As part of the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre’s Open Day, a panel of experts will discuss how artificial intelligence can be used to benefit patients and the challenges that it presents. The discussion will be chaired by Professor Lionel Tarassenko, world-leading expert in the application of signal processing to medical systems.

As part of the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre’s Open Day, Professor Ian Pavord will discuss emerging treatments for asthma, a condition that affects 5.4 million people in the UK. Professor Pavord is an internationally renowned researcher with a particular interest in asthma, chronic pulmonary disease and chronic cough.

As part of the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre’s Open Day, Dr David Eyre, an infectious diseases researcher and clinician, and Dr Katie Jeffery, Consultant in Microbiology at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, will discuss how they used infection prevention and control best practice, whole genome sequencing and electronic patient data to halt an outbreak of a potentially deadly fungal pathogen at the John Radcliffe Hospital between 2015 and 2017.

In Origin of Species, Charles Darwin described how a population explosion occurs and called the time of population explosion “ favourable seasons”, he was not to know it, but such circumstances arose for his own species at around the time of his own birth. However, the favourable seasons for human population growth were not experienced favourably, with times of great social dislocation from small scale enclosure to global colonisation. Now those seasons are over, we have experienced the first ever sustained slowdown in the rate of global human population growth. This has been the case for at least one human generation. However, we are not just slowing down in terms of how many children we have, but in almost everything else we do, other than in the rise in global temperatures that we are recording and that we have to live with. It can be argued that there is even a slowdown in such unexpected areas as debt, publishing, and in the total amount useful information being produced.

If this is true – that humanity is slowing down in almost everything that we do – what does this mean? What measurements suggest that slowdown is true? And if so much is still rising, albeit at slower and slower rates – is that such a great change? Finally how might the slowdown impact on economic thought. In many ways economics was the science of the great acceleration; a science that makes most sense when markets are expanding and demand is rising. What kind of an economics is needed in a world where enormous and accelerating growth has stopped being the normality?

As part of the Surgical Grand Round lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences:

Dr Anita Makins will present ‘FGM: a global perspective’

Dr Katy Newell-Jones will present ‘Medicalisation of female genital cutting: decision making dilemmas and competing priorities’

Professor Chris Lavy will present ‘Building kids’ hospitals in Africa: the need, the realities and the rewards’

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Professor Richard van Hillegersberg from University Medical Center Utrecht in The Netherlands will discuss ‘Robotic minimally invasive oesophagectomy’.

The high seas are under severe pressure from both direct and indirect human impacts, including the effects of over-fishing, plastic debris and climate change. In this talk, Prof Alex Rogers will present what a network of marine protected areas in the high seas might look like, protecting 30% of known conservation features and taking into account climate change impacts. We will also hear from Dr Gwilym Rowlands, who will consider how such a network of marine protected areas could be enforced and the potential benefits to the ocean.

In this lecture, lawyer Mary Bartkus shares her firsthand experience of the international litigation of multibillion dollar claims against Big Pharma when a medication taken by millions of users worldwide is withdrawn.

She will address the impact of the withdrawal and United States litigation on regulators, legislators, and on cross-border litigation in common law and civil law jurisdictions across six continents.

When Merck & Co., Inc. withdrew the innovative painkiller Vioxx (Rofecoxib) from more than eighty countries following evidence that high-dosage use could cause an increased risk of heart attack and stroke, thousands of US citizens brought personal injury claims.

A Texas jury awarded more than $250 million to one individual claimant. Although that verdict was reduced and later overturned on appeal, and most US juries found for the company, with more than 26,000 US court claims yet to be tried and another 14,100 waiting to be filed, the company agreed to resolve the US personal injury claims for $4.85 billion, a deal said to be “favourable” to the company and “clearly at the low end of general expectations”.

Internationally, claims were brought in waves following developments in the US. These international cases would be heard and decided in jurisdictions with different traditions and conditions for litigants.

In Australia, a justice of the Federal Court dismissed all claims against Merck & Co., Inc. in class litigation, finding “Merck had done everything that might reasonably be expected of it in the discharge of its duty of care”. The Full Court overturned an award of damages to the individual representative claimant for failure to establish causation, and awarded full costs to the company; the High Court denied claimants leave to appeal. Claims of remaining group members then were resolved.

