Courses Overview - Sam Kamperis

Ethics of AI - Matthias Rolf

Capture the Flag activity - Joe Norton

Coding for Machine Learning - Sam Kamperis

Cozmo and Spot Robots - Sam Kamperis

Rocket Car activity - Alice, Miao and Dan from WP.

Wycombe High School Year 10 Visit

Summer, Thursday 13th June 2024

ECM welcomed year 10 from Wycombe High to Wheatley Campus for the third time. The day began with talks from Olga Barrera and Clare Martin about Engineering and Computer Science. The speakers also shared some of their experiences of working in STEM with the children.

Trudy Ing ran the rocket car activity in Dora Cohen Hall.

James Maunder gave a talk on the mathematical proofs.

Paul Allen ran the conrod tensile test in the stress lab.

Sara and Kaci from the OBR team presented the car to the students and spoke about their experiences studying at Brookes and working in the race team. Mike showed the students around the autolab.

Matt Mycock Demonstrated Spot the Dog.

Alu Abdullah Al-Saadi and Andre Costa ran the conrod CAD models activity in HLG01.

There were 170 year 10 school girls in attendance.

UK University Search at Oxford Brookes

Summer, Wednesday 12th June 2024

Oxford Brookes hosted a UK University Search Fair in June. As part of the event ECM brought the Adrian Reynard car and Spot the robot dog to the quad and ran demonstrations throughout the day with Mike answering questions about being a current student on the OBR team.

There were over 1000 school students in attendance.

Computer Science Taster Day

Summer, Thursday 9th May 2024

The School's computer science taster day was held in Wheatley in May. Tjeerd Olde Scheper gave an introduction to the day and discussed the different computer science courses offered. Sam (me) ran a workshop on frontend web development. The students met Aduen who gave a talk of the Autonomous Racing team. Peter Whittle gave a demonstration of the VR Cave and the students had the opportunity to experience it. Jacob also ran the robotics demo in the lab (and outside).  

There were 10 year 12/13 school students in attendance.

Engineering Taster Day

Summer, Wednesday 8th May 2024

The School's engineering taster day was held in Wheatley in May. Douglas Higgison gave an introduction to the day and discussed the different engineering courses offered. Dan Bell ran the rocket car activity in Dora Cohen Hall. The students toured the R Block where Ian Spacksman gave a tour of the workshop and Formula Student team members Alfie, Sara and Garrett gave a talk about the team and student life. Paul Allen ran the Conrod Tensile Test demo followed by Jess running the conrod CAD models workshop in a computer lab. In parallel Jacob ran a demo in the robotics lab before switching groups after lunch.  

There were 22 year 12/13 school students in attendance.

Brookes Engage 2023-24 Session 3 - Wheatley

Week 10, Saturday 20th April 2024

The third Brookes Engage session took place in Wheatley. 

Sam gave a talk on courses offered by the School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics.

Formula Student met the students and talked about their experiences studying and working on the team.

Jurgent demonstrated the Conrod Tensile Test in the Stress Lab.

Jacob demonstrated the robots in the robotics lab and a practical exercise with the cozmos.

Year 10 Study Conference 2024

Easter, Monday 25th March 2024

The Year 10 study conference organised by the WP team took place at Headington Campus. The year students were offered workshops in English, Maths and Science. ECM has designed a new talk for this year which has been recorded for new student ambassadors to deliver in future.

Throughout the day Sam Kamperis and Leon delivered the workshop Mathematics, the Art of Problem Solving to 74 students from three different schools.

STEM Masterclass - 6 Spring 2024

Week 6, Saturday 9th March 2024

Prof Alistair Fitt, Vice Chancellor, Oxford Brookes University

Correlation, Cause and Bayes’ Theorem

Politicians, the Press and most of the general public seem to find it impossible to distinguish between correlation and cause. The two are frequently confused and this can lead not only to incorrect and damaging conclusions, but in some cases serious miscarriages of justice and ridiculous political policies. Bayes’ Theorem has a crucial role to play in the understanding of all this, and I will try to show how this often misunderstood result can lead to results that are hard to interpret and may often seem counter-intuitive.

