Banner for the event that shows staff and students from different FoNS departments at work - writing at chalk boards, having discussions in seminars and in the lab

Virtual FoNS Research Showcase 2021

This event will be run live on Microsoft Teams. Event Link: Day One: Departments of Chemistry and Life Sciences Showcases

Join us for two afternoons of presentations and stimulating discussions with the academics and prize-winning PhD students in the Faculty of Natural Sciences:

PhD competitions

The FoNS Showcase 2021 comprises two separate competitions for the PhD students: the first one is an oral presentation competition taking place during DAY ONE and DAY TWO. The second is a poster and video competition where students will present their research to judges in advance (Take a look at the submissions). 

Your chance to vote! The people’s choice prize:  Take a look at the submissions and vote for your favourite video as part of the people’s choice prize. Voting is open to the whole Imperial community – be sure to submit your vote by the 30 September 2021!

The prize winners of both oral and poster presenters will be announced on Friday 1 October 2021.

Programme for Day One

Find out more about the programme for DAY ONE (Chemistry and Life Sciences Showcases) below – Click the link to read the Abstracts of all presentations in Day One.

[Note: Please click here to view the programme for DAY TWO (Physics, Mathematics and CEP Showcases)]

Day One keynote speaker

This year the Faculty is extremely pleased to host keynote speaker Dr Edward O. Pyzer-Knapp (Research Lead, Machine Learning and AI at IBM), who will tell us how IBM is applying AI, HPC, Quantum and robotics to accelerate the discovery of new materials. Please join us!

13:30 Welcome message by the Faculty Dean Professor Richard Craster

KEYNOTE SPEAKER, Chair: Professor Ramon Vilar Compte

                   13:35 Dr Edward O. Pyzer-Knapp (IBM Research Global Lead AI Enriched Modelling and Simulation/ Visiting Professor in Industrially Applied AI University of Liverpool)) – Title: Accelerating Discovery – How the combination of  AI/HPC/Quantum and robotics Is changing how we discover new materials.          

DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY SHOWCASE, Chair: Professor Ramon Vilar Compte

                  14:00 Dr Marina Kuimova (Reader in Chemical Physics) – Title: Mapping microscopic viscosity and temperature using molecular rotors

                  14:20 Joe Higham (PhD student) – Title: Bringing together otherwise unreactive centres with a Transient Directing Group

                  14:35 Polina Jacoutot (PhD student) – Title: Infrared Organic Photodetectors for Biometric Monitoring

                  14:50 Irene Bechis (PhD student) – Title: Computational modelling of amorphous microporous materials

                Coffee break (15:05-15:15)

 DEPARTMENT OF LIFE SCIENCES SHOWCASE, Chair:  Professor Erhard Hohenester

                  15:15 Professor Vincent Savolainen (Professor of Organismic Biology) – Title: COVID in the environment: from sewage  detection to potential animal reservoirs

                  15:35 Emma Couves (PhD student) – Title: Protecting Human Cells from the Innate Immune System

                  15:50 Danielle Norman (PhD student) – Title: Impact of disturbance on automated classification and mammal species interactions

                  16:05 Krista Grimes (PhD student) – Title: Connections between immunity and metabolism- what can we learn from the fruit fly?

                  16:20 Closing remarks by the Faculty Dean Professor Richard Craster