In England, claimants abandoned multi-party actions filed in the High Court. In Scotland, the parties litigated and resolved individual actions. In Canada, the parties litigated and resolved overlapping class and individual actions in ten provinces. Courts regularly dismissed cases in civil law jurisdictions.

The lecture considers this landmark international litigation alongside the challenges companies face when investing billions of dollars to develop innovative medications, and asks: Who won and who lost?

Mary E. Bartkus is Special Counsel at Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP, a member of the Bars of New York and New Jersey; previously Executive Director & Senior Counsel, Merck & Co., Inc.

Under the leadership of the new Climax Chair of Clinical Therapeutics, Professor Duncan Richards, St Hilda’s College is establishing an innovative research centre aimed at addressing some of the key questions facing Clinical Therapeutics today.

We are launching this initiative on 11th June 2019, when Sir Michael Rawlins GBE, MD, FRCP, FMedSci , Chair of the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, will deliver the centre’s inaugural lecture: ‘Novel approaches to assessing the safety and efficacy of new medicines’.

Professor Sir Paul Collier and Professor Colin Mayer CBE will share the latest thinking and research into the future of capitalism and the corporation to understand how business might be changed to make it work better for society. The speakers will bring together their new books, The Future of Capitalism: Facing The New Anxieties and Prosperity: Better Business Makes the Greater Good, alongside the British Academy’s Future of the Corporation programme research to pose serious questions of our economic system.

This talk will be followed by a drinks reception, book sale and signing, all welcome

This is a joint book talk with The Rockefeller Foundation Economic Council on Planetary Health at the Oxford Martin School

Now that Trump has turned the United States into a global climate outcast, will China take the lead in saving our planet from environmental catastrophe? Many signs point to yes. China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, is leading a global clean energy revolution, phasing out coal consumption and leading the development of a global system of green finance.

But as leading China environmental expert and author of Will China Save the Planet? Barbara Finamore will explain in this talk, it is anything but easy. The fundamental economic and political challenges that China faces in addressing its domestic environmental crisis threaten to derail its low-carbon energy transition. Yet there is reason for hope. China’s leaders understand that transforming the world’s second largest economy from one dependent on highly polluting heavy industry to one focused on clean energy, services and innovation is essential, not only to the future of the planet, but to China’s own prosperity.

We will also hear from respondent Radhika Khosla, Research Director at the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, Somerville College.

This talk will be followed by a drinks reception, book sale and signing, all welcome

The biosphere and econosphere are deeply interlinked and both are in crisis. Industrial, fossil-fuel based capitalism delivered major increases in living standards from the mid-18th through late-20th centuries, but at the cost of widespread ecosystem destruction, planetary climate change, and a variety of economic injustices. Furthermore, over the past 40 years, the gains of growth have flowed almost exclusively to the top 10%, fuelling populist anger across many countries, endangering both democracy and global action on climate change.

This talk will argue that underlying the current dominant model of capitalism are a set of theories and ideologies that are outdated, unscientific, and morally unsound. New foundations can be built from modern understandings of human behaviour, complex systems science, and broad moral principles. By changing the ideologies, narratives, and memes that govern our economic system, we can create the political space required for the policies and actions required to rapidly transform to a sustainable and just economic system.

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences:

Mr Ravish Jootun will present “Towards 0% 90-day Colorectal mortality: Accepting a low floor in the anastomotic leak rate plus safe rescue using an early warning integrated model”

Mr Will Perry will present “University of Auckland’s Global Surgery Group: the Republic of Vanuatu – a growing collaboration”

Interested in medical device regulation? Get together with experts within the University and other researchers to discuss aspects of Medical Device Regulation relevant to your innovation. You can join us online at the comfort of your own desk!

Topic: Software classification

Who should attend? People interested in bringing a medical device to the market or interested in the medical device regulation.

Joining instructions: Further instructions on how to join the Zoom webinar will be made available to you after registration of the event

An amusing talk and exploration of AI and the future of technology. Is the future more absurd than comedians can imagine? Will a driver-less BMW still cut you up? What do we do when a human doesn’t pass the Turing test? Computers have beaten chess masters but can they beat comedians?

