On Saturday 23 March the Isaac Newton Institute was proud to host Dr Craig Saunders - Head of Applied Science at Amazon Alexa Knowledge - as part of the annual Cambridge Science Festival.

We were delighted to be joined by Siddhant Mohapatra and his family. Siddhant won a mathematical competition at New Scientist Live in 2017 and we have kept in touch with him, and so we invited him to join us for this talk. 

As head of the team that develops Amazon's "Alexa" device Dr Saunders spoke about the complex challenges involved in building a user-friendly voice assistant and the ways in which language knowledge, research science and engineering are all called into play in its ongoing development. 

Following the talk, a number of questions were asked, including by Siddhant and he had the opportunity to talk more with Dr Saunders. Siddhant said the day was "rewarding and fulfilling" and we wish him luck with his continued endeavours in the field of mathematics. 
 

More information and pictures from the event are available on the INI website.