Where: Building 9; Room 2325
Credit: 12
Description
Since the early days of Pong, video games have often been coded with Artificial Intelligence - a script that plays the game as if it were human, making smart and rational decisions. In this workshop, we will investigate some of the core techniques used in AI, in particular, Pathfinding (for deciding physical routes across a map). We will code bots that can play games via a graphical interface, observe our bots perform in the game, and even pit them against other coders' bots. Participants would be expected to learn basic coding; we will use the Python language in the lectures (but the students can use any popular language instead). It is not required to know AI in advance. Some mathematical aptitude would be helpful, and the course will appeal to anyone in STEM. As part of the workshop, we will launch a fun competition that participants can invest time in at home before we debrief and discuss the strategies we used. Note that this same workshop was run in WEP 2021 and 2022.
Liam Mencel
Liam began his academic career with an MA in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge, Trinity College. Here, he developed a foundation in pure and proof-based mathematics, whilst learning Python programming on the side. He then went on to perform a Masters in Computer Science at KAUST, with special focus in Algorithms and Theoretical Computer Science. His Master thesis is titled "A Faster Algorithm for Computing Straight Skeletons".
Liam transitioned from the MSc into a PhD at KAUST in the field of Computational Geometry, under the supervision of Professor Antoine Vigneron. He continued to research results concerning the Straight Skeleton, as part of the Visual Computing department.
In 2017, Liam took up a position as a Software Engineer, for Amazon in London, UK. Here, he used much of his past knowledge to specialise in the Data Science side of engineering. One of his flagship projects involved using customers' film preferences to generate automatic movie and TV recommendations, which was regarded as a successful addition to the Prime Video website.
In recent years, Liam has worked as a freelance programmer, which proved to be a more convenient role given the current global circumstances.
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