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.