Events

14 Feb	Sir Greg Winter speaking on The Antibody Revolution: Turning Inventions Into Medicines and Companies In recent years therapeutic antibodies have been displacing small molecule drugs as blockbuster pharmaceuticals, and large pharmaceutical companies have been buying the biotechnology companies that developed them. The talk will explain how this revolution started and where it may lead. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
21 Feb	Professor Shankar Balasubramanian speaking on Decoding Genomes at High Speed There has recently been a quantum leap in our ability to accurately decode human genome sequences at an unprecedented speed and cost. This technological advancement is transforming biology and is bringing to the forefront the possibility of individualising medicine based on our genomes. In this talk I will discuss the origins of this technology revolution, how it is changing science and a vision for how it may shape medicine over the next 20 years. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
23 Feb	Professor David Nutt speaking on Science and Non-science in UK Drug and Alcohol Policy The regulation of drugs – including alcohol and tobacco – is an issue of pressing importance due to the increasing health care costs associated with their use and the new sorts of synthetic agents being developed and sold over the internet. My talk will reflect on these issues in the light of my ten years experience on the governments Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs from which I was sacked about a year ago. I shall present new analyses that compare the harms of drugs and alcohol using more sophisticated methodology and challenge many of the current misconceptions about drugs – their harms – and how to deal with them. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
28 Feb	Professor Simon Baron-Cohen speaking on Zero Degrees of Empathy Empathy is the drive to identify another person’s thoughts and feelings and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion. Empathy comes by degrees, with individual differences evident in the traditional bell curve. We now know quite a lot about which parts of the brain are used when we empathize and how empathy develops in children. We also know that early experience affects empathy, but so does biology: hormones in the womb, and specific genes. There are several ways in which one can lose one’s empathy, clearly seen in psychiatric conditions such as the personality disorders including the psychopath. However, there is one condition, autism, which not only entails difficulties with empathy but can lead to a talent in ‘systemizing’: the aptitude to spot patterns in the world. We discuss how people with autism and psychopaths show opposite empathy profiles. Finally, the discovery that there may be ‘genes for empathy’ implies that empathy may be the result of our evolution. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
6 Mar	Professor Sir Michael Atiyah speaking on The Apprenticeship of a Scientist What is research? How does one start? What are the crucial choices? I will address such issues based on my personal experiences and will be happy to turn the event into a discussion forum. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre

For more events, see our full programme or download our term card.