Breaking Down the Walls- Living Greener Living Longer
Mar
13
6:00 PM18:00

Breaking Down the Walls- Living Greener Living Longer

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Building on the success of our previous events that explore the role of creativity in science, this year we are focussing very much on how exciting developments we are seeing in data science, artificial intelligence, ageing research and genomics can provide solutions for both human and planetary health- specifically looking at the theme of ‘living greener living longer’. As part of this we will explore ethics and humanity which are just as important to address to protect the most important role of science as a great force for good. At this event we involved five speakers who each spoke on a theme for about 5 minutes. Our chair, Dr John Collins, opened up the discussion with the audience and invited their questions to be discussed and debated using a ‘Question Time’ format.

The slides, recorded presentation by Lynne Cox and video by Shakir Mohamed can be accessed here. See Dr John Collins introduce the panel in the video here. The recording of the presentations and Q & A session can be accessed here.

Our speakers (and their session summaries) were as follows:

Claire Steves, Senior Lecturer, King’s College London

Claire is a Clinical Senior Lecturer at King’s College London. She is also a Consultant Geriatrician at Guys and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust as well as the Deputy Director (Clinical) for TwinsUK. Claire is interested in the interactions between physical and mental health in ageing. Her current research focuses on the relationship between the gut, urinary and salivary microbiome and conditions of ageing, including cognitive ageing, frailty and multi-morbidity. Claire also leads on the new Wellcome Longitudinal Population Study grant which aims to expand our ability to contribute to health sciences, by linking with health records, social and environmental scientists. Claire graduated first class from Cambridge University in 1997. She joined the department in 2009 with a Wellcome Clinical Research Fellowship and gained a PhD by 2014.

Session summary

Medical science is emerging into a new era.  We’ve had an amazing two centuries of the advance in understanding of disease with targeted treatments led by doctors in hospitals.  Generally, we’ve waited for problems to happen and then relied on the doctors to take the problem away.  And an amazing number of diseases have been pretty much taken away… So why is it that the numbers admissions to our hospitals is going up and up year on year? And that some of the most common problems presenting to hospital are not clearly definable as diseases; things like becoming more confused, falling over, and being more susceptible to viruses – like coronavirus? It’s only been relatively recently that we’ve begun to study what makes some human beings particularly vulnerable with the passage of time. A new branch of science “geroscience” has sprung up. There may soon be new methods to slow ageing.  We are now realizing that we need a new system of medicine to both treat and head off this challenge of our ageing populations. Very soon we will soon have the technology in all our hands for true preventative medicine.  Rather than waiting for things to build up, we will all be able to track ourselves as we go.  With the help of a bit of artificial intelligence, can we all be our own doctors? Less high-tech more my-tech. Happily, things that are critical to lessen climate change may actually be the things we need to focus on to slow ageing.  Getting more physically active slows many of the effects of ageing.  Less pollution also appears to be important.  A diet rich in plant foods improves many aspects of physiology, and too much meat appears to be bad.  So, is it possible that a greener world would be a healthier world?

Lynne Cox, Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry, Oxford University

Lynne Cox is a biochemist at the University of Oxford. Her lab studies the molecular basis of ageing in human cells and in model organisms, with a particular focus on cell senescence, as well as premature ageing Werner syndrome. Since moving to Oxford in 1996 to set up her own research lab, she has studied the molecular basis of ageing using longitudinal proteomics and functional approaches, as well as phenotypic screening to identify agents that can suppress the SASP and other deleterious phenotypes in senescent cells. She also has a strong interest in premature ageing Werner syndrome (WS), with the aim of identifying ways of alleviating premature senescence in human WS.  She is a Trustee of the British Society for Research on Ageing, Fellow and Tutor in Biochemistry at Oriel College, Oxford, Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, member of the Biochemical Society Clinical and Translational theme panel, and co-founded (with Katja Simon) the Oxford Ageing Network, OxAgeN. In 2014, she received the Glenn Foundation award, presented at the House of Lords, for research into the biological mechanisms of ageing. 

[Listen to recorded presentation]

Holger Pirk, Assistant Professor, Imperial College

Holger is Assistant Professor in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, and member of the Large-Scale Data and Systems Group.  He is interested in all things data: analytics, transactions, systems, algorithms, data structures, processing models and everything in between. While some of Holger’s work targets "traditional" relational databases, his objective is to broaden the applicability of data management techniques. This means targeting new applications like visualization, games, IoT and AI as well as new platforms like compilers, GPUs or FPGAs.  Before joining Imperial, Holger was a Postdoc at the Database group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He spent his PhD years in the Database Architectures group at CWI in Amsterdam resulting in a PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2015. He received his master's degree (Diplom) in computer science at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2010.