There were 35 Year 12 and Year 13 students in attendance.

STEM Masterclass - 5 Spring 2024

Week 5, Sat 2nd March 2024

Jurgent

Mathematical Models for Disease Spread

In this session we will look at two mathematical models for modelling the spread of infections (such as COVID-19).

The two models we will look at today are part of a general class of models known as compartmental models, which divide the entire population into compartments.

The models we will look at in detail are discrete, but we will briefly discuss how differential equations can be used to produce continuous models.

Dr Sam Kamperis

Polyhedra: from Plato to Euler

In this masterclass we will explore properties of polyhedra, specifically the regular (Platonic) and semi-regular (Archimedian) solids.

There were 32 Year 12 students in attendance.

STEM Masterclass - 4 Spring 2024

Week 4, Sat 24th February 2024

Dr James Maunder

Friends, Graphs, and Influenza

In this masterclass, we will use the language of graph theory to state a surprising result about social networks and friendships known as the Friendship Paradox. Using probability, we will prove and explain precisely why this counterintuitive result is true and when its effect is most apparent.In fact, our proof will allow us to apply this result to different networks. Moreover, we will demonstrate how the application of this result can lead to more effective sampling and, in particular, we will see how one study was able to detect the presence of influenza almost two weeks ahead of random sampling.

There were 27 Year 12 students in attendance.

Online Robotics Lab Tour

Week 3, Tue 13th February 2024

Jacob ran a demonstration of the robots in B210 live on zoom to high school students in China. This was a huge success with questions fielded live over the call whilst Jacob walked them round the room.

There were over 50 students on the call.

STEM Masterclass - 3 Spring 2024

Week 2, Sat 10th February 2024

Dr Sam Kamperis

Spherical Trig - Triangles on balls!

We have spent years at school studying triangles. Three points with straight lines between them. The shortest route between two points on a flat surface is indeed a straight line, but what if I have points on a sphere? What's the shortest distance between those two points? It's still a line, but it must be curved. The shape formed between three points and lines is a spherical triangle and the area of mathematics is spherical trigonometry. This week we will explore the theory of this exciting topic and how we can use it to realise coordinates, bearings and distances on Earth.

There were 24 Year 12 students in attendance.

Brookes Science Bazaar BEYOND

Week 1, Sat 3rd February 2024

The School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics brought three activities to the Spring 2024 Science Bazaar at Headington. 

Formula Autonomous and Hannah demonstrated Spot the Robot Dog, which won *Most Engaging Activity at the Bazaar* as judged by Linda King. 

Formula Student brought a car chassis and ran a design activity.

Joe Norton designed and built a cyber security activity.

Countless members of the general public visited the university throughout the day.

STEM Masterclass - 2 Spring 2024

Week 1, Sat 3rd February 2024

Dr Sam Kamperis

Geometric Series and the Golden Ratio

This talk introduces golden ratio and properties related to infinite sums of related geometric series.

Leon

Conway's Soldiers

Sometimes problems which are easy to explain can be very difficult (or impossible!) to solve. A game proposed by the late mathematician John Horton Conway is presented and proofs of the possible outcomes will then we worked on by the class.

There were 29 Year 12 students in attendance.

STEM Masterclass - 1 Spring 2024

Week 0 Sat 27th January 2024

The first of the Royal Institution Year 12 STEM Masterclasses. This week Sam (me) introduced the series with the Science of Scanning.

There were 29 in attendance (35 with Brookes Engage).

Brookes Engage 2023-24 Session 2 - Headington

Week 0 Sat 27th January 2024

The Brookes Engage ECM session joined the RI STEM Masterclass 6 attended and 4 signed up to the masterclass programme following the event.

