Ada Lovelace Day Live,

About the event

Ada Lovelace Day Live! is our flagship ‘science cabaret’ event which this year will be held at The IET on the evening of 11 October. Playing host to the UK’s most fabulous women in STEM, ALD Live is an entertaining evening of geekery, comedy and music suitable for everyone over the age of 12. If you’d like to enjoy a taster, take a look at our videos from 2015, 2014 and 2013!

Our amazing speakers are:

• Yewande Akinola, design engineer focused on sustainable water supply systems and the engineering design coordination of large projects in the built environment.
• Dr Sheila Kanani, planetary physicist, science presenter, secondary school physics teacher and space comedienne with a background in astrophysics and astronomy.
• Dr Kat Arney, science writer and broadcaster whose work has featured in the New Scientist, Wired, the Guardian, the Times Educational Supplement, BBC Radio 4, the Naked Scientists and more.
• Jenny Duckett, developer with the Government Digital Service.
• Dr Sara Santos, mathematician, director and founder of Maths Busking. 
• Dr Bissan Al-Lazikani, computational biologist working on drug discovery for Cancer Research UK. 
• Dr Anna Jones, deputy science leader for the British Antarctic Survey's Atmosphere, Ice and Climate Team. 

And our amazing compère this year will be the award-winning comedian and broadcaster Helen Keen! 

Lobby doors open at 6.30pm, the performance will begin at 7.30pm and will run until approximately 9.30pm. There will be a cash bar for refreshments from 6.30pm until the beginning of the performance.

Why should you sponsor?

By sponsoring Ada Lovelace Day, you’ll be helping to promote and support girls and women in STEM on a global level. This is your opportunity to make an impact on the world of tomorrow by encouraging  girls and women to study and pursue a career in STEM.

Our work crosses generations. We provide inspiration for all girls and women, because it’s not enough to encourage girls to study STEM if the women they grow into are discouraged from continuing their careers. We are here to provide inspiration and help throughout a woman’s life, but we need your support to continue and expand our work.

By working with us, you will be supporting a grassroots organisation with a proven track record, one that is growing year on year and expanding our work and our reach. And your brand will be associated with a vibrant, forward-thinking community and an event that is beloved around the world.

Our community

Our community is a passionate one, full of women in technology and science in particular, as well as men, many of whom have daughters whom they want to have the same opportunities growing up as they did.

Our newsletter has over nearly 1,200 subscribers, 40 percent of whom are in the UK, with 40 percent in the US and the remainder distributed around the rest of the world.

Our website gets an average of 15,000 page views per month, with 28 percent of visitors coming from the UK, 36 from the US, and the remainder coming from 110 other countries.

Of our nearly 7,100 Twitter followers, 42 percent are in the UK, 30 percent in the US, and the remaining 28 percent spread out over 93 other countries.

We also have new communities on Facebook and Pinterest which are growing, and a new podcast.

Press coverage

Each year Ada Lovelace Day receives a significant amount of media attention. In the past our events have been covered by CNN, The Guardian, The New York Times, Forbes, Business Week, the BBC, Motherboard, The Huffington Post, New Scientist, Wired, Forbes, National Geographic, NBC News and Smithsonian.com and many more household names.

Why our work is crucial

Ada Lovelace Day was founded because social and cultural pressures turn many girls away from STEM, and prevent many women from discovering, pursuing and succeeding in STEM careers. And those who do enter STEM fields face significant challenges because of their gender. Studies show that:

In the UK, 47 percent of the workforce are women, but women account for only 14 percent of the STEM workforce.

• 18 percent of IT professionals are women.
• 8 percent of engineers are women.
• 20 percent of physics A-Levels are taken by girls, a number that hasn’t changed for 20 years.
• 13 percent of computer science students were female in 2014, compared to 14 percent in 2010.

Yet, businesses with women on their board of directors perform better than those with none, and “unleashing women’s full potential could be worth £23 billion a year to the Exchequer”.

There is no doubt that women are underrepresented in STEM, and that both business and society are losing out as a result. Furthermore, women are losing out on enjoyable, fulfilling and lucrative careers: Evidence shows that girls and women are capable, achieving higher grades than boys at A-Level in physics, for example. Indeed, they outperform boys in STEM qualifications at all levels, and outnumber boys in degrees such as medicine and veterinary science, accounting for 60 percent of all medicine undergraduates and 75 percent of veterinary science undergraduates.

Suw Charman-Anderson

Ada Lovelace Day (ALD) is an international celebration day of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). It aims to increase the profile of women in STEM and, in doing so, create new role models who will encourage more girls into STEM careers and support women already working in STEM.

Founded in 2009 by Suw Charman-Anderson, it is now held every year on the second Tuesday of October. It features a flagship Ada Lovelace Day Live! ‘science cabaret’ event in London, UK, at which women in STEM give short talks about their work or about other women who have inspired them, or perform short comedy or musical interludes with a STEM focus.

The day also includes dozens of grassroots events around the world, organised entirely independently from the ALD Live! event. These events take many forms — from conferences to Wikipedia ‘edit-a-thons’ to pub quizzes — and appeal to all ages, from girls to university students, to women with well-established careers.

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