Session summary

Gadgets are nice: they allow us to video-chat with anyone on the planet whenever we want, get live updates for football matches or find the closest coffee shop that makes oat-milk latte. Apple, Google and company are adding new features all the time to make us buy the newest model of their phones, tablets and watches. Unfortunately, the rapid pace at which gadgets are supposed to be replaced comes at the expense of the environment. But does this have to be this way? In Holger’s research group at Imperial College, they work on techniques and technologies that make apps run faster while using less energy. In his presentation, he will briefly talk about some of the techniques they developed and how they help to make gadgets that are greener and last longer. However, the problem cannot be solved by technology alone. We all are responsible for the environment. We need to decide: do we want to look cool today by buying a new smart watch every year or do we want to have a planet to live on in 50 years.

Shakir Mohamed, Scientist and Community Organiser, DeepMind

Shakir Mohamed is a scientist and community-organiser in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Shakir is a senior staff scientist at DeepMind in London. He thinks of his research as building pathways from principles to products, sometimes working on methods in probabilistic reasoning and deep learning, and at other times on applications in healthcare and environment. Shakir also writes, organises and acts wherever he can to support the critical work of transformation and diversity in STEM. Shakir is a founder and trustee of the Deep Learning Indaba, an independent grassroots organisation whose mission is to build pan-African capacity and ownership in AI. Shakir holds a PhD in Statistical Machine Learning from the University of Cambridge, and is from Johannesburg, South Africa, where he completed his undergraduate and masters degrees in electrical and information engineering.

Session summary

I'd like to put forward a simple thought: perhaps, living longer and  greener, means living through simulation. I'm not thinking of a science fiction setting where we are all plugged into some large virtual world.  Instead, I'm thinking of a world where we have powerful simulators of the world that we live in. By using these simulators we can imagine the different ways the world can evolve, and use that knowledge to make decisions about how to live longer and greener. This idea of simulation is the way we understand the weather and climate change, the ways predicts and manage the spread of disease, and in our tools for controlling robots. Using simulation we can explore what it means to live longer and greener, by exploring new ways to live ethically and responsibly, and that supports greater well-being everywhere. Our challenge though, is how to build these types of powerful simulators.

Anton Derlyatka, CEO and Co-Founder, Sweatcoin

Anton is an Entrepreneur and investor in digital health and fitness technology. He is cofounder and CEO of Sweatcoin, a virtual currency rewarding physical activity. It makes people walk more, live healthier and have a lower carbon footprint. The vision for Sweatcoin is to become a global, nation-state independent virtual currency to facilitate value exchange between users (including user-to-user) and vendors. The app pays users 0.95 sweatcoins for every 1,000 steps they take outdoors. That digital currency can be traded for fitness gear, giftcards and workout classes in the app's marketplace. About 20,000 sweatcoins -- that's just over 21 million steps -- can be exchanged for an iPhone X.  Available in the US and the UK, the app now has 10 million users.  Anton is a graduate of Stanford University School of Business.

Session summary

Fitness/sports participation continue to growth due to positive propaganda of healthier healthstyles.  Yet, obesity and inactivity-related healthcare costs are rising as well. How is that possible? The answer is only 30% of population participate in some sort of active lifestyle. This furthers health inequality as the other 70% are the people pushing healthcare costs up. To add to that, most of the modern tech makes us less active, not more active. It’s time to try novel solutions, such as social prescribing and smart use of incentives

Chair

Dr John Collins, Disruptive Technologist, Commercialisation Director, SynbiCITE, Imperial College London

John runs operations and commercialisation activities at the UK National Centre for Commercialising Engineering Biology based at Imperial College London, SynbiCITE. SynbiCITE is tasked with growing industry based on using the engineering of biology to ‘do useful things and make useful stuff to heal us, feed us, fuel us and – most imperatively - to sustain us’. John helps turn ‘upstarts into start-ups and start-ups to become grown ups’ through business incubation and acceleration programmes designed specifically for SynbiCITE and the UK’s broad engineering biology landscape. Prior to this John has had a varied portfolio career including being a Fellow at Cambridge Judge Business School (teaching Intellectual Property for business), R&D, product development, technical sales, business development, international development for a trade association, innovation and digital creativity growth, sitting on the UK National Measurement System Programme Expert Groups, and in educational services. Throughout his careers John has run his own ‘Disruptive Technologies and Innovations Management’ consultancy.  John is also a Director of Collider Science.

