University of Cambridge

Can we build a machine that can solve any problem? How can we break a code others believe unbreakable? Why do leopards have spots and zebras stripes? These questions were all answered by Alan Turing. Mathematician James Grime explores Turing's childhood fascination with maths and how it led to the breaking of the infamous Enigma cipher. Including a demonstration of an original WWII Enigma Machine!

A technology breakthrough that started in Cambridge has brought us to the point where we are able to decode the entire DNA sequence of 100,000 genomes to determine mutations that cause rare genetic diseases and cancer. Dr David Bentley, Chief Scientist illumina and Professor Mark Caulfield, Chief Scientist Genomics England discuss how this project promises to revolutionise the way we practice medicine.

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 and clinical research. In 2009 he won the Lily Prize of the British Pharmacology Society. In 2000 he established the Barts and The London Genome Centre which now underpins over 40 programmes of research. Since 2008 he directs the Barts National Institute for Health Research Cardiovascular Biomedical Research Unit. Mark 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. Mark served on the NICE Guideline Group for hypertension and leads the Joint UK Societies’ Working Group and Consensus on Renal Denervation and was President of the British Hypertension Society (2009-2011). In 2013 he became an NIHR Senior Investigator and was appointed as the Chief Scientist for Genomics England (NHS 100K Sequencing Project) 2013-2017.

David Bentley DPhil 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.

From Laser Light Displays to Extreme X-rays, we'll take you on a fantastic journey through the rainbow world of the electromagnetic spectrum. You'll believe your eyes - but you shouldn't in this illuminating science show. And as Jon London is the presenter you know SOMETHING is going to catch on fire!

Animals with backbones took millions of years to move out of the seas and onto land, then one group turned around and dived back in. Join Dr Helen Scales for an encounter with whales, including the biggest and some of the smartest animals ever to evolve.

Dr Helen Scales is a marine biologist, writer and broadcaster. Her latest book is the Guardian bestseller Spirals in Time, the secret life and curious afterlife of seashells.

The human brain is one of the most remarkable objects in the known universe but, like everything living, it evolved over millions of years from the humblest of beginnings. Join zoologist and writer Matt Wilkinson on a quest to uncover these mysterious origins. You’ll never look at a sponge in the same way again!

Morphing structures can adapt their shape to suit their environment and purpose. These are surprisingly difficult for us to make, but nature offers many solutions. For example, the Venus Fly Trap captures its prey using an ingenious morphing structure. Martin Walker introduces examples of these morphing structures: discover how they work and try them for yourself.

Martin Walker is a 3rd year PhD candidate in Engineering at the University of Cambridge studying the mechanics of creased thin metallic shells. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Waterloo (Canada) where he obtained a Bachelors of Applied Science in Civil Engineering with Distinction. He won a prestigious Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship to undertake a Masters in Structural Engineering at the University of Toronto (Canada), where he studied a novel lightweight blast protection system. After working as a structural engineer in London (UK) for three years he returned to academia to pursue a PhD.

Dr Kirstie Whitaker will take you on a journey "under the hood" to learn how researchers in Cambridge (and around the world) are studying the teenage brain. She will discuss what we can (and can not!) learn from brain scans in understanding this sensitive period of brain development.

Dr Kirstie Whitaker is a postdoctoral researcher in the Brain Mapping Unit of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge. She is a 2016/17 Mozilla Fellow for Science and a passionate advocate for reproducible neuroimaging research. Dr Whitaker received her PhD in Neuroscience in 2012 from the University of California at Berkeley, funded by a Fulbright scholarship. She is the founder and lead developer of the STEMM Role Models project (www.stemmrolemodels.com) that seeks to ensure conference organisers are able to invite the most exciting and diverse speakers to their event. Her personal website is www.kirstiewhitaker.com and she tweets @kirstie_j.

Professor Clive Oppenheimer explains what has been learned about how volcanoes work from detailed observations of the southernmost active volcano in the world, Mount Erebus on Ross Island, Antarctica. The island was the base for several polar missions, notably those led by Shackleton and Scott. Their pioneering studies of the volcano paved the way for all subsequent investigations, and the physical traces they left on the mountain provide a tangible link between past and present scientific endeavours.

Presented with Cambridge University Press

Clive’s research explores the behaviour and hazards of volcanoes and the impacts of large eruptions of the past on climate and society. These themes were treated in the film INTO THE INFERNO that he made with Werner Herzog for Netflix in 2016. Fieldwork is his passion, and over the past year he has studied volcanoes in Chad, Ethiopia, Antarctica, Indonesia and North Korea.

The research presented in this talk is funded by the European Research Council (ERC). The mission of the ERC is to encourage excellent frontier research in Europe supporting top researchers across all fields and of any nationality. 2017 marks the 10th Anniversary of the ERC.

Every day your immune system is busy protecting you from the thousands of germs around you that can make you sick. It does its job so efficiently that you don’t even notice that it is at work. Micro-organisms are present in your gut and interact with your body during periods of health and disease. When the immune system hits the wrong target, however, it can unleash a torrent of disorders, including inflammatory diseases, cancer, and autoimmune disease. Come along and be enlightened by our experts in the field.

Panelists: Dr Eoin McKinney (Autoimmunity - Dept of Medicine), Dr Maike De La Roche (Immunity - CRUK), Dr Sam Forster (Microbiota - Sanger Institute). Chaired by Prof Clare Bryant (Innate Immunity - Dept of Vet Medicine).

In the UK over 6,500 people are currently on the waiting list for an organ transplant. In 2015/16 more organ transplants were carried out than ever before, but there is still a gap between the number of patients waiting for a transplant and the number of organs available. Professor Mike Nicholson, Dr Sarah Hosgood and Dr Patrick Trotter discuss how their research may help increase the quality and quantity of organs for transplantation.

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 my 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. Professor Nicholson has published more than 340 papers in peer-reviewed journals and his 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.