University of Cambridge

In this episode we chat to Duncan Astle, a developmental neuroscientist, who’s based at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. Duncan and I talk about his recent study that uses machine learning to identify learning difficulties and why children may struggle at school. We also talk about his work with Pride in STEM and how the current scientific research publishing model needs to change.

It’s something that we all do, but no one talks about it: emptying your bowels. However, for many people with conditions that impair this most normal of bodily functions, it can impact your day-to-day life in unexpected and profoundly challenging ways. Scientists Dr Ewan St. John Smith and Dr James Hockley teamed up with DragonLight Films to produce a short film that explores how gut function goes wrong, the impact it has on peoples’ lives and how scientists and clinicians are working to better treat those affected. We seek to understand how gut function is disrupted and how pain occurs in conditions including Crohn’s disease (a form of inflammatory bowel disease, IBD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), as well as being a natural consequence of ageing.

You can watch the film here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOiNI0qREsI

After watching the film Dr Dervila Glynn of Cambridge Neuroscience will moderate an open debate with a panel of experts to discuss themes arising from the film. The event is supported by Bowel and Cancer Research whose mission is to bring forward to a day when no one will die of bowel cancer or have to live with chronic bowel disease.

Come along and discover more about your amazing gut, a system as complex as your brain, how it controls things we take for granted and which no one usually likes to talk about!

Biographies:

Dr Ewan St. John Smith is a Senior Lecturer in Pharmacology at the University of Cambridge and Fellow in Pharmacology at Corpus Christi College. Ewan’s research group is focused on determining how pain is caused in a wide variety of conditions.

Dr James Hockley is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Pharmacology at the University of Cambridge. James’ research examines the biological pathways responsible for how sensations, in particular pain, arise from our internal organs.

Colin Ramsay is an award-winning Cambridge based filmmaker, founder and managing director of DragonLight Films. In 2017, Colin won the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) “Best Research Film of the Year” for his documentary film Pain in the Machine.

Giovanna Mallucci is Professor of Clinical Neurosciences and Associate Director of the UK Dementia Research Institute. She discusses how research is transforming our understanding of the cellular mechanisms that make brain cells go wrong in dementia and degenerative brain disease and how these insights may be translated into new treatments.

Professor Giovanna Mallucci has undergraduate degrees in Physiological Sciences and Medicine from the University of Oxford, with clinical training at University College, London. She obtained her PhD from London University, for which she generated the first adult onset mouse model of prion protein knockout that paved the way to her discoveries about reversibility of early neurodegeneration and underlying mechanisms.

Her work on the role of the UPR in neurodegenerative disease and its pharmacological manipulation was hailed as “turning point in search for medicines to control and prevent Alzheimer’s” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24462699 and was the 2013/2014 Research for Society MRC success story http://www.mrc.ac.uk/successes/mrc-success-stories-2013-14-a-review-of-t....

Since her PhD she has combined clinical work and basic research and led groups in the MRC Prion Unit (2001-2008) and the MRC Toxicology Unit (2008-present), before moving to Cambridge, where, as well as running her own lab, she is now setting up the UK Dementia Research Institute Centre at the University of Cambridge. She is also Honorary Consultant Neurologist at Addenbrooke's Hospital specialising in Dementia. Her own lab is pioneering interventions targeting common pathways for treatment of dementia.

She has received numerous national and international awards for her work, including a SciAm50 award for leadership in research as one of the top 50 scientific innovators worldwide, and has given many plenary and keynote talks at international conferences. She is an ERC Consolidator Fellow. In 2017, she was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

You might have heard that scientists will soon be able to build quantum computers. But what exactly is a quantum computer? Is it just a super-fast version of a normal computer? What will it be good for? And most importantly, should you buy one? Mithuna Yoganathan provides the answers! Hint: don't put in your pre-order until you've seen this talk!

Through a series of short, interactive presentations, Astex Pharmaceuticals take you on a journey into their ‘molecular mix and match’ approach to the discovery of new medicines. Stick around after the talks to meet the scientists!

