Discovery

Anne-Marie Imafidon passed her computing A-Level at the age of 11 and by 16, was accepted to the University of Oxford to study Maths and Computer Science.

It was a combination of personal experience and the discovery that the number of women working in the STEM sectors - Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics - was in free-fall that inspired Anne-Marie to found Stemettes: a not-for-profit social enterprise introducing girls to STEM ideas and careers in fun and accessible ways. It's now in its tenth year and still growing, while Anne-Marie has received an MBE, enjoyed a successful stint as the numbers guru on the TV series Countdown, and is the current President of the British Science Association.

In conversation in front of an audience at the UK's 2023 Cheltenham Science Festival, she tells Jim Al-Khalili about her quest for equality and diversity across the scientific community - and explains why she thinks everyone has the potential to be a 'child prodigy', given the right opportunity...

(Image: Anne-Marie Imafidon. Credit: Anne-Marie Imafidon)

Our genes can tell us so much about us, from why we look the way we look, think the way we think, even what kind of diseases we might be likely to suffer from. But our genes aren't the whole story. There are other, complex and intriguing systems within every cell in our bodies which control which of our tens-of-thousands of genes are switched on, or off, in different parts of the body, and under different circumstances.

Welcome to the fascinating world of 'epigenetics', which our guest, the molecular geneticist Anne Ferguson-Smith, describes as 'genetics with knobs on'.

Anne, now Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics and Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Cambridge, tells Jim Al-Khalili about her life and work. She's spent her professional life at the cutting edge: from a degree in a brand new field of Molecular Biology, to post-grad working on brand new genetic structures, through to a lifetime of discoveries and breakthroughs which have changed our understanding of the genome.

Yet she wasn't always destined to be a scientist. She says she was a 'bad student' for a lot of her early life, and believes that embracing failure is an essential part of being a working scientist.

(Image: Anne Ferguson Smith. Credit: Anne Ferguson Smith)

From landslides and wildfires to floods and tornadoes, Bruce Malamud has spent his career travelling the world and studying natural hazards.

Today, he is Wilson Chair of Hazard and Risk and executive director of the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience at Durham University - but as he tells Jim al-Khalili, a lifelong passion for discovery has taken Bruce from volunteering with the Peace Corps in West Africa and a Fulbright Fellowship in Argentina, to fieldwork in India; not only studying hazards themselves, but also the people they affect - and building up the character and resilience to overcome personal tragedy along the way.

Over the years, his work in the field has opened up new ways of understanding such events: from statistical modelling to show how groups of hazards occur, to examining the cascading relationships between multiple hazards. And today, his focus is on projects that can bring tangible benefits to people at serious risk from environmental hazards - finding innovative ways to help them to better manage that threat.

(Photo: Bruce Malamud. Credit: Bruce Malamud)

The world around us is three-dimensional. Yet, there are materials that can be regarded as two-dimensional. They are only one layer of atoms thick and have remarkable properties that are different from their three-dimensional counterparts.

Sir Andre Geim created the first-ever man-made 2D material, by isolating graphene, and is one of the pioneers in this line of research. Even beyond his Nobel Prize-winning work on graphene, he has explored new ideas in many different areas of physics throughout his career. Andre tells Jim al-Khalili about his time growing up in the Soviet Union, being rejected from university based on his German ethnicity, his move to Western Europe, and levitating frogs.

(Photo: 2010 Nobel Physics laureate Andre Geim during 2019 China Science Fiction Convention, Beijing, 3 November, 2019. Credit: VCG/Getty Images)

Norwegian jazz musician Jon Larsen was having breakfast one clear spring morning when he noticed a tiny black speck land on his clean, white table. With no wind, birds or planes in sight, he wondered if it fell from space.

Dust from space is not as fanciful as it sounds. Billions of microscopic meteorites, dating back to the birth of our solar system, fall onto Earth every year. But they are so tiny, hidden among the copious dust of everyday life, that scientists believe they are impossible to find outside ultra clean environments like Antarctica.

But this doesn’t deter Jon, who, against the advice of all experts, decides he is going to be the first person to find an urban micrometeorite.

He takes presenter Caroline Steel and planetary scientist Dr Matthew Genge up onto some roofs, in search of the elusive particles. Can we find stardust on the top of the BBC?

Featuring Jon Larsen, Dr Matthew Genge and Svein Aarbostad.

Presenter: Caroline Steel

(Image: Cygnus Nebulosity and Starclouds Credit: VW Pics / Contributor | Getty Images)

We've been building computers to think like us for years, but our ability to replicate human senses has been impossible. Until now.

Evolutionary biologist and broadcaster Professor Ben Garrod, is off to meet some of the sensory innovators and technological pioneers who are developing human like-sensing technology. From skin patches that can read our sugar levels, to brain implants that could use our thoughts to control computers. This is the technology that could blur the boundary between body, mind, and computer chip.

