Festival Day

JP Rangaswami has been fascinated by information all his life: where it comes from, where it goes, how it gets there and what it does to everyone and everything it touches. After more than four decades working in the information industry (most recently as Chief Data Officer and Group Head of Innovation, Deutsche Bank; Chief Scientist, Salesforce; Chief Scientist, BT) he has retired from full-time employment to become a grandfather-in-training.

He remains an independent non-executive director of a number of companies, a trustee at a number of non-profits, a governor at an academy school and an adjunct university professor of web science.

Claire Garside is a teacher, creative technologist and postgraduate researcher at The University of Leeds. She is one of the founders of The Foundation for Digital Creativity based in Manchester, and her research focuses on ways that ‘maker education’ can impact on children’s mental health and well-being.

From Key Stage 2 to PhD: The Foundation for Digital Creativity specialises in making technology accessible to tackle real world social and environmental problems, facilitating data-driven decision making to improve health and well-being. This year their ‘Internet of Curious Things’ education programme is supporting even more children and teachers in primary and secondary schools with extended community activities looking to help groups make a difference to the quality of air that they breathe. In 2019 the team has also partnered with Cisco and Manchester Metropolitan University to launch thingQbator Manchester, an on-campus IoT Makerspace to help boost the digital talent pipeline in the city.

David E. Fletcher was born in Mytholmroyd in 1933 and went to school in Hebden Bridge, before going on to study at the Universities of Hull, Sheffield, Leeds and Bradford. From 1970 to 1979 he was Head of Department Environment & Geography at Manchester Metropolitan University. He served as Countryside Commissioner from 1988-1998 and from 1993-2003 as Rural Development Commissioner. Also serving on the board of Calder Civic Trust/Pennine Trust from 1965 until the present day, alongside private consultancy in the UK, US and EU.

Dr Heather Williams is a Principal Medical Physicist for Nuclear Medicine at The Christie Hospital and honorary Lecturer at the University of Manchester, focussing on teaching imaging physics and positron emission tomography (PET) research. Heather is also a Director of ScienceGrrl, STEMNET ambassador, and active member of the IPEM Nuclear Medicine Special Interest Group and IoP Women in Physics Group committees. Heather also likes standing up and talking about science, and encouraging others (particularly women) to do so. When she's not busy with all that, Heather enjoys running, hiking and introducing her sons to the wonders of the universe, often at the same time.

By training Michael Dales is a Software Engineer with experience in numerous Cambridge startups and more established companies, and currently runs his own software consultancy firm, Digital Flapjack Ltd (never name your company when hungry).

By passion Michael now builds custom guitars and guitar related things: building guitars on commission and also building related things like amps and pedals as he attempts to expand his understanding and abilities. He’s an active member of the Cambridge Makespace community, where he regular teaches courses on woodworking, 3D Printing, and CAD/CAM.

Georgina Ferry is a science writer, author and broadcaster. She has been a staff editor and feature writer on New Scientist, and a presenter of science programmes on BBC Radio. Her biography of Britain's only female Nobel-prizewinning scientist, Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life (Granta 1998) was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize, and A Computer Called LEO (Fourth Estate 2003) was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week.

She has published four further books on 20th and 21st-century science, and in 2017 published A Better World is Possible (Profile), a history of the Gatsby Foundation.

She is Deputy Chair of the Trustees of Science Oxford and a Trustee of the Oxfordshire Science Festival.

Ben is a spacecraft systems and electronics engineer currently based near Oxford. He has a Master’s degree in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science from Aston University, where he worked on several aerospace related projects. Ben now works for STFC RAL Space, designing bespoke electronics for science payloads for earth observation and astronomy missions. He is also part of The Flame Trench, a group of hobbyist and professional engineers, teachers and scientists, working on an amateur picosatellite and a robotic observatory.

Jo Hinchliffe is a Libre Space Foundation team member working primarily on communications, outreach and documentation but is involved in numerous projects across the hardware branches of LSF activity. Jo is very involved in the global Pocketqube micro satellite community and also is heavily involved in high power rocketry, with which he is helping develop the Libre Space rocketry roadmap. Jo has a ground station on the SatNOGS network and is keen to support others to join the network.

Amanda Brock is the CEO of Trustable Software, a UK based not for profit organisation working globally. www.trustable.io

She was General Counsel of Canonical, setting up the global legal team and running this for 5 years. She has worked in a variety of sectors, ranging from Fashion to Fintech, across EMEA, US, AsiaPac and Emerging Markets, based out of the UK and Amsterdam and has worked in open source since 2008.

As well as many years of structuring and negotiating a multitude of deals, her roles have included contribution to and leadership of a number multi-organisational collaborative projects and open source initiatives. She has expertise in open source software, governance, IP, compliance audits, policies and processes as well as commercialisation and contracting around open source. Amanda was a member of the Open Stack Drafting Committee in 2012 and a member of the Linux Foundation’s General Counsel committee.

Amanda is a regular international speaker and author covering innovation, open source and legal issues and has contributed to a number of books and journals on open source issues.

She is a European Representative of the Defensive patent pool, Open Invention Network, an Executive and founding Editor of the International Free and Open Source Law Review, a member of the OASIS Open Projects Advisory Council and a Director of Open UK.

Sarah Angliss is a composer, performer and maker of robotic musical instruments. Her music often draws on resonances between European folklore and early notions of machines. She’s been seen and heard at The National Theatre, The Old Vic and Almeida, London, Park Avenue Armory and National Sawdust, New York, BFI Southbank and many live music festivals. In 2019 she received a Composer’s Award from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. Between commissions and live performances, Sarah researches technology and culture. Her research has been published by the Science Museum, Smithsonian Scholarly Press and The Wire Magazine. She’s made documentaries on sound culture for BBC Radio 4 (‘The Bird Fancyer’s Delight’, 2011 and ‘Echo in a Bottle’, 2018). In August 2016 she was invited to write an extensive introduction to the long awaited reprint of ‘An Individual Note - of Sound, Music and Electronics’, written by BBC Radiophonic Workshop founder Daphne Oram.

Derek Woodroffe has been building tesla coils as a hobby for over 20 years. He has constructed over 30 different tesla coils from 30mm to over 1M tall of many different types. He runs both the Nottingham Gaussfest and Cambridge Tesla coiler meet-ups and has worked a number of times on TV to assist with tesla coil and high voltage demonstrations to programs such as the Royal Institute Christmas Lectures and Dara Ó Briain’s Science club.

Dr Laura James engineers new technologies to help people and society, and has very varied experience getting things done in innovative and evolving organisations. 

Laura is Technology Principal at Doteveryone, fighting for a fairer internet and finding ways to make technology development more responsible. Laura is also a co-founder at Field Ready, an NGO enabling humanitarian supplies to be manufactured locally. 

She's a cofounding member of the Digital Life Collective, a new co-operative to build technology we can trust. In 2010 Laura co-founded Makespace, a community workshop and inventing shed in Cambridge. She was previously CEO of Open Knowledge, a global non-profit network unlocking knowledge to empower people.  Laura has worked at startups including AlertMe.com, a connected home system, where she was the first employee and VP Engineering, and Evi.com (now part of Amazon), building an AI platform for conversational search. Laura has also worked in R&D at AT&T Labs in the US and UK, and at CARET, an innovation department of the University of Cambridge, developing open source systems to support teaching and research. 

Laura holds Masters and PhD degrees in Engineering from the University of Cambridge, received the Royal Academy of Engineering Leadership Award and a NESTA Crucible Fellowship, and is a Chartered Engineer. Laura is an advisor to Weir PLC, Good Night Lamp, and the ContentMine.