Festival of Digital Research, Innovation & Scholarship 2026
The Festival of Digital Research, Innovation & Scholarship is UCL's flagship annual celebration of digital research, organised by UCL Advanced Research Computing (ARC). Now in its third edition, the 2026 Festival brings together researchers, technologists, and partners from across UCL and beyond to showcase how advanced computing, data science, and digital innovation are transforming research practice and real-world impact.
The programme features keynote talks, invited presentations, Speed Postering sessions, and a poster gallery of almost 60 research projects spanning UCL's digital research landscape. A central theme of the 2026 Festival is UCL partnerships in digital research—from trusted research environments and national compute infrastructure to industry collaboration in AI, geospatial science, and sustainable urban design. Posters are displayed throughout the day in the Roberts Building foyer, with attendees invited to vote for the best poster before prizes are announced at the closing plenary.
Date: Tuesday, 16 June 2026
Time: 9:00–19:00 (celebratory drinks from 16:30)
Location: Roberts Building, University College London
Format: In-person (keynotes, presentations, poster exhibition & Speed Postering)
Organiser: UCL Advanced Research Computing
Festival 2026 Programme & Posters Information
Festival Programme Overview
The day opens with welcome coffee and an ARC opening address, followed by a morning programme of keynote presentations and Speed Postering. Sessions cover graduate training at the interface of software, data, and computation; AI growth zones and secure, sustainable digital capabilities; and collaborative research in trusted environments, industry partnerships, and national compute infrastructure.
Afternoon sessions continue with presentations from UCL Grand Challenges, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Sidara, and Ordnance Survey—highlighting the breadth of UCL's digital research ecosystem. Research posters remain on display in Roberts Building Foyer G02 from 9:30 throughout the day, with dedicated poster sessions during coffee and lunch breaks.
The Festival closes with remarks, poster prize announcements, and a celebratory drinks reception from 16:30—offering a valuable opportunity to engage with peers, explore interdisciplinary work, and celebrate digital scholarship across the university.
Accepted Poster Presentation
Title: Network Models for Assessing Comorbidity between Stuttering and ADHD
Presenter: Dr. Fjorda Kazazi
Presentation type: Accepted poster presentation
This poster presents a data-driven approach to examining comorbidity between stuttering and ADHD using cognitive network models derived from multimodal experimental data. Rather than relying on single behavioural markers, the work applies network-based analyses to characterise how attention, working memory, and cognitive control interact across conditions—enabling a more integrated view of executive function in neurodevelopmental disorders.
The research draws on behavioural paradigms combined with virtual reality, eye tracking, and EEG, aligning with the Festival's emphasis on digital and computational methods in research. Network modelling offers a principled framework for identifying shared and dissociable cognitive profiles, moving beyond binary comorbidity labels toward mechanistic understanding of how these conditions overlap and diverge—particularly in domains of attention and impulsivity.
For digital research and clinical science, the poster demonstrates how computational network analyses can support more precise assessment and stratification in populations where co-occurring conditions are common but poorly understood. The findings contribute to a growing body of work advocating for individualised, evidence-based approaches to neurodevelopmental conditions, and illustrate how UCL-led interdisciplinary research can translate complex cognitive data into interpretable, actionable models.
The poster is featured in the Festival 2026 Poster Gallery and reflects doctoral research completed at University College London in Experimental Psychology, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences.
Poster
Key Schedule
- 9:00–9:30: Welcome & coffee — Roberts Building, Foyer G02
- 9:30–16:30: Keynotes, presentations & Speed Postering — Roberts Building G06
- 9:30 onwards: Poster exhibition — Roberts Building, Foyer G02
- 16:10–16:30: Closing remarks & poster prizes
- 16:30–19:00: Celebratory drinks & nibbles — Roberts Building, Foyer G02