Imagine to be in front of a traffic light, you are about to cross and the green light starts to blink. Do you cross? Do you always stop, or does your choice depend on how late/early you are for an appointment? Does this depend on your age, the younger you are, the faster you can cross, or the more likely you are to take risks?

Right from brainless bugs such as bacteria and yeasts, to each of the three trillion cells making up our bodies, each cell continually takes critical decisions about proliferation, migrations, metabolisms and cell behaviour. However, once in a while, genetic mutations occur. Like typos that change the meaning of a sentence in a book, these errors change how cells decide leading to uncontrolled growth.

Although cells have mechanisms to correct these errors or to avoid the consequences that these errors may lead to, rarely, wrong decisions are made and perpetuated… and cancer is triggered. Dr Alessandro Esposito, MRC Cancer Unit, explores how the cell, a tiny droplet of water, takes decision to support life and how scientists probe the ‘brain of the cell’ to understand cellular decisions in physiological and pathological conditions.

Professor Ulf Büntgen presents a short introduction into modern tree-ring research, including wood anatomy, followed by timely examples of how different tree-ring archives and parameters can help to identify and shift research frontiers and cross disciplinary boundaries; not only within the natural sciences but also to the humanities.

In addressing different aspects of archaeology, astronomy, biology, ecology, epidemiology, history, mycology and volcanology, he discusses the potential and limitations of state-of-the-art ‘dendro sciences’ that may range in space and time from the cell to the hemisphere and from the day to throughout most of the Holocene, respectively.

Professor Ulf Büntgen and his team conduct fieldwork all over the globe to assemble unique tree-ring archives, parameters and techniques for the advanced reconstruction of environmental and climatic conditions over centuries to millennia. In so doing, they are providing annually resolved and absolutely dated solutions to unravel the direct and indirect causes and consequences of past ecological and societal changes. One focus is on the better understanding of conceivable linkages between volcanic activity, climate variability and human history.

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.

Understanding disease at the molecular level is key to the discovery of new targets that drive inflammation and autoimmune processes. What happens when the immune system hits the wrong target? It can unleash a torrent of disorders, including inflammatory diseases, cancer, and autoimmune disease. Understanding disease triggers may enable entirely new approaches to treating and potentially preventing disease. Come along and be enlightened by our panel of experts in the field.

From human disease and intellectual ability, ethnicity and race to sex and our origins, Dr Ewan Birney and colleagues, discuss the five things that everyone should know about genetics.

Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith is the Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics and Head of the Department of Genetics. Her research focuses on the molecular events governing pre- and post-natal mammalian development.

Dr Matthew Hurles leads a research group at the Wellcome Sanger Institute focused on deciphering the genetic causes of severe developmental disorders, and understanding how DNA mutates as it is passed from generation to generation.

Dr Stuart Ritchie is a Lecturer in the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King’s College London. His research focuses on the genetic and environmental links to human intelligence differences.

Ewan Birney is Director of EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute with Dr Rolf Apweiler, and runs a small research group. He is also EMBL-EBI's Joint Head of Research, alongside Dr Nick Goldman.

Ewan completed his PhD at the Wellcome Sanger Institute with Richard Durbin. In 2000, he became Head of Nucleotide data at EMBL-EBI and in 2012 he took on the role of Associate Director at the institute. He became Director of EMBL-EBI in 2015. Ewan led the analysis of the Human Genome gene set, mouse and chicken genomes and the ENCODE project, focusing on non-coding elements of the human genome. Ewan’s main areas of research include functional genomics, DNA algorithms, statistical methods to analyse genomic information (in particular information associated with individual differences in humans and Medaka fish) and use of images for chromatin structure.

Ewan is a non-executive Director of Genomics England, and a consultant and advisor to a number of companies, including Oxford Nanopore Technologies, Dovetail Genomics and GSK. Ewan was elected an EMBO member in 2012, a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2014 and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2015. He was also made a CBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list in 2018.

Ewan has received a number of awards including the 2003 Francis Crick Award from the Royal Society, the 2005 Overton Prize from the International Society for Computational Biology and the 2005 Benjamin Franklin Award for contributions in Open Source Bioinformatics.