Computing students attend BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium 2026

Congratulations to Linaya Piyaratne and Dianah Naigah, both final year BSc (Hons) Computing (Artificial Intelligence and Robotics) students at Buckingham, who were selected to present their projects at the 19th Annual BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium held at the University of Bath on 8-9 April 2026.

The Lovelace Colloquium is the UK’s leading national conference for women and non binary students in computing. Around 180 student poster presentations (selected from 280 abstract submissions) across undergraduate and master’s categories covering wide range of topics such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, healthcare technology, quantum computing, human computer interaction and digital ethics were included in this year’s colloquium.

Day one of the Lovelace Colloquium focused on first year and Master’s students presenting their work. It was a great opportunity to explore wide range of ideas and explore Bath city. The day ended with a social and Lovelace committee providing accommodation, food and even cake! Day two was when undergraduates presented the early results from their final year projects. It was an opportunity to explain the ideas and work behind the projects to fellow university students and hear fresh perspectives and questions that will further help to improve ongoing projects.

Inspiring keynotes were delivered by Sarah Winmill FRSA CITP CEng FBCS (President of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT) and Edafe Onerhime (Enterprise Data Architect and Responsible AI specialist).

Linaya with her project: Multi-Label Classification of Behavioral Health Risks in NASA Astronaut Narratives: A Comparative NLP Approach

Supervised by Dr Maysson Ibrahim, Linaya’s project, “Multi-Label Classification of Behavioral Health Risks in NASA Astronaut Narratives: A Comparative NLP Approach”, focuses on building a multi-label classification system to detect behavioural health risks in NASA astronaut narratives.

She is comparing multiple approaches including rule-based baselines, traditional statistical ML models, SOTA transformer models (BERT) and domain adapted models (MentalBERT) to see which architecture best understands the stoic, technical language of astronauts.

Linaya says:

“This is a true passion project for me as it allows me to combine my background in psychology with my BSc in Computing with AI and Robotics, all while integrating my love for space!!”

Supervised by Dr Athar Ali, Dianah’s project, “Detecting Online Harm Without Silencing Voices: Bias Aware Cyberbullying Detection”, is a comparative study of a fine-tuned RoBERTa transformer and a Llama large language model for bias-aware cyberbullying detection.

Dianah with her project, titled: Detecting Online Harm Without Silencing Voices: Bias Aware Cyberbullying Detection

Dianah says:

“The attendees were genuinely engaged with the models, curious about my findings, and eager to see how far the project will go. Exploring Bath city center and enjoying the university’s wonderful hospitality were a lovely bonus to what was already a remarkable time.

I am deeply grateful to the School of Computing for bringing this opportunity to my attention as, without them, I would have never known of it.

To our lovely Dean Professor Harin for his constant support throughout the process, and most especially to my wonderful supervisor, Dr Athar Ali, whose guidance, encouragement, and belief in me from the very first abstract submission through to the final poster made this achievement possible.”

Reflecting on the overall experience, Linaya said:

“Being surrounded by so many driven, like-minded women in tech all sharing ideas, research and ambitions made the experience both motivating and unforgettable.

Incredibly grateful to Prof Harin for sharing this opportunity with us and to Dr May for her continuous guidance and support in bringing this project to life!”

Dianah adds:

“Being in a room full of women who share my passion for technology reminded me that I belong in this field and, that the work I do matters.”

We are absolutely delighted with our students’ success and incredibly proud to see them representing Buckingham on this prestigious stage.