Message of support from Sir Paul Nurse, Director of Francis Crick Institute, Winner of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2001

I am delighted to support Science Question Time. Young people sometimes think of science as a lot of facts that need to be learned to do well in exams, but actually scientific discovery is a creative pursuit, that starts with asking questions and challenging prevailing wisdom. Many new types of jobs and careers will be created by science, through the curiosity of individuals inventing new ways of solving problems. The great strides we are seeing in dark matter, human evolution, data science, artificial intelligence, genomics and other technologies like quantum computing are just some of the things exciting scientists, engineers and designers today- but new questions around ethics, diversity and humanity are just as important, addressing how science is a force for good. We need to inspire young people to see themselves as the inventors of the future world one they are happy to live in.

 

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Breaking Down the Walls: DNA, Data and Diversity
Mar
15
6:00 PM18:00

Breaking Down the Walls: DNA, Data and Diversity

Building on the success of our previous events that explore the role of creativity in science, this time we focussed on how exciting developments we are seeing in genomics, data science and other technology areas are also raising new questions on diversity and ethics which are important to address to protect the most important role of science as a great force for good. Please see the full video of the event here (at the end of the video are interviews with speakers too).

Five experts presented their research and views for 5 minutes each  and then Dr John Collins, our Chair, involved the audience to ask their questions using a ‘Question Time’ format. Our experts were:

Dr Becky Inkster, Academic Advisor; Turing Institute; Columbia University; National University Singapore; Cambridge University; Wysa AI healthcare; Advisory Board Member Lancet Digital Health; Co-founder Hip Hop Psych

A neuroscientist  passionate about everything from cells to phones, genes to jewellery, hip-hop to hippocampi... Becky researches artificial intelligence, mental healthcare, ethics and governance, digital/clinical/music-based interventions, social media data, molecular biology, neuroimaging, epidemiology, psychiatry, psychology, ultra-audible watermarking, financial health, space health, statistics, policy, public engagement and other areas to improve our understanding of mental health.  She loves engaging with youth culture, the arts and society.

Julie A. McCann,  Professor in Computer Systems at Imperial College

Julie’s research centres on highly decentralized and self-organising scalable algorithms for spatial computing systems e.g. wireless sensing networks. She leads both the Adaptive Embedded Systems Engineering Research Group and the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Cities, and is currently working with NEC and others on substantive smart city projects. She has received significant funding though bodies such as the UK’s EPSRC, TSB and NERC as well as various international funds, and is an elected peer for the EPSRC. She has actively served on, and chaired, many conference committees and is currently Associative Editor for the ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems. She is a Fellow of the BCS.

Dr Jordana Bell, Head of the epigenomics research group at the Department of Twin Research at King’s College London

Jordana’s research focuses on understanding the processes shaping epigenetic variation in human populations, and its biomedical significance. Jordana completed her doctoral studies on genetic interactions in complex traits at the University of Oxford, and was subsequently a Wellcome Trust funded fellow at the Universities of Chicago and Oxford, where her work shifted to epigenomics. Since joining King’s in 2012 Jordana has established a research program in human population epigenomics, focusing on twins, and is currently leading research efforts across UK-based and international cohorts, including within ESSN, GoDMC, CHARGE, and DIMENSION collaborative consortia.

Carl Miller, Research Director, DEMOS

Carl is a pioneering technology researcher and award-winning author who has thrown himself into some of the weirdest, least familiar parts of the digital age.  His first book, The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab won the Transmission Prize 2019. It describes his journey to understand the new centres of power and powerlessness in the digital age, from politics and media, to business and warfare. It was published in August 2018 by Penguin RandomHouse.  In 2012 he co-founded the first UK think tank institute dedicated to studying the digital world at Demos, and has written for the Economist, Wired, New Scientist, the Sunday Times, the Telegraph and the BBC. He’s also a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London. 

Dr Nickolai Vysokov, Neuroscientist, Entrepreneur, CEO, co-founder, BrainPatch

Our chair was Dr John Collins, Disruptive Technologist, Commercial Director, SynbiCITE, Imperial College

John is Commercial Director of the UK National Centre for commercialising Engineering Biology based at Imperial College London, SynbiCITE. SynbiCITE is tasked with growing industry based on using the engineering of biology to ‘do useful things and make useful stuff to heal us, feed us and fuels us’. John helps turn ‘upstarts into start-ups and start-ups to become grown ups’ through business incubation and acceleration programmes designed specifi cally for SynbiCITE. Prior to this John has had a varied portfolio career including R&D, product development, technical sales, business development, international development for a trade association, innovation and digital creativity growth and in educational services. Throughout his careers John has run his own ‘Disruptive Technologies and Innovations Management’.

