BlueSci Podcast

Welcome back to the BlueSci Podcast! We are fresh from our summer break and have a lot of new exciting science to share! 

This week our guest is Dr Jerelle Joseph, a post-doc in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. Jerelle completed her PhD in atomistic protein modelling and is now doing post-doc studying intracellular liquid-liquid phase separation. She talks to us about how understanding protein biochemistry at a single protein level as well as a multi-protein level is crucial for biomedical research. 

Jerelle also talks to us about the CariScholar organisation, a mentorship initiative she founded in order to link Caribbean students to academics and professionals worldwide. 

Details on CariScholar can be found here: https://www.carischolar.com/

The BlueSci Podcast is run by the Cambridge University Science Magazine, currently hosted by Ruby Coates and Simone Eizagirre and sponsored by Greiner Bio-One. Visit www.bluesci.co.uk to access our free magazine, and find out how to get involved. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe! We welcome your feedback and suggestions via email: podcast(at)bluesci.co.uk. You can also follow us on Twitter on @bluescipod.

In this week's episode it's just your hosts, Ruby and Simone! We thought we’d use this episode to share some of the things that we’ve been up to as part of our work as the hosts of the podcast, and make some announcements. 

Firstly, we share our thoughts following our podcast collaboration with Simone Erlingfeld from Cambridge Quaranchats, a humanities-based podcast. In this 2-episode collaboration, we discussed some of the best fragments from both of our podcasts, and explored how each connected to both the sciences and humanities. We also talked about how politics and ethics affect scientific research, and how society's perception and understanding of science can help inform policymaking and encourage positive change. Make sure to check these episodes out! 

Secondly, we are going to take a short break from the podcast to refresh and plan more episodes for you to enjoy! In the meantime - please get in contact us with any questions, comments or suggestions for the podcast on Twitter (@bluescipod) or email ([email protected]). Do you know someone we should interview? Do you want us to interview you? Let us know!

See you in August! 

Listen to the podcast with Cambridge Quaranchats on your favourite digital platform, via: https://anchor.fm/quaranchats/episodes/18--Pandemic-Partners-Sciences--Humanities-link-up--wBlueSci-Pod-part-1-egi7dv

This week we're learning about additive manufacturing and bioelectronics! Our guest is Tanyaradzwa Mangoma, a PhD candidate based at the Fluids in Advanced Manufacturing group in the Institute of Manufacturing and the Bioelectronics group in the Department of Engineering. Her research focuses on fabricating additively manufactured neuromorphic and neural network devices based on organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs).  She chats to us about her work, what it’s like working in such a fast-paced interdisciplinary field, and what the future could hold for personalised bioelectronic medicine.

A transcript of this episode will be up on our website shortly.

You can follow Tanyaradzwa's on Twitter @TanyaradzwaMa19 and find out more about her work here.

The BlueSci Podcast is run by the Cambridge University Science Magazine, currently hosted by Ruby Coates and Simone Eizagirre and sponsored by Greiner Bio-One. Visit www.bluesci.co.uk to access our free magazine, and find out how to get involved. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe! We welcome your feedback and suggestions via email: podcast(at)bluesci.co.uk. You can also follow us on Twitter on @bluescipod.

For today's episode we've invited PhD students Daniel Muthukrishna and Nick Taylor to tell us about a COVID-19 modelling web-app they made in collaboration with Dr Cerian Webb. The website, called lowhighcovid, is an educational resource which allows users to learn about mathematical modelling and infectious disease statistics, interactively set and observe the outcomes of control measures, and visualise COVID-19 data in real time from a global data feed. 

Dan (Astrophysics) and Nick (Plant Epidemiology) tell us how they came up with the idea for the app whilst having a drink at their college bar, and how it evolved into the resource it is today. They explain what it takes to build an interactive modelling app from scratch and what they have learned along the way. 

You can find the lowhighcovid app here and take a look for yourself: https://lowhighcovid.herokuapp.com/ 

The BlueSci Podcast is run by the Cambridge University Science Magazine, currently hosted by Ruby Coates and Simone Eizagirre and sponsored by Greiner Bio-One. Visit www.bluesci.co.uk to access our free magazine, and find out how to get involved. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe! We welcome your feedback and suggestions via email: podcast (at) bluesci (dot) co (dot) uk. You can also follow us on Twitter on @bluescipod.

This week we spoke to Dr Chiendu Ugwu, a lecturer and a research fellow at the Africa Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Disease (ACEGID) at Redeemer's University in Ede, Nigeria (https://acegid.org/).  He has just been granted a Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Research Fund COVID-19 Emergency Award to study the immune correlates of protection to the SARS-CoV-2 virus in Nigeria (SIP-NG). We speak to him about how he designed this new project, how the results will contribute to effective vaccine design, and how better and more sustainable frameworks for international collaboration are essential to making research and opportunities more accessible to all communities.

A transcription of this episode is available on our website: https://www.bluesci.co.uk/posts/podcast-023-chinedu

You can find out more about Dr Ugwu's current research project (SIP-NG) here: https://www.cambridge-africa.cam.ac.uk/cambridge-africa-updates/sars-cov-2-immune-correlates-of-protection-in-nigeria-sip-ng/ And his work at Redeemer's University here: http://staff.run.edu.ng/process.php?active=myprofile&usrid=RUN%2FREG%2FSS%2FPF%2F843. To see other projects funded by the Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Research Fund COVID-19 Emergency Award: https://www.cambridge-africa.cam.ac.uk/initiatives/emergency/.

