Masterclasses are a range of online, subject-specific, hour-long sessions for students in Year 12. Sessions run weekly on Tuesday and Thursday (4-5pm) from January to April. Applications are now open!
Masterclasses are online, subject-specific, hour-long sessions for students in Year 12 to get a taste of university. Masterclasses will introduce you to subjects available at UCL in 2024. The hour-long sessions will feature a lecture on a specific topic from UCL academics and PhD students.
This year, Masterclasses will be online. The sessions are interactive, and we encourage you to engage with the presenters, as there is an opportunity at the end to ask questions about the topic presented.
Find out more about our April schedule below! We will also be offering Masterclasses in January (Arts & Design), February (Sciences), and March (Social Sciences).
April - Sciences and Social Sciences
Philosophy
Topic: Gorgias' Encomium of Helen
Presenter: Dr Merrick Anderson
Date: Tuesday 09 April 2024, 4 - 5pm
This Masterclass will focus on Gorgias' Encomium of Helen (a text that was likely composed in the late 5th Century BCE). The piece contains the first complete valid deductive argument of any philosophical text. It also addresses still-relevant issues about moral responsibility. In this interactive session, you will learn how to argue effectively and be challenged to think hard about why and when we hold people responsible.
Computer Science
Topic: Graphics, VR/AR, and AI
Presenter: Ahmet Hamdi Güzel
Date: Thursday 11 April 2024, 4 - 5pm
In this Masterclass, you will dive into the fascinating world of Computer Graphics, VR/AR Displays, and their conjunction with AI. You will explore how these technologies allow us to interact with digital elements blended into our real world or immerse us entirely in a computer-generated environment. You will investigate Computer Generated Holography, uncovering how we can create three-dimensional images that appear as if they are floating in mid-air by computing the light's behaviour. You will also discover how AI techniques can help researchers advance these technologies.
Mathematics
Topic: An Introduction to Applied Mathematics
Presenter: Thomas Caussade Strauszer
Date: Tuesday 16 April 2024, 4 - 5pm
The Mathematics Department at UCL is highly regarded, being one of the founding departments of UCL established in 1826. In this Masterclass, we will look at applied mathematics. In this topic, we are often led to models where finding an exact solution to the problem can be difficult to achieve. However, a good numerical approximation is very useful for most practical purposes. We will discuss different techniques to numerically solve a variety of equations where an explicit solution cannot be found, such as the bisection method, the secant method, and fixed-point iteration methods.
Education, Society and Culture
Topic: Nonsense and Knowledge: Finding Our Way in a Confusing World
Presenter: Dr JD Carpentieri
Date: Thursday 18 April 2024, 4 - 5pm
The world is full of misinformation, misdirection and outright lies. There is a lot of genuinely useful knowledge out there, but in a world of information overload it can be almost impossible to separate that knowledge from nonsense. In this session, we will discuss misinformation, both online and in the broader world. Who produces this misinformation and why? What are their strategies for fooling us? And why are we more easily fooled than we might want to admit? In this interactive, university-lecture style Masterclass, we will also look at strategies for identifying and avoiding nonsense in our pursuit of genuine knowledge. In doing so, we will consider questions such as: When should we rely on common sense and when should it be avoided? How do governments use statistics to mislead us? Do your parents really know what they’re talking about? And (perhaps most importantly) can you really trust university rankings?