1.Get your LAST BLACK BOX
We will send you a kit containing everything you need to understand Modern Technology… by building it.
2. Build your NB3
Our online courses guide you through the hands-on construction of a “No Black Box Brain” called NB3.
We start from electrons and go all the way to Artificial Intelligence without using any black boxes.
Coming soon
3.Unlock your BRAIN
You can complete the course at your own pace or join one of our live sessions.
With each black box you open you will upgrade your brain badge that certifies your new skills and understanding.
Coming soon
Discover our on-site Courses
To keep the curriculum of the Last Black Box up-to-date with the latest technology, develop new teaching resources, and test new materials, we run a few on-site courses each year in collaboration with Secondary Schools, Universities, and Institutes in London. See below…and get in touch if you are interested in hosting your own edition of the Last Black Box.
SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS
Build a Brain
We are currently running two after-school clubs that introduce MODERN TECHNOLOGY to secondary school students in a way that is Engaging, Fun, Efficient, and Memorable.
How is this possible?
1. We provide each student with their own Last Black Box, a kit containing all the material they need to build a modern artificial brain.
2. Everything is explained. Our classes start from the basics (electrons) and go all they way to AI…without using any black boxes.
3. Our students get lots of time to play, fiddle, test, and explore. We believe everyone wants to understand their world, and when given some interesting stuff and time to be creative, they can.
Join our newsletter or contact us if you want to come along and see what this year’s students manage to build. We will have an open event in July 2024.
WHO: Secondary school students
WHEN: April - July 2024
SCHOOLS: Parliament Hill School and UCL Academy, London, UK.
OPEN EVENT: July 2024, London UK (more info soon, contact us if you want to come along).
The after-school programme was made possible thanks to the generous support of the CT Foundation.
LIFE SCIENCE RESEARCHERS
Tech Bootcamp for Life Science
In collaboration with University College London and the Francis Crick Institute, we are organising one-week intensive “bootcamps” during the spring and summer of 2025 to teach MODERN TECHNOLOGY to early-career life science researchers.
WHY?
Although research students have access to several courses to learn computational skills, there is no course that teaches them how the technology used in every laboratory actually works.
WHAT?
We will create a Shared Teaching Resource within the Faculty of Life Sciences at UCL and the training programme of the Crick Institute. This resource is a stock of hands-on experimental kits, our Last Black Box, that can be reused each year to offer our highly effective training to as many new scientists as possible.
WHAT TOPICS?
The course immerses students in the essentials of electronics, sensors, motor control, microcontrollers, programming, data analysis, and machine learning. It guides them through the hands-on construction of a sophisticated robot, while revealing how their own instruments generate the data they will use in their research.
Our goal is to empower new life science researchers to pursue the innovations required for the next breakthrough.
WHO: UCL and Crick Institute undergraduates, masters, and post-graduate life science researchers
WHEN: January - July 2025
OPEN EVENT: December 2024, London UK (more info soon, contact us if you want to come along).
These courses have been made possible thanks to the support provided by University College of London’s Faculty of Life Sciences.
Tech Bootcamp for Neuroscience
NEUROSCIENCE PHD STUDENTS
In collaboration with the Sainsbury-Wellcome Centre we are organising a “Technology Bootcamp” for new neuroscience PhD students.
WHY?
Neuroscience PhD students are tasked with studying the most complex “black box” in the universe, the brain, and they should not have any man-made “black boxes” in their way.
WHAT?
We have distilled years of experience into a three-week hands-on “bootcamp” to bring new neuroscience PhD researchers up-to-speed with technology as quickly (and engagingly) as possible. They will learn how data is acquired, how computation is implemented in machines, how to automate equipment, how to program in Python, and how to adapt and deploy state-of-the-art techniques (e.g. ML approaches to computer vision, transformer architectures for language models).
Our goal is for every new neuroscientist to understand how their tools work…so they can focus on how the brain works.
WHO: SWC and Gatsby PhD students
WHEN: September 2025
OPEN EVENT: September 2025, London UK
These courses have been made possible thanks to the support provided by the Sainsbury-Wellcome Centre.