As in previous years, Sir Paul Nurse,  Director of the Francis Crick Institute, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2001, supports Science Question Time and sends this message.

I am delighted to support Science Question Time.

Young people sometimes think of science as a lot of facts that need to be learned to do well in exams, but actually scientific discovery is a creative pursuit, that starts with asking questions and challenging prevailing wisdom.   Many new types of jobs and careers will be created by science, through the curiosity of individuals inventing new ways of solving problems.

The great strides we are seeing in data science, artificial intelligence, genomics and other technologies like quantum computing are just some of the things exciting scientists, engineers and designers today- but new questions around ethics, diversity and humanity are just as important, addressing how science is a force for good.   We need to inspire young people to see themselves as the inventors of the future world one they are happy to live in.

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Breaking Down the Walls: THE CONVERGENCE OF SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING OPENS UP NEW IDEAS FOR THE FUTURE
Mar
16
6:00 PM18:00

Breaking Down the Walls: THE CONVERGENCE OF SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING OPENS UP NEW IDEAS FOR THE FUTURE

Building on the success of our previous events that explore the role of creativity in science, this year we focused on how exciting developments we are seeing in data science, artificial intelligence, robotics and synthetic biology are also raising new questions around ethics and humanity which are just as important to address to protect the most important role of science as a great force for good.

Five experts presented their research and views for 5 minutes each  and then the Chair, Dr Daniel Glaser, Neuroscientist and Director of the Science Gallery London, King's College London, invited the audience to ask their questions using a ‘Question Time’ format.

The experts presenting were:

Sophie Scott, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL, who studies the science of laughter

Dr John Collins, Disruptive Technologist, Commercial Director, SynbiCITE, Imperial College

Mihaela van der Schaar, Man Professor in Oxford Man Institute of Quantitative Finance (OMI) and the Department of Engineering Science at Oxford, Fellow of Christ Church College and Faculty Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute whose research interests and expertise are in machine learning, data science and decisions for a better planet. including novel machine learning and data science methods for medicine and personalised education

Waseem Qasim, NIHR professor in cell and gene therapy, Institute of Child Health, University College London whose research interest lies in modifying and editing human cells

Phoebe Tickell, a scientist with Imperial College  Synthetic Biology Accelerator SynbiCITE, systems designer and social entrepreneur (Founder of Future Farm Lab)

Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, Director of the Francis Crick Institute, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2001, supported the event and sent this message.

 I am delighted to support this Science Question Time event run by ColliderSCIENCE. Previous ones have shown the high level of enthusiasm for parents and students to engage in this forum.

Many teenagers about to pursue science GCSEs, A levels and IB may see science as a lot of facts that need to be learned to do well in exams, but scientific discovery is a creative pursuit that starts with asking many questions and challenging prevailing wisdom.   The world is changing quickly and many new types of jobs and careers will be created through the curiosity of individuals to invent new ways of solving problems.    It is good to see that Kings College Wimbledon have recognised the value of design thinking  and the critical role of engineering in this endeavour in their new Design and Engineering discipline.

One of the main reasons I am supporting the Science Question Time event is that it is aligned to the core principles of the Francis Crick Institute- that aims to explore connections between the different scientific disciplines to spur new thinking in many important areas of our lives. 

Applying the great strides we are seeing in data science, artificial intelligence, robotics and synthetic biology are just some of the things exciting scientists and engineers today- but new questions around ethics and humanity are just as important to address to protect the most important role of science as a great force for good. 

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Breaking Down The Walls: The Convergence Of Sciences And Engineering Opens Up New Ideas For The Future
Apr
25
6:00 PM18:00

Breaking Down The Walls: The Convergence Of Sciences And Engineering Opens Up New Ideas For The Future

Building on the success of our inaugural event in November 2015, we held another incredible Science Question Time in April 2017 engaging teenagers and their parents on the future of science, involving the following inspirational scientists:

Anjana Ahuja (Chair): Award winning science journalist, commentator and broadcaster.  Contributing Writer on science at the Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, Prospect and BBC2’s Newsnight.

