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Warwick 'What If?' marquee at Cheltenham Science Festival

As part of our 50th anniversary celebrations the Faculty of Science hosted a marquee at this year’s Cheltenham Science Festival from 2-7 June 2015. The Festival attracted over 45,000 visitors during the week. The Warwick 'What If?' marquee was pitched in the heart of the festival and took on a different theme each day, from big data to robotics, genetics to hacking, magnets to crystals.

We featured alongside some of the biggest names in science, providing a platform to showcase our people and research, as well as reaching new audiences nationally and internationally.

Throughout the week, over 120 staff and students from the Science Faculty successfully delivered a range of intriguing workshops for over 270 school children, fun drop-in activities for families and provoking panel-led discussions for older audiences.

Many members of the public visited the marquee every day to experience the full programme Warwick had to offer, with one visitor commenting,

absolutely brilliant - wide range of activities, for all age levels, increasing public understanding and great public engagement team!

Warwick’s experts were at the centre of the Festival programme of talks and debates, speaking on topics as diverse as ebola, cryogenics, cyberbullying, data science, risk taking and quantum computers. Festival visitors were able to continue the conversation in the 'What If?' marquee in our well-attended Ideas Café events on cyberbullying, data science, crystallography and artificial intelligence.

One participant in our 'What if... data science can solve our future?' Ideas Café commented,

‘It was great to have chance to follow the interesting “Big Data or Big Brother?” event with open follow up discussion in the Ideas Café - well led by the University of Warwick team.’

Read this Twitter Storify for a summary of the highlights of the Warwick 'What If?' marquee at Cheltenham Science Festival 2015.

Special thanks to all those organizing and delivering sessions throughout the week, for making it such a success!

Cheltenham Science Festival

Cheltenham Science Festival

Cheltenham Science Festival