We meet Jules Howard, a zoologist who uses VR to help us explore the anatomical worlds inside animals. Jules shows us the inner-workings of a ducks vagina. We meet Anagram, who’s augmented reality experiences can visualise the inner-worlds of those experiencing schizophrenia and ADHD. We play with the health monitors and wearable tech that claim they could make us fitter, happier, and more productive humans. And meet Dr David Putrino, a clinician with Mount Sinai in New York, who’s conducting some of the first medically-approved surgery for brain implants.

Presenter: Professor Ben Garrod

(Image: Artificial intelligence robot and binary. Credit: Yuichiro Chino/Getty Images)

We've been building computers to think like us for years, but our ability to replicate human senses has been impossible. Until now. This technological revolution is starting to profoundly change not only how we interact with the world around us, but is allowing us to see, hear, smell, taste and even touch things we never imagined possible before.

An artificial intelligence revolution is super-charging sensing technology, promising us eyes with laser precision, ears that can distinguish every sound in a mile's radius and noses than can sniff out the early signs of forest fires before the first flame forms.

Evolutionary biologist and broadcaster Professor Ben Garrod is off to meet some of these sensory innovators and technological pioneers - the programmers, robotics engineers and neuroscientists, who are turning our world upside down and inside out.

In episode four - we’ll explore touch and what role does it plays for our nearest living relatives. Ben tries to give his mum a hug from 5,000 miles away. We discover what brain scans show when Ben given both painful and pleasurable touch. We explore what role the body could play in our use of computers in the future. We hear about remotely-operated sex toys. And learn about how all this might shift our understandings of intimate relationships in the future.

Could these new technologies and natural evolutions be redefining what it is to touch? Ben takes us through the amazing adaptations, and technological developments that could help touch become digitised.

Presenter: Prof Ben Garrod

(Photo: Hands touching fingers. Credit: Kelvin Murray/Getty Images)

In The Evidence on the BBC World Service, Claudia Hammond will be exploring the concept of solastalgia; broadly defined as the pain or emotional suffering brought about by environmental change close to your home or cherished place.

Made in collaboration with Wellcome Collection, Claudia Hammond and an expert panel examine this relatively new concept, one that might be increasingly heard about as the effects of climate change are felt.

Claudia will be hearing stories of solastalgia from communities in Kenya and Indonesia and examining where storytelling fits in with other types of evidence when it comes to health and wellbeing. What kind of impact can personal stories of loss have on policy makers?

On stage with Claudia and in front of a live studio audience, are artist Victoria Pratt, Creative Director of Invisible Flock; Daniel Kobei, Director of Ogiek People’s Development Program; epidemiologist Dr Elaine Flores from the Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; former prime minister of Australia Julia Gillard and environmental activist Laetania Belai Djandam

Produced by: Helena Selby and Geraldine Fitzgerald

Photo: Man standing in grey climate whilst looking towards bright climate.

We've been building computers to think like us for years, but our ability to replicate human senses has been impossible. Until now. This technological revolution is starting to profoundly change not only how we interact with the world around us, but is allowing us to see, hear, smell, taste and even touch things we never imagined possible before.

An artificial intelligence revolution is super-charging sensing technology, promising us eyes with laser precision, ears that can distinguish every sound in a mile's radius and noses than can sniff out the early signs of forest fires before the first flame forms.

Evolutionary biologist and broadcaster Professor Ben Garrod, is off to meet some of these sensory innovators and technological pioneers. The archaeologists, ecologists and medics, who are turning our world upside down and inside out.

Could these new technologies and natural evolutions be redefining what it is to smell? Ben takes us through the amazing adaptations, and technological developments that could help broaden how we think of our noses.

Presenter: Professor Ben Garrod

(Photo: Close up of human nose smelling an animated smell. Credit | Getty Images)

We've been building computers to think like us for years, but our ability to replicate human senses has been impossible. Until now. This technological revolution is starting to profoundly change not only how we interact with the world around us, but is allowing us to see, hear, smell, taste and even touch things we never imagined possible before.

An artificial intelligence revolution is super-charging sensing technology, promising us eyes with laser precision, ears that can distinguish every sound in a mile's radius and noses that can sniff out the early signs of forest fires before the first flame forms.

Evolutionary biologist and broadcaster Professor Ben Garrod is off to meet some of these sensory innovators and technological pioneers; The archaeologists, ecologists and medics, who are turning our world upside down and inside out.

In episode two, Ben finds sound solutions to tricky problems. We’ll hear about the ear which works up to depths of 500m below the ocean. In this light-deprived oceanic environment, we’ll find out how sound has become the most important sense. We’ll learn how noise pollution has inspired a number of revolutionary scientists to create sound-based solutions to better animal conservation. Along the way, we’ll meet engineers and computer programmers who’ve been able to find animals we thought previously extinct, and learn how one colour blind ornithologist mapped the entirety of a Caribbean archipelago so he could help protect his favourite species from storms and freak climate events.

Could these new technologies and natural evolutions be redefining what it is to hear? Ben takes us through the amazing adaptations and technological developments that could help stretch our hearing further than ever before.

Produced by Robbie Wojciechowski

(Photo: Field mouse with large ears. Credit: Zoological Society of London/PA Wire)