Steve Smith, CU Management Information Systems Division

In the past, we've had some projects that used data from the Talks.cam API. Perhaps we could do something that identified current research grants from CUFS, correlated them with research subjects at seminars advertised in talks.cam, then advertised them to students who were registered for relevant exams via CamSIS?

Track down the experts

Undergraduate students in Cambridge are not always given the opportunity to meet research staff whose work is related to their lectures. Some of those staff give lectures and supervise, but others are just hidden away in labs. However, there are university systems that could be combined to locate expert researchers - for example, use your CamSIS exam entry codes to find course titles and syllabus, use the university financial system to discover which research labs receive funding in related areas, correlate the teaching and research keywords using the interface to talks.cam, and find out where those researchers meet via the API to the University online map. There are some tricky technical problems in all this, but we do have permission for you to use the relevant service interfaces. Cambridge is already a world leader in producing students who are up-to-date in recent research, but a system like this could provide the most stimulating degrees in the world!