Cambridge Science Festival 2019

Cambridge Infectious Diseases Public Lecture
Dr Ellen Nisbet discusses how saving the world's coral reefs is helping us cure malaria. Corals contain photosynthetic algae, dying when the algae are lost. And malaria parasites are really algae in disguise.

Dr Ellen Nisbet - Coral Reefs, Malaria And Drug Discovery

We humans have many obvious physical adaptations for effective movement – most notably the fact that we all tend to wander around on two legs. Less obvious, but every bit as important, is how our minds – particularly our desires – have been shaped through evolution by the need to move. Central to these mental adaptations is the brain’s ‘reward chemical’ dopamine. Dopamine is famous for making the runner’s high feel so good, but its role in encouraging and rewarding movement goes much deeper than that.

Drawing on the latest research, as well as traditional hunter-gatherer wisdom, zoologist Dr Matt Wilkinson will reveal all about these stimulating mental systems, and will give some tips about how to keep them working in our modern, civilised world.

Dr Matt Wilkinson - Joy Of Steps

The UK is embarking on a renewal of its generation of electricity by nuclear power and moving towards finding a permanent home for its accumulated radioactive waste. Since the last time the UK made decisions like this, much understanding has developed that could re-set our attitude to radiation and radiological risk. Ian & Gerry will demonstrate little appreciated aspects of radioactivity in the natural world and the outcomes of decades of study on the health effects of radiation.

Ian Farnan is Professor of Earth & Nuclear Materials in the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge. His research involves the effect of radiation and water on materials used in radioactive waste disposal and nuclear power generation. He has led UK and European research consortia in this area and is currently Chair of Cambridge Nuclear Energy Centre.

Gerry Thomas is Professor of Molecular Pathology at Imperial College London and among many other things, Director of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank. Her research involves the molecular mechanisms involved in development of thyroid cancer, which is the only radiobiological consequence of the Chernobyl accident. Gerry believes passionately in the communication of the real health effects of power generation, and addressing our unconscious biases towards methods of electricity generation. She has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows all over the world talking about the health effects of the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents.

Ian Farnan & Gerry Thomas - Putting Radioactivity In Perspective

A technology breakthrough that started in Cambridge has brought us to where we are able to decode the entire DNA sequence and determine mutations that cause rare genetic diseases and cancer. With all 100,000 genomes now sequenced, Dr David Bentley, Chief Scientist at Illumina, and Professor Mark Caulfield, Chief Scientist at Genomics England, discuss how the 100,000 Genome Project will revolutionise the way we practise medicine.

Dr David Bentley FMedSci
David is Vice President and Chief Scientist at Illumina Inc. and graduated with an M.A. in Natural Sciences from Cambridge and a D.Phil from Oxford. During his career he has been a Senior Lecturer at London University; and later the Head of Human Genetics and a founder member of the Board of Management at the Sanger Centre. David has played a leading role in the Human Genome Project and related international consortia to characterise human sequence variation, including The SNP Consortium and the HapMap Project. His long-term interest is the study of human sequence variation and its impact on human health and disease. His current research is focussed on fast, accurate sequencing of human genomes for adoption and benefit in healthcare, with early applications including rare genetic disease and cancer. These applications are exemplified in the goals of the 100,000 genomes project, a partnership that includes Illumina, Genomics England and the National Health Service.

Professor Mark Caulfield
Mark Caulfield graduated in Medicine in 1984 from the London Hospital Medical College and trained in Clinical Pharmacology at St Bartholomew’s Hospital where he developed a research programme in molecular genetics of hypertension which has discovered over 1000 gene loci for blood pressure and clinical research. He served on the NICE Guideline Group for hypertension and was President of the British Hypertension Society (2009-2011).

He was appointed Director of the William Harvey Research Institute in 2002 and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2008. He led on fundraising towards the £25m William Harvey Heart Centre which created a translational clinical research centre. Since 2008 he directs the National Institute for Health Research Cardiovascular Biomedical Research Unit and Centre at Barts. Between 2010 and 2015 he co-led the merger of three hospitals in North London to create the new £400 million Barts Heart Centre which provides 80,000 cardiovascular patient episodes.

He has won the Lily Prize of the British Pharmacology Society, the Bjorn Folkow Award of the European Society of Hypertension 2016 and the Franz Volhard Award of the International Society of Hypertension in 2018.

In 2013 he became an NIHR Senior Investigator and was appointed as the Chief Scientist for Genomics England (100,000 Genomes Project) 2013-ongoing.

David Bentley & Mark Caulfield - 100,000 Genomes Project Transforming Precision Healthcare

Black holes are nature’s most extreme and exotic objects. They stretch our understanding of space and time to its limits and, in a cosmic irony, are responsible for some of the most energetic phenomena in the Universe. In this talk, Professor Christopher Reynolds describes the nature of black holes as we currently understand them, the role that they play in the Universe, and how future research on black holes may yet again change our view of reality.

Christopher Reynolds is the Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the University of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy, and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College. After completing his undergraduate and doctoral degrees at Cambridge, he spent 21 years in the United States including a 16 year stint as a Professor at the University of Maryland where we ran a research group focused on black holes. He returned to Cambridge in the Autumn of 2017

Prof Christopher Reynolds - The Universe Of Black Holes

Research Horizons Public Talk
What does the future hold for Cambridge? How will its economy grow, and will our housing and transport infrastructure be able cope? Ying Jin talks about how we are able to model the city’s development, and Matthew Bullock and Gemma Burgess discuss why these predictions matter for balancing economic success and social equality.

Looking into Cambridge’s future

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