Yesterday I was invited by KPMG UK to be a guest speaker at their Health Get Together event.
It was a pleasure to be invited to participate in their internal event. It gave me an inside look at how consultants work, and I also had a chance to listen to a very interesting internal presentation about their social media use.
Today I was invited to attend InfoSecurity Europe, Europe`s largest Information Security industry event.
As always, it was interesting to have a chance to catch up with this rapidly moving field, and a great opportunity to chat with old friends.
Apart from gimmicks (VR everywhere, car racing and helicopter simulators, giant robots, etc), swag (all kinds of Star Wars and other Sci-Fi related giveaways, from toys to t-shirts) and junk food (from candy to icecream to chips, the booths did not have healthy alternatives, although the food vendors did), the most interesting part of these events is always the talks, specifically the hands-on demos.
Today I was invited, along with my son, who at 14 has been a videogame developer for years, to attend the Intel Buzz videogame developer workshop. It was not only a lot of fun, but WONDERFUL to attend with him!
Although a small event, it ended up being extremely interesting, with an area to try indie games and new technologies, and a long list of talks and panels, including one-on-ones.
May 27 I was invited to participate in the “Computing in Cancer Workshop” organized by Microsoft Research in Cambridge.
It was a great opportunity to network, meet with colleagues and other researchers, and especially to learn a lot.
The fascinating lectures were:
Antonio Criminisi (Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research): Machine Learning for Medical Image Analysis Jasmin Fisher (Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research): Virtual Models of Cancer Giles Maskell (President, Royal College of Radiologists): Current problems in diagnostic radiology Fiona Gilbert (Head of the Department of Radiology, University of Cambridge) Dennis Wang (Senior Bioinformatics Scientist, AstraZeneca): Predicting drug combinations and biomarkers of response: a crowd-sourced solution Florian Markowetz (University of Cambridge, CRUK Cambridge Institute): Quantifying patterns of tumour evolution Francesca Buffa (Associate Professor, Department of Oncology, University of Oxford): In-silico systems biology and functional genomics approaches to accelerate biomarker discovery Hoifung Poon (Researcher, Microsoft Research): Machine Reading for Cancer Panomics Raj Jena (Academic Consultant Clinical Oncologist, Cambridge University Hospitals): Computing for Radiation Oncology – from cell culture to the clinic Bertie Gottgens (Professor of Molecular Haematology, University of Cambridge): Defining Cell States and Regulatory Networks using Single Cell Genomics
Stockholm day 2:
We started the day with a very yummy breakfast buffet, which gave us plenty of energy for all the walking we had planned to do.
Since the National Museum was closed, we walked along the Strandvägen and crossed the Djurgårdsbron bridge into Djurgården to go to the Vasa Muséet.
The Vasa museum is quite an amazing place, a lot more interesting than it seems at first: it displays the only almost fully intact 17th century ship that has ever been salvaged, the 64-gun warship Vasa that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628.
After the wonderful cruise, we disembarked in Stockholm and took a taxi to our hotel: the Nobis . It is a cool design hotel, with a particular claim to history: in their building is where the Stockholm Syndrome effect first happened. It is located in a square where they are installing heated floors!
After storing our luggage in the hotel (too early to checking-in), we went off to explore the city.
Friday, May 20, we arrived in Helsinki quite early and docked by Kauppatori (Market Square) where they sell a ton of berries (blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, etc), which we have been eating a ton during the cruise.
So, after breakfast we disembarked, and walked the Senate Square, got a map in the City Hall, where we also took the opportunity to check our email thanks to the free wifi, and went on, passing by the Helsinki Cathedral, the Palace of the Council of the State, the main building of the University of Helsinki, and the National Library.