Professor Mary Ryan: Professor of Materials Science & Nanotechnology, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Materials, Imperial College, London

Dr Jessica Wade: Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Physics, Imperial College, London

Professor Alan Winfield: Professor of Robot Ethics, Department of Engineering, Design and Mathematics,University of the West of England, Bristol

Dr Fay Cooper: PostdoctoralTraining Fellow, developmental biology, Francis Crick Institute, London

Professor Maja Pantic: Professor of Affective and Behavioural Computing, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Computing, Imperial College London

Professor Magnus Rattray: Professor of Computational and Systems Biology, Director, Data Science Institute, University of Manchester

Sir Paul Nurse, former President of the Royal Society and Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2001, is supporting the event for the second time, with the following message:

I am delighted to support the second ColliderSCIENCE Science Question Time event to build on the success of the first one held at Kings College School Wimbledon in November 2015.

The great interest in the inaugural event is driven at least in part by the increasing appreciation of the role of science in creating a better world for us, our children and society at large.

Many teenagers about to pursue science GCSEs, A levels and IB may see science as a lot of facts that need to be learned to do well in exams, but scientific discovery is a creative pursuit that starts with asking many questions and challenging prevailing wisdom. 

One of the main reasons I am supporting the Science Question Time event is that it is aligned to the core values of scientific research including those we apply in the newly opened Francis Crick Institute that opened this year and explores the connections between the different scientific disciplines to spur new thinking in many important areas of our lives. 

The world of science is exciting ahead- and many new types of jobs and careers will be created by the ingenious application of knowledge and curiosity and the collision of many people and ideas to invent new ways of doing things.   Understanding the genetics of aging, chronic disease and longevity (including the role of ‘omics’-the study of genomics, proteomics and metabolomics) as well as curing disease and preventing ill health more quickly though the great strides we are seeing in data science, artificial intelligence and blockchain technology, are just some of the things exciting scientists today.

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Breaking down the walls: The convergence of sciences and engineering opens up new ideas for the future
Nov
19
6:00 PM18:00

Breaking down the walls: The convergence of sciences and engineering opens up new ideas for the future

Click here to see the podcast of the event.

An incredible Science Question Time event, “Breaking Down the Walls in Scientific Thinking- Convergence in Science and Engineering Opens up New Ideas for the Future”,  was held at Kings College Wimbledon on 19th November.  Over 200 tickets were sold to an enthusiastic audience of students, parents and the wider community, going far beyond expectations,  both in terms of interest to attend and the great engagement we had as evidenced by the number of questions we had in the end.

Dr Anjana Ahuja, award winning science journalist, did a magnificent job in chairing the event, bringing energy, knowledge and humour to keep up the tempo and engage the audience. 

First, Anj read out the message of support from Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society and Director of the Francis Crick Institute, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2001: ‘I am sorry I cannot be at this event but I am very pleased to see that its focus is on exploring the connections between the different scientific disciplines to spur new thinking in many important areas of our lives. For many of you about to pursue science GCSEs, A levels and IB, you may see science as a lot of facts you need to learn to do well in your exams, but scientific discovery is a creative pursuit that starts with asking many questions. The innovations we see every day come from the intense, creative collaboration between scientists across many specialties, blurring the lines between biology, physics and chemistry.   This is driving developments in areas as diverse as nanotechnology, synthetic biology and computational sciences that are revolutionising our understanding of disease and changing the face of healthcare.’

Dr Simon Schultz, Director at the Centre for Neurotechnology, Imperial College left the audience in wonder at how fluorescence borrowed from nature can be harnessed to understand neural activity and mechanisms of disease such as in Alzheimer’s.   This is a field known as optogenetics which holds much promise to unravel the complexities behind disorders in the brain and to develop new treatments.

Dr Chris Forman, Nanobiophysicist at Cambridge University, took the audience through a journey of natural nanotechnology with panache, first explaining the “central dogma”, describing how DNA provides the biological manufacturing platform to drive applications in all sorts of areas at the cellular level right through to the macro level.  He left the audience pondering how this fundamental appreciation of biological manufacturing may help to solve innumerable challenges like how best to recycle, prevent food from running out and develop renewable energy.

Dr Lena Ciric, a microbiologist at the Faculty of Engineering Science, UCL, explored the fascinating world of bacteria and engaged the audience on her professional journey which started with using microbes to help with oil clean-ups and develop antibacterial mouthwash; in her quest to do more on the global worries over antimicrobial resistance she is now focussed on applying engineering technologies to design healthy buildings.