We cannot end poverty without ending energy poverty. Ever since the world’s first power plants whirred to life in 1882, we have seen how electricity is the lynchpin for development in all of its forms.

Manufacturing and industrial productivity, agriculture and food security, nutrition, hygiene, water, public health, education, even community engagement, in other words, daily life in a modern economy, demand access to reliable energy.

And yet despite significant progress over nearly 140 years, more than 800 million people around the world live without access to electricity, and hundreds of millions more struggle with unreliable or unaffordable service. Families are deprived of the means to labour productively and their quality of life and status in extreme poverty goes unchanged.

We need urgently to fast-track sustainable power solutions, investments, and partnerships across the globe to catalyze an energy transformation and accelerate sustainable, reliable and modern electrification for economic development.

In this book talk the Author, Carl Benedikt Frey, will discuss how the Industrial Revolution was a defining moment in history, but how few grasped its enormous consequences at the time. Now that we are in the midst of another technological revolution how can the lessons of the past can help us to more effectively face the present?

This talk will be followed by a book sale, signing and drinks reception. All welcome.

Professor Carl Heneghan will talk about his involvement in Tamiflu research that led to the discovery of 170,000 pages of clinical study reports, the subsequent development of Alltrials he was involved in and the current epidemic of publication and reporting bias that plagues much of the current research evidence.

Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine, employs evidence-based methods to research diagnostic reasoning, test accuracy and communicating diagnostic results to a wider audience.

This talk is being held as part of the Practice of Evidence-Based Health Care module which is part of the MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care and the MSc in EBHC Systematic Reviews. Members of the public are welcome to attend.

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Professor Michael Griffin OBE will present ‘Talking to cancer patients – do not promise what you cannot deliver’.

Professor Michael Griffin OBE became President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 2018, when he was a Consultant Oesophagogastric surgeon at the Royal Victoria Infirmary. He developed the Northern Oesophagogastric Cancer Unit which is now the largest in Europe and North America. A Council member since 2009, he is Chair of the Joint Committee for Intercollegiate Examinations (JCIE) and Professor of Gastrointestinal Surgery at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. His clinical and research interests have been focused on early diagnosis and radical treatment of oesophagogastric cancers. He was awarded an OBE for services to cancer health care in 2013.

Data-driven micro-targeted campaigns have become a main stable of political strategy. As personal and societal data becomes more accessible, we need to understand how it can be used and mis-used in political campaigns and whether it is relevant to regulate political candidates’ access to data.

This book talk will be followed by a drinks reception and book sale, all welcome

Breakthroughs using gene therapy and gene editing are regularly in the news, but how close in reality are we to them to be used to treat actual patients? Professor of Molecular Therapy and Co-Director of the Gene Medicine Research Group, Steve Hyde sorts the fact from the fiction as he discusses how viruses are being re-purposed to treat rare diseases such as leukaemia, blindness and haemophilia.

Michael Obersteiner will present new insights from co-producing a set of new sustainability scenarios.

Major sectoral transitions will be presented to achieve development targets in line with improved ecosystem and human health. He will conclude with an outlook on new ways to socialise findings from such global assessments.

This talk is part of the Oxford Martin School Lecture Series ‘Food futures: how can we safeguard the planet’s health, and our own?’

We are all living longer, but we are ill prepared, both as individuals and as a society, and attitudes towards ageing remain stubbornly negative, in spite of evidence that older people are some of the most satisfied with life. This session will debunk some myths, challenge stereotypes and consider what we can do to age well.

This talk is delivered by Penny Thewlis, Chief Executive of Age UK Oxfordshire.

With a background in public services, Penny joined Age UK Oxfordshire in 2000 to undertake a study of the needs and aspirations of older people in rural communities and stayed to work alongside older people and communities to implement the recommendations. Penny is passionate about asset based approaches, about changing the narrative on ageing and about ensuring older people have a voice.

Big data and AI are starting to feature in cancer research today, and will will play an even greater role in the future. Join researchers from Cancer Research UK to discover the technologies and methods they use to help find, prevent and treat cancer, and what big ideas they have for the future.

