The THA Annual Dinner 2023

Guest List

Booking for the dinner is now closed, however, you can still register to attend the Panel Discussion and the AGM. If you have any queries, or would like to enquire about accommodation options please contact Rebecca Horner on alumnievents@trinhall.cam.ac.uk.

Message from the Trinity Hall Association

We would like to invite all alumni, together with their guests, to the THA Annual Dinner and Annual General Meeting (AGM) in College on Saturday 23 September 2023.

We will also be holding a special panel discussion for those who would like to come up to College in the afternoon titled “AI: Unravelling Potential”. We are delighted to announce that Dr Estara Arrant, Professor Hatice Gunes, Charles Radclyffe (2001), Dr Marcus Tomalin, and Karsten Wenzlaff (2007) will be joining the panel. Further details can be found below.

The THA Annual Dinner is the only one held in College which is open to alumni from all year groups and it has been a pleasure to see alumni from across the decades come together each year. Previously, year groups have also used the dinner as an opportunity to organise a mini reunion. It’s the perfect opportunity to gather your friends for an evening in College.

We look forward to seeing you in College soon.

Programme

Saturday

15:30 – 17:00 Panel discussion,  “AI: Unravelling Potential”

18:00 Annual General Meeting (AGM)

18:45 Drinks reception in Master’s Lodge

19:30 Four-course dinner in Hall

After dinner drinks in the Aula Bar

Sunday

09:45 Service in Chapel led by the Revd Cortland Fransella (1967)

If you are unable to join us for dinner, you are still welcome to attend the panel discussion, AGM, and Chapel Service. Please book using the form above.  You can also join us for the panel discussion and AGM remotely. Please email THAevents@trinhall.cam.ac.uk for further details. Papers for the AGM will be available online in good time for the meeting.

Dress code for the drinks and dinner will be smart (black tie optional).

Panel discussion, “AI: Unravelling Potential”

The panel will explore salient issues related to AI, including the potential risks and/or opportunities it poses, and there will be ample opportunity to ask questions.

Panellists

We are delighted to announce that Dr Estara Arrant, Professor Hatice Gunes, Charles Radclyffe (2001), Dr Marcus Tomalin, and Karsten Wenzlaff (2007) will be joining the panel.

Dr Estara Arrant is a Postdoctoral Research Associate based at the Cambridge University Library in the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit. She works on the ERC-funded project TEXTEVOLVE: A New Approach to the Evolution of Texts Based on the Manuscripts of the Targums, where she analyses the history of Aramaic translations of the Bible using bioinformatic methods and algorithms.

Dr Arrant is a linguist of Semitic languages, data scientist, palaeographer, and Middle Eastern studies scholar. She uses data science, applied mathematics, and computational tools to help solve long-standing problems and create new tools to further the linguistic, religious, and historical study of Middle Eastern languages and cultures.

Professor Hatice Gunes is a Professor of Affective Intelligence and Robotics, the Director of the AFAR Lab at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Computer Science and Technology, and a Fellow at Trinity Hall. Her research interests are in the areas of affective computing and social signal processing that lie at the crossroad of multiple disciplines including, computer vision, signal processing, machine learning, multimodal interaction and human-robot interaction. She has published over 165 papers in these areas. Her current research vision is to embrace the challenges present in the area of health and empower the lives of people through creating socio-emotionally intelligent technology. In 2019 she was awarded the prestigious EPSRC Fellowship to investigate adaptive robotic emotional intelligence for wellbeing, and has been named a Faculty Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute – UK’s national centre for data science and artificial intelligence (2019-2021). Between 2018 and 2021 she was also a member of the Human-Robot Interaction Steering Committee.

Charles Radclyffe (2001) is a serial entrepreneur who has focused his career on solving tough technology challenges for some of the world’s largest organisations. He has developed a keen radar for the ‘dark-side’ of tech, which he believes mostly manifests unintentionally from not considering the various needs of, and impact to, stakeholders. Charles has built and sold three technology companies, and in his spare time passionately supports and mentors young entrepreneurs and start-up teams. Past roles include Head of Technology at Deutsche Bank Labs in London and Head of AI at Fidelity International. Charles is currently a Forbes contributing writer and is a Visiting Fellow of the University of Bristol. In early 2020 he co-founded an ESG Ratings agency, EthicsGrade, which evaluates the maturity of corporate digital responsibility at some of the world’s most well-known brands. Charles matriculated at Trinity Hall in 2001.

Dr Marcus Tomalin is a Senior Research Associate working as the Project Manager of Giving Voice to Digital Democracies: The Social Impact of Artificially Intelligent Communications Technology, and a Fellow at Trinity Hall. His research interests include speech recognition, speech synthesis, machine translation, and dialogue systems. He has also written extensively about various topics in the philosophy of language and theoretical linguistics, with a focus on the interconnections between mathematics, logic, and syntactic theory. He has published widely on issues relating to the ethical and social impact of language-based AI systems, and he teaches ethics to undergraduates and postgraduates studying philosophy, computer science, and information engineering.

Karsten Wenzlaff (2007) is an Alternative Finance Researcher and Lecturer at the University of Hamburg at the Chair for Digital Markets. His research interests are Civic Crowdfunding for Public Goods, Corporate Crowdfunding, and Regulatory Competitiveness in Crowdfunding Ecosystems, especially in Central and Eastern Europe through the project Crowdfundport. Karsten has published reports on the European German Crowdfunding Ecosystems since 2010. He is a member of the European Crowdfunding Stakeholder Forum of the European Commission. He founded the German Crowdfunding Network and is Secretary-General of the German Crowdfunding Association. Karsten has an MPhil from Trinity Hall in International Relations.

Chapel Service

~09:45 in the College Chapel. We are delighted that the Revd Cortland Fransella (1967) will lead a service. All are welcome to attend.

Booking and cost

The cost of the dinner, which is subsidised by the THA, will be £75 per head or £40 for those who matriculated in 2013 or later.

Booking for the dinner is now closed, however, you can still register to attend the Panel Discussion and the AGM. If you have any queries, please contact Rebecca Horner on alumnievents@trinhall.cam.ac.uk.

If you would like to join the Panel Discussion or the AGM via Zoom, please email thaevents@trinhall.cam.ac.uk.

Accommodation