Dr Sabine Hauert, Lecturer in Robotics at Bristol University, enthralled the audience with her incredible work applying swam behaviour (found in nature with bees and birds for example) to nanoparticles and using the power of the crowd to design applications as diverse as killing cancerous cells to cleaning up oil spills.  She works with Robohub.org, a non-profit online communication platform that brings together experts in robotics research, start-ups, business, and education from across the globe, and demoed their NanoDoc game which allows bioengineers and the general public to imagine and crowdsource new nanoparticle strategies towards the treatment of cancer.

And, finally, Professor Paul Freemont,  co-director of the EPSRC Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovations and the National UK Innovation and Knowledge Centre for Synthetic Biology at Imperial College London, opened our minds to a number of ‘what if’ scenarios: for example, what if we could design cities with naturally bioluminescent treesto reduce the need to light our cities?   He then went on to describe how cells can be viewed as programmable “factories” picking up on the central dogma theory from Chris’ talk to expand on the power of the ‘living operating system’  to design limitless synthetic biology applications to solve major global challenges.

The questions form the audience were diverse and inspired, starting first with which scientists had watched the film ‘Ex Machina’  a sci fi exploration of the concept of singularity, delving into humankind's experiments with artificial intelligence-   followed by the question, what would happen when manmade machines started getting smarter than humans?  Simon responded first, saying that while it would be possible to scan the human brain and upload the information on a computer, this will take time to figure out due to the complexity of information storage in the brain.

Next, a question on how can we make sure that a scientific divide does not grow between the “haves” (the scientific elite) and the “have nots” (the less well educated, or less empowered citizens).  Lena admitted this was an ongoing challenge which she tries to address in her head of outreach at UCL and Chris stepped in with his concept of the “virtuous policy circle”, harnessing people power to create pressure on governments to change policy.

Simon interjected his views on the importance of education to reach communities and communicate how science and technology together are changing the world and impacting our lives in many areas, including our jobs. Paul concluded that we need to make technology accessible, and with the power of citizen science can create a movement where technology can be shared- this is starting to happen with “hackspaces” and “DIY Labs” for example.

The next question asked whether armed with the knowledge of DNA that we have today- can we not use shortcuts to go straight to biology rather than nanobiology to design applications.  This set the scene for Anj, the Chair, to ask the panellists- where do you predict will be the most exciting developments ahead?

Chris answered that you can use shortcuts and cited the example of start-ups that use bacteria to create silk- for example, Spiber have created silk using synthesised genes which coax bacteria to produce fibroin, a structural protein found in spider silk- this spider silk is at least five times stronger than steel, more flexible than nylon and three times stronger than body armour.  Simon then cited the potential of using synthetic silk as a "flexible, biocompatible waveguide" to pipe light into the body (for optogenetics).

Lena said that developments in renewable energy with biofuels was where she would put her money, whereas Sabine felt that leaps in understanding of the biology of tumours was driving significant developments in personalised medicine. Paul said that if he had any money to invest, it would be in companies specialising in DNA synthesis and computational design, designing biological systems and devising new materials, biosensors and drugs.

Chris added that he felt the biggest impact ahead would come from machine learning and pattern recognition.  Simon added that keeping people alive for longer by tackling neurodegenerative diseases was also a very exciting area, but that more money was needed for research.  This spurred the next question on the issue of funding scientific research- this time on the global challenge of superbugs resistant to all antibiotics.  Lena explained the challenges of incentivising pharmaceutical companies to invest in this type of research (drugs required for chronic diseases tend to get the lion’s share of investment) and Paul added that the Wellcome Trust and other groups were funding this research in recognition of the severity of the global problem.  Anj cited a recent report by an economist that looked at the scale of the problem from a macro economic perspective.  Finally Chris volunteered some ‘disruptive’ ideas, using nanotechology and physical approaches to interfere with viral cycles.

Questions on robotics and fracking followed (the general consensus amongst scientists was to look for alternatives to fossil fuels) and ending finally on the penultimate question- will we ever be able to design a new species to which Paul answered enthusiastically with a resounding YES!

Throughout, Anj asked personal questions of the scientists on their personal journeys of discovery – Simon’s interest in science started from building circuits, Chris’ fascination began with the constellations of the night sky and his first viewing of ORION in his telescope, Lena’s low point in her scientific career was completing her PhD, Sabine’s advice to other would-be scientists is to follow your passion, and Paul said if he weren’t a scientist the only other option would have been to become a mountaineer (relishing the solitude and reflection you can have in the mountains).

Overall, a key theme running through everything was one of constant questioning and being prepared to fail- science is an art in persistence.

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