Some face-to-face events are returning. Check carefully for any requirements.
The future of UK flood insurance | Matt Cullen, Policy Adviser – Flooding and Climate Change, Association of British Insurers
Adaptation to climate change: the role of insurance in flood risk management | Edmund Penning-Rowsell, School of Geography and the Environment
Oxford University Engineering Society presents:
Roderick Lubbock, a post doctoral research assistant at the Osney Thermo-Fluids Lab, will be giving a talk on his research.
The Osney Thermo-Fluids Laboratory is located in a brand new facility opened by the Vice Chancellor in 2010. It is part of the University’s strategic investment in the nation’s science base.
The lab houses some of the most sophisticated turbine and high speed flow facilities in the UK, and the research group includes internationally recognised experts in CFD, flow and heat transfer experiments and instrumentation.
Complimentary food & drink will be provided after the talk.
Want to win £100K? Got a ground breaking scientific idea or skills to offer? OBR Oxford is holding a free lecture/Q&A with VCs + Entrepreneurs and drinks reception to launch our OneStart competition! For the winner we can offer: £100K non dilutive capital + free lab space + free advice. To see what happened in lasts year comp see: http://vimeo.com/64725496
PEFM Seminar
Cristian Popa (National Bank of Romania)
Discussant: Gillian Edgeworth (Unicredit)
Chair: Max Watson (St. Antony’s College, Oxford)
(In association with SEESOX)
Finance is often considered either intimidating or boring. What do terms like profit and loss, cashflow or balance sheet really mean? How are they relevant to us at the early stages of starting a business? In this session Maurice will demystify these terms and explain the basics of finance for entrepreneurs through a combination of sharing his expertise and experience and engaging participants in interactive group work.
As with all our innovation workshops there is no need to register – just come to 56 Banbury Rd 5-7pm on Wednesdays in term. The workshop will include some light refreshments and a chance to network with similar students.
Virtual currencies such as Bitcoin have recently attracted significant media coverage. Some commentators highlight their innovative features and hail them as the future of money. Other commentators point to their uses in illegal activities and the volatility and speculative nature of their markets. In this workshop