There were 35 total in attendance across the two groups (see above for photos).

First Lego League Challenge Oxfordshire Regional

Week 0, Weds 24th January 2024

The first Lego League Challenge Oxfordshire Tournament was held in Wheatley for second year running. This year there were 12 teams from nine schools with 90 school students in attendance.

The tournament was a lively and competitive event with a great atmosphere. The students also took a tour of the R Block autolab where they were greeted by the formula student team and Jacob gave a demo of the Boston Dynamics Spot dog in the main hall whilst the judges deliberated.

The feedback from the event has been really positive with a quote from teacher:

"A Great experience for our teams, you have been an awesome host and provided excellent added value to our experience. From the point of view of opening our students eyes to engineeing, computing and business apprenticeships and degrees that Oxford Brookes offer, to the organisation of the whole day and providing real critical judging experiences and a challenging fun environment that student will have found really have found highly valuable it was an outstanding day."

Environmental Design Challenge

Week -1, Weds 17th January 2024

The first Oxfordshire Enviromental Design Challenge was held at Oxford Brookes Headington Campus in January.

The Environmental Design Challenge asks students from multiple schools to form companies, to work collaboratively as designers of environmentally-friendly human settlements. The programme is designed to promote interdisciplinary collaboration and give students experience working in an industry environment.

Companies are presented with a Request for Proposal (RFP) which details the requirements for a solution to an environmental issue the students are tasked with designing. The RFP is broken down into 5 key sections which represent each department within the company. Whilst departments focus on their section of the RFP, successful designs require collaboration and communication between departments. The challenge highlights to students the value of combining ideas and perspectives to work towards effective outcomes.

There were 17 students (14 girls and 3 boys) in attendance.

RI Christmas Lecture Livestream

Week 12, Tues 12th December 2023

Prior to the livestream starting, we welcomed 30 students from Cheney School in years 10 - 13 and ran activities with them. Jacob demonstrated Spot the Robot Dog. Nigel Crook gave a short lecture on generative AI and Peter Marshall presented the AI courses available at the university.

We welcomed an additional 20 public guests for the livestream event.

This year Professor Mike Wooldridge revealed the truth about Artificial Intelligence in the 2023 CHRISTMAS LECTURES from the Royal Institution, supported by CGI.

In this Lecture Mike demonstrated the contrast between how a machine learns and how a human learns, and explained how neural networks accelerated the growth of AI. Questioning if machines could ever match human intelligence?

Brookes Engage 2023-24 Session 1 - Headington

Week 9, Saturday 25th November 2023

Programming with Safras

The first Brookes Engage session with year’s cohort. Parents and carers of the children had an opportunity to meet with academics for tea and coffee before the students had their first subject session in the afternoon.

Safras delivered a python programming workshop for ECM which was attended by 11 year 12 students.

Wheatley Park School Visit

Week 8, Weds 15th November 2023

32 students between years 9 and 12 visited the R Block on Wheatley Campus to learn about studying engineering at the university. Alessio gave a welcome to talk to the students followed by Paul and the formula student team showcasing work in the labs.

UK Space Design Competition (Oxfordshire Regional)

Week 7, Sat 11th November 2023

The UKSDC Oxfordshire Regional was held at Wheatley Campus with over 120 secondary school students from 10 different schools in attendance.

The event was also attended by science teachers from the ten schools and promoting the university and strengthening our ties with them.

Three Oxford Brookes students Jacob, Jurgent and Aaron volunteered at the event and Jacob demonstrated the cozmos in the robot lab.

BCS - Women in IT event 2023

Week 7, Weds 8th November 2023

The women in IT event was held at the Headington Campus in JHB208.

It was attended by 15 people in person and 20 online.

The following speakers presented:

• Caroline Dowling

• Elena Sierra

• Rhesa Baar

• Hendrika Willemse

• Dr Arantza Aldea

• David Sheppard

The recording is available below

BCS - Women in IT event recording