The BlueSci Podcast is run by the Cambridge University Science Magazine, currently hosted by Ruby Coates and Simone Eizagirre and sponsored by Greiner Bio-One. Visit www.bluesci.co.uk to access our free magazine, and find out how to get involved. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe! We welcome your feedback and suggestions via email: podcast (at) bluesci (dot) co (dot) uk. You can also follow us on Twitter on @bluescipod.

Taking a break from our coronavirus reporting, this week we're transporting our listeners to the Antarctic! Join us for this episode of escapism where we interview Dr Anna Belcher, a postdoctoral researcher at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). Her research focuses on how marine life in the ocean can capture atmospheric carbon, and she has been on several voyages to the Artic and Antarctic circles to gather data. She tells us why protecting marine ecosystems is so important, and what it's like to carry out polar marine research.

This episode was recorded in Cambridge in early March before the lockdown began.

The BlueSci Podcast is run by the Cambridge University Science Magazine, currently hosted by Ruby Coates and Simone Eizagirre. Visit www.bluesci.co.uk to access our free magazine, and find out how to get involved. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe! We welcome your feedback and suggestions via email: radio (at) bluesci (dot) co (dot) uk. You can also follow us on Twitter on @bluescipod.

A transcript of this episode will available on the BlueSci website shortly. 

What can we learn from the genetic information of a virus? This week our guest is Grant Hall, an MPhil student in Department of Pathology at Cambridge University, currently working in the Cambridge COVID-19 Genomics Lab led by Professor Ian Goodfellow, which is part of the nationwide effort (COG-UK) to sequence the genomes of SARS-Cov-2 viruses isolated from COVID-19 positive patients.

Grant talks us through how the genetic sequencing is performed, how this information can help scientists better understand and fight the pandemic, and what it is like to be at the forefront of coronavirus research in the UK. 

Information on COG-UK can be found here: https://www.sanger.ac.uk/science/collaboration/covid-19-genomics-uk-cog-uk-consortium

The BlueSci Podcast is run by the Cambridge University Science Magazine, currently hosted by Ruby Coates and Simone Eizagirre. Visit www.bluesci.co.uk to access our free magazine, and find out how to get involved. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe! We welcome your feedback and suggestions via email: radio (at) bluesci (dot) co (dot) uk. You can also follow us on Twitter on @bluescipod.

A transcript of this episode will available on the BlueSci website: https://www.bluesci.co.uk/posts/podcast-021-sequencing/

This week we spoke to Stephen Baker, Professor of Molecular Microbiology at the University of Cambridge. His laboratory was one of the first academic labs converted to a COVID-19 screening lab, now carrying out validated rapid testing of staff at Cambridge's Addenbrooke’s Hospital. Remarkably, the lab was set up and running in under 2 weeks.

We speak to him about how he set his lab up for COVID-19 testing, discuss the differences between PCR and antibody tests, the current challenges to to achieving mass testing capacity, and the role that academic labs can play in speeding up that process.

The BlueSci Podcast is run by the Cambridge University Science Magazine, currently hosted by Ruby Coates and Simone Eizagirre. Visit www.bluesci.co.uk to access our free magazine, and find out how to get involved. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe! We welcome your feedback and suggestions via email: radio (at) bluesci (dot) co (dot) uk. You can also follow us on Twitter on @bluescipod. 

A transcript for this episode is available at: https://www.bluesci.co.uk/posts/podcast-020-covid/.

This week we have a 2-part interview with Professor Andrea Armani! Prof Armani is Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Southern California.  She was co-chair of the Photonics Online Meetup, which was held in January 2020 and was one of the first fully-virtual online scientific conferences, with over 1000 attendees! In this second interview, she tells us how the idea originated, and how they managed to co-ordinate it, including a virtual poster session! We also reflect on what this experience teaches us about traditional conferences, and how the scientific community can foster more productive and more accessible interactions between researchers.

You can follow Prof Armani on Twitter on @ProfArmani and find out more about her work at www.armani.usc.edu.

Find out more about the upcoming edition of the Photonics Online Meetup, which will be held on June 25th 2020: https://sites.usc.edu/pom/

The link to the PhD workshop run by Prof Armani can be found here: https://armani.usc.edu/phd-workshop/

The BlueSci Podcast is run by the Cambridge University Science Magazine, currently hosted by Ruby Coates and Simone Eizagirre. Visit www.bluesci.co.uk to access our free magazine, and find out how to get involved. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe! We welcome your feedback and suggestions via email: bluescipodcast (at) gmail (dot) com.

This week we have a 2-part interview with Professor Andrea Armani, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Southern California!  In this first part, we discuss the benefits of crossing the boundaries between traditional fields, and adopting an interdisciplinary approach to problem-solving in research. She also gives out some handy tips on succeeding as a graduate student and making decisions about careers in academia.

She is also pioneering changes to scientific networking, and advocates the importance of increasing accessibility to scientific conferences worldwide.  Earlier this year, Prof Armani co-chaired one of the first ever fully online conferences - the Photonics Online Meet Up. Listen to her tell us all about it in our next episode!

You can follow Prof Armani on Twitter on @ProfArmani and find out more about her work at www.armani.usc.edu. 

The BlueSci Podcast is run by the Cambridge University Science Magazine, currently hosted by Ruby Coates and Simone Eizagirre. Visit www.bluesci.co.uk to access our free magazine, and find out how to get involved. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe! We welcome your feedback and suggestions via email: bluescipodcast (at) gmail (dot) com.