As part of an ongoing partnership between delivery and logistics company DPD and Staffordshire University, the Schools of Computing & Digital Technologies and Creative Arts & Engineering ran a highly successful Design Sprint competition for students as part of the recent FutureFest event in November.

Students spent a full day busily working in groups to create and design solutions for various challenge topics provided by DPD, and presented these to a prestigious panel of judges which included our own VC, Professor Liz Barnes, the CEO of DPD, DwainMcDonald, and School Deans Professor Eunice Ma and Professor David Hawkins.

Twelve teams presented their ideas with the three best teams awarded not only prizes, but also the opportunity to work further with DPD on future projects. All teams impressed the judges with their innovative suggestions and pitching skills, and picking the winners was a challenge in itself!

Huge congratulations to everyone who took part, and to our winning students!

Mr Awad AlRasheed, PhD research student from the School of Computing & Digital Technologies, scoops the award for Best Presentation at the 19th International Conference on Knowledge Management Systems.

Supervised by Head of Computing at Staffordshire University Russell Campion, Mr AlRasheed has also been honored as an outstanding PhD Research Student by His Excellency the Saudi Cultural Attaché Dr. Abdulaziz Bin Ali Almagushi at the Saudi Embassy in London in September 2017 and presented to HRH Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf Al Saud, the Saudi Ambassador in the Saudi National Day Celebration.

Friday July 7th saw host to the annual Computer Science In Schools Conference, held for the first time in our brand new Mellor Building facilities on our College Road campus.

The event saw educators and computing specialists from across the area come together to discuss and improve the ways in which computing is taught in our primary and high schools, with keynotes & panel sessions from examining bodies AQA and OCR, as well as a number of other workshops available through out the day.

With such a positive response from this years event, 2018 looks to be an even bigger year for Computer Science In Schools Conference.

A special thank you to our sponsors for the event; AQA, OCR, Cambridge Institute and BCS.