University of Cambridge

Have you ever wondered why dragons, unicorns, giants and vampires don’t exist? If so, then this is the event for you, as zoologist Dr Matt Wilkinson takes you on an expedition beyond life as we know it, to see why there are some things that evolution just can’t make.

Most of us value our health highly yet act in ways that undermine it. If we ate and drank less, didn’t smoke and were physically more active, 40% of cancers and 75% of diabetes and cardiovascular disease would be avoided. This talk addresses four questions, the answers to which reveal less and more effective approaches to improving our health:

1. Why do we persist in engaging in unhealthy behaviour despite valuing our health highly?

2. Why doesn’t learning of the risks to our health from our behaviour – eating and drinking too much, smoking, moving too little - lead us to change it?

3. Why don’t governments do more to make these behaviours less likely?

4. Is a better public understanding of the non-conscious nature of much of human behaviour core to more effective approaches to improving health?

Professor Theresa Marteau is Director of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit in the Clinical School at the University of Cambridge, and Director of Studies in Psychological and Behavioural Sciences at Christ’s College, Cambridge. She studied psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the University of Oxford.

Her research interests include:

i. development and evaluation of interventions to change behaviour (principally diet, physical activity, tobacco and alcohol consumption) to improve population health and reduce health inequalities, with a particular focus on targeting non-conscious processes

ii. risk perception and communication particular of biomarker-derived risks, and their weak links with behaviour change

iii. acceptability to publics and policy makers of government intervention to change behaviour.

She is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Academy of Social Sciences. In 2017, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of her contribution to Public Health.

The world sends more messages today than ever before. Through the internet we email, and tweet, and instagram. And those messages are in code. This may not be surprising, but even those codes contain more secrets than you realise.

Dr James Grime will reveal how film studios know if you are sharing movies illegally. How to hide a secret message on the internet in plain sight. And the ingenious maths within a CD that allows it to keep playing.

James will also reveal a World War II code machine even more secret and difficult than the famous Enigma, and how too that code was broken. And introduce the Golden Age Hollywood actress and secret inventor who came up with an idea still used in WiFi today.

Dr James Grime is a mathematician and public speaker. Formerly of the Millennium Mathematics Project for the University of Cambridge, James now runs The Enigma Project and travels the world giving public talks on the history and mathematics of codes and code breaking. James is also a presenter of the YouTube channel numberphile.

We love dogs for their companionship and work but they can also help humans by teaching us about human genetic diseases. Eleanor Raffan, Institute of Metabolic Sciences, explains how studying inherited disease in dogs can benefit humans too, including examples from her own work studying the genetics of obesity.

Biography:

Eleanor Raffan is a vet and researcher at the University of Cambridge Metabolic Research Laboratories. She got the bug for research after specialising as a vet and encountering lots of inherited disease in her patients. Eleanor studies pet dogs to understand how genes cause disease in both animals and humans.

Organ transplants save lives and improve quality of life for recipients and their families. Although more than 50,000 people in the UK are alive today because of organ transplantation, demand for organs still outstrips supply in every country in the world. It is estimated that in the UK three people die every day while waiting for a transplant. Researchers worldwide are endeavouring to improve this picture and increase the quality and quantity of organs available.

Transplant surgeon and researcher Professor Mike Nicholson hosts a session in which some of the young scientists in his team talk about their latest work and about the developments in transplantation they hope to see in the future.

With Professor Mike Nicholson, Dr Sarah Hosgood, Dr Tom Adams, Miss Jenna DiRito

Professor Michael Nicholson qualified from Nottingham University and trained in renal transplantation in Leicester and Oxford. He was the Director of the Transplant Service and Professor of Transplant Surgery in Leicester for 18 years. Early in 2015 he moved to Cambridge in order to further develop his work into ex-vivo normothermic perfusion.

Clinical interests: Professor Nicholson has a particular interest in live donor kidney transplantation and with colleague Peter Veitch introduced laparoscopic live donor nephrectomy into UK practice, performing the first operation in October 1998. He has now performed more than 600 laparoscopic donor nephrectomies and 1100 kidney transplants.

Academic activities: Professor Nicholson is the Director of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Blood and Transplant Research Unit in Organ Donation and Transplantation at the University of Cambridge and Newcastle University. He continues to be active in research addressing the pathophysiology of ischaemia-reperfusion injury and in the development of ex-vivo normothermic perfusion (EVNP) techniques. He has published more than 340 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Professor Nicholson's translational research programme has taken renal normothermic perfusion from the laboratory into clinical practice. Kidney Research UK have funded a randomized controlled trial of EVNP using DCD kidneys in Cambridge, Newcastle, Guy’s Hospital and Edinburgh. Recruitment started in February 2016.

The most interesting events and discoveries in molecular science and nanotechnology went through a “de-evolution of words”: from this does not make any sense to Eureka. Dr Ljiljana Fruk, Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology highlights discoveries and molecules, which initially did not make any sense, but have nevertheless rocked our world and changed the way we live. From oxygen discovery and strange ice properties to DNA, fullerene and nanotechnology, some myths will be debunked and some stories revisited. And no worries, there is plenty of no-sense still around!

Chemist by training, Dr Ljiljana Fruk is lecturer in bio-nanotechnology working on light- triggered chemical reactions and devices, hybrid materials for tissue engineering and nanomaterial modification. She is a prototype of a EU scientist having studied and worked in Croatia, Italy, Germany and UK and therefore still tries to make sense of Brexit. But when things really do not make any sense, she designs Molecular Chocolates, turns failed experiments into art, writes short SF stories that keep on getting rejected and annoys her PhD students by making them do experiments they think do not make any sense (and they are often right!).

Take a deep breath and jump into the incredible world of fish, with marine biologist Dr Helen Scales (goggles and snorkels optional). Find out how fish can live for 500 years, how their beards can glow in the dark and sometimes they talk to each other with farts.

As a writer, marine biologist and broadcaster Dr Helen Scales' work combines a scuba diver’s devotion to exploring the oceans, a scientist’s nerdy attention to details, a conservationist’s angst about the state of the planet, and a storyteller’s fixation with words and ideas.

Helen writes books and articles and makes radio documentaries; she searches for stories about the oceans and the natural world, of the wonders of science and people; and she does her best to spend as much time as she can in, on and next to the sea.

Using sparks, fire, microwave ovens and many more demos, Dave Ansell shows the science and engineering that has allowed humans to shine light into the darkness from the stone age to the present day.

This is Dave's 21st Cambridge Science Festival, in that time he's been an a physics undergraduate and a research student, has worked in science radio, built a hands on science museum, and started a science roadshow. Now he spends most of his time in his shed making science toys, demos and exhibits for his own shows and for museums, researchers, TV companies and enthusiasts.

http://sciansell.co.uk

Whether it's about the risks of eating burnt toast or changes in sexual habits, numbers get used to give weight to a media story. But statistics are frequently abused, with exaggerations and misunderstandings disguised by the illusion of hard facts. Professor David Spiegelhalter shows how to identify the naughty numbers and the shabby stats, and how some basic mathematics can take apart scare stories.

David Spiegelhalter is Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk and Fellow of Churchill College at Cambridge University, and as Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, he works to improve the way in which risk and statistical evidence are taught and discussed in society. He gives many presentations to schools and others, advises organisations on risk communication, and is a regular commentator on risk issues. He presented the BBC4 documentaries ‘Tails you Win: the Science of Chance’ and the award-winning ‘Climate Change by Numbers’. He was elected FRS in 2005, awarded an OBE in 2006, and was knighted in 2014 for services to medical statistics. For 2017-2018 he is President of the Royal Statistical Society. In 2011 he came 7th in an episode of Winter Wipeout.

Mobile devices are often with us 24/7. Intuitively, we understand these mobile companions must know a lot about our interests and friends but sensors embedded in these devices offer a incredibly rich window into the lives of individuals and society as a whole. Is this information reliable? For what and how can this be used? How can we exploit it while respecting user privacy? Cecilia Mascolo, Professor of Mobile Systems, discusses the challenges and opportunities of this technology that is revolutionizing the future of a wide variety of domains ranging from health care to how cities function.

Cecilia Mascolo is a mother of a teenage daughter. She is also Full Professor of Mobile Systems in the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK, a Fellow of Jesus College Cambridge and a Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute for Data Science in London. Prior joining Cambridge in 2008, she was a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at University College London. She holds a PhD from the University of Bologna. Her research interests are in human mobility modelling, mobile and sensor systems and networking and spatio-temporal data analysis.

She has published in a number of top tier conferences and journals in the area and her investigator experience spans projects funded by Research Councils and industry. She has received numerous best paper awards and in 2016 was listed in “10 Women in Networking /Communications You Should Know”. She has served as an organizing and programme committee member of mobile, sensor systems, networking, data science conferences and workshops. She has delivered a number of keynote talks at conferences and workshops in the area of mobility, data science, pervasive computing and systems. She sits on the editorial boards of IEEE Pervasive Computing, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks and ACM Transactions on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies.

More details at www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/cm542.