IF Oxford is operating a Pay What You Decide (PWYD) ticketing system. This works by enabling you to pre-book events without paying for a ticket beforehand. Afterwards, you have the opportunity to pay what you decide you want to, or can afford. If you prefer, you can make a donation to IF Oxford when you book. All funds raised go towards next year’s Festival.

Geographers have long been interested in the spaces brought into being by the internet. In the early days of the Web, digital technologies were seen as tools that could bring a heterotopic cyberspace into being: a place beyond space de-tethered from the material world.

More recent framings instead see digital geographies as always-augmented, hybrid, and ontogenetic: integrally embedded into everyday life.

Against that backdrop, Professor Mark Graham will present findings from three large research projects about digital platforms. First, a large-scale digital mapping project that looks at how digital inequalities can become infused into our urban landscapes. Second, a study about the livelihoods of platform workers in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Finally, early results from a new action research project (the Fairwork Foundation) designed to improve the quality of platform jobs.

In each case, the talk explores why understanding the ways that platforms command digital geographies is a crucial prerequisite for envisioning more equitable digital futures.

Please register via the link provided. This talk will be followed by a drinks reception, all welcome.

Dr David Nabarro, former Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Food Security and Nutrition, will give a talk on what implications there will be for the planet and us in linking nature, food and the climate.

Please register via the link provided. Followed by a drinks reception, all welcome

As part of the Surgical Grand Round lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Mr Vincent Gnanapragasam from the University of Cambridge will discuss ‘Using research to change paradigms in diagnosing and managing early prostate cancer’.

Charles Babbage has been called the ‘great-uncle’ of modern computing, a claim that rests simultaneously on his demonstrable understanding of most of the architectural principles underlying the modern computer,band the almost universal ignorance of Babbage’s work before 1970. There has since been an explosion of interest both in Babbage’s devices and the impact they might have had in some parallel history, and in Babbage himself as a man of great originality who had essentially no influence at all on subsequent technological development.

In all this, one fundamental question has been largely ignored: how is it that one individual working alone could have synthesised a workable computer design over a short period, designing an object whose complexity of behaviour so far exceeded that of contemporary machines that it would not be matched for over one hundred years?

Our Leverhulme funded project Notions and notations: Charles Babbage’s language of thought investigated the design methods that Babbage used, and their impact on subsequent design practice. As part of that work we constructed a steam-driven difference engine to Babbage’s outline design.

In this general interest talk, we shall describe some aspects of Babbage’s designs and design methods, and demonstrate the difference engine.

As part of the Surgical Grand Round lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Professor Chris Lavy from the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences will present ‘Public-private partnerships in elective surgery’.

The logic and principles behind the drive for evidence-based health care are so compelling that often the limitations of evidence go unacknowledged. Despite a strong evidence base demonstrating the health risks associated with higher body weights, and health professionals routinely instructing patients to lose weight to improve their health, the incidence of obesity is predicted to continue to rise. Calling on his research into the relationships between obesity, inequality and health, Oli Williams – a fellow of The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute – will argue that when it comes to reducing the burden on, and improving, health care a more critical approach to the way we generate, select, apply and communicate evidence is needed.

Oli Williams completed his PhD in the Department of Sociology at the University of Leicester. He was subsequently awarded the NIHR CLAHRC West Dan Hill Fellowship in Health Equity which he held at the University of Bath. He later re-joined the University of Leicester in the Department of Health Sciences working in the SAPPHIRE Group and is now based at King’s College London after being awarded a THIS Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship. His research focuses on health inequalities, the promotion of healthy lifestyles, obesity, weight stigma, equitable intervention and co-production. He co-founded the art collective Act With Love (AWL) to promote social change. The Weight of Expectation comic is one example of their work, view others at: www.actwithlove.co.uk In recognition of his work on weight stigma the British Science Association invited Oli to deliver the Margaret Mead Award Lecture for Social Sciences at the British Science Festival 2018.

This talk is being held as part of the Qualitative Research Methods course which is part of the Evidence-Based Health Care Programme. This is a free event and members of the public are welcome to attend.