This new series of general seminars will take place on a quarlerly basis; all staff and students are welcome to attend. Talks will be presented by academics from different FoNS Departments, lasting 20 minutes each, followed by two lively 10 minute Q&A discussion sessions.
The first FoNS seminar will take place on Friday 10th March at 1pm in Huxley 145.
Cassini Discoveries from Saturn and its moons
Michele Dougherty, Professor of Space Physics
The Cassini mission has been in orbit around Saturn since July 2004. The Imperial magnetometer team discovered an atmosphere at one of Saturn’s moon’s, Enceladus and is driving the end of mission science coming up in September this year. Both the Enceladus discovery and the unique end of mission science will be described.
Controlling Amyloid fibril formation – from nature to materials science and biotechnology
Steve Matthews, Professor of Chemical and Structural Biology
The formation of a microbial biofilm is a highly regulated, complex process in which the organisms secrete a polymeric extracellular matrix. Amyloids fibrils are abundant in this matrix, where they confer structural and organisational integrity due to their unique mechanical properties. Although amyloids are also exploited in higher organisms including animals and humans, their uncontrolled amyloid formation is often highly toxic e.g. Alzheimers. Nature, however, has devised some elegant solutions to control inappropriate amyloid assembly. This seminar will focus on our recent efforts to understand this extraordinary ability. It will also highlight the implications of this work in biomedicine as well providing new opportunities for industrial applications in diagnostics, biomimetics and nanomaterials.
Please contact Dr Sophie Armstrong-Brown if you have any questions or are interested in giving a talk.