Ada Lovelace Day 2020

To mark Ada Lovelace Day, we are celebrating some of the incredible women in STEM that we have had the pleasure of working with at the David & Jane Richards Family Foundation.

Name: Dr Sarah Churchill

Occupation: Senior lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University

Special interests: Biomechanics in sport, in particular sprinting and rugby union

Interesting fact: Sarah has worked with a number of elite athletes, applying her research on biomechanics to help them achieve a competitive edge.

Along with colleagues in the Department of Sport, Sarah has hosted a number of fantastic trips for pupils studying our “Get Creative with Data” course, giving young people the opportunity to explore some of the applications of data in the world of sport. Pupils really enjoyed Sarah’s interactive presentation about her research on the biomechanics of sprinting, which was followed by the opportunity to apply what they had learnt by using high-tech professional equipment to gather and analyse their own fitness data.

Name: Kat Hurdley

Occupation: Primary teacher

Special interests: STEM and arts education

Interesting fact: Kat set up a FIRST LEGO League club at her school and coached her team all the way to the world finals in the USA in their very first year!

Kat has played a significant role in the development of our “Get Creative with Data” course, and in particular the “Hands-on data” module which empowers pupils to gather their own datasets using Raspberry Pi microcomputers with custom sensor boards. As well as single-handedly soldering the entire first batch of these IoT kits, Kat also coordinated a creative hackathon for sixth form students to investigate and problem-solve the challenges of connecting the hardware to school WiFi networks.

Name: Yvonne Kilvington

Occupation: Activity Support Worker at Ashbrow School and DJRFF’s Beekeeping Advisor

Special interests: Honeybees and bringing beekeeping to young people

Interesting fact: Yvonne has been a guest on Gardeners’ World!

Yvonne has been instrumental in helping us to successfully launch our “Beehives for Schools” project. As well as breeding all of our bees from her thriving colonies at Ashbrow School, she has also delivered hands-on training to all of the participating schools and keeps in regular contact with them to offer ongoing support throughout the beekeeping year. This year, she led a brilliant honey extraction training session for our schools, which resulted in a successful honey harvest in the autumn.

Name: Megan Naylor

Occupation: Aerospace Engineering student and member of the Sheffield Engineering Leadership Academy (SELA)

Special interests: Military aviation

Interesting fact: During her time at university, Megan has been a member of both the University Air Squadron and the Stunt Cheerleading team!

We had the pleasure of collaborating with Megan during her second year at SELA, which saw her working on a project with Sheffield’s Urban Flows Observatory. Megan and her team created a series of lessons for our “Get Creative with Data” course about the role that data can play in helping us to protect the environment, using the Observatory’s work monitoring air pollution as a case study. The lessons were a big hit with pupils, who also relished the chance to meet Megan and find out more about her fascinating course and some of the many opportunities available in STEM.