UDIT Keynote by Neil Maiden

Neil Maiden is Professor of Digital Creativity at the Cass Business School of City University London. He is also Director of Cass’s Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice. His research interests include human creativity, and how to support it with digital technologies, in domains ranging from journalism and manufacturing to dementia care and design. He is and has been a principal and co-investigator on numerous EPSRC- and EU-funded research projects worth over €35million. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers in academic journals and conference proceedings. He was Editor of the IEEE Software’s Requirements column from 2005-2013. His details are available at https://www.city.ac.uk/people/academics/neil-maiden.

Title of the talk: Using computer science to teach interdisciplinary students about creativity
Creativity is an important to our modern world. It is essential for innovation to happen. It contributes to the beauty of that world. And it is associated with human happiness. However, creativity and creative processes continue to be poorly understood, in part because neither of them are taught regularly in higher education, outside of the creative arts. Therefore, this keynote will introduce the MICL – the Masters in Innovation Creativity and Leadership at City, University of London. Founded in 2008, this Masters teaches creativity from the perspective of different disciplines – the arts, social sciences, law, design, business, and from a computer science perspective. The keynote will highlight the symbiotic relationship between creativity science and computer science for teaching Masters-level students about creativity, demonstrate samples of this teaching using digital creativity support tools, computational creativity engines, and creative search algorithms, and report the successes and challenges of using computing technologies in creativity teaching.