GCHQ at Cheltenham Science Festival 2010

Inspiring the next generation of Engineers, Technologists, Mathematicians and Scientists is something that GCHQ takes very seriously. That is why we’re once again delighted to be involved in this years Cheltenham Science Festival; 9 to 13 June.

In conjunction with STEMworks, which helps promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) in schools, we will be running an interactive code cracking and communications workshop on 10th and 11th June in St Andrews Church for local schools (fully booked).  This will encourage young people to consider how STEM subjects can be applied in the real world and will include a communication challenge in which participants will devise and build a message transmitter.

We will also be fully participating in the Discovery Zone each day at the Festival and in addition to our displays, running a series of smaller hands on demonstrations. These will include a new interactive demonstration to study computer attacks and will allow participants to remotely access or take control of another computer and develop better understanding of the security risks to personal and home computers, including the importance of virus protection.

Another interactive demonstration will reflect GCHQ’s heritage using a Morse code simulator.  This will demonstrate how, using updated methods of transmitting and decoding, this traditional method of communication still has relevance in the 21st Century.

By taking part in Cheltenham Science Festival we hope to inspire curiosity and passion for STEM subjects in young people and encourage more to continue studying them throughout their education.

18 May 2010

Related link

BBC News: Cheltenham's GCHQ teaches pupils code-cracking methods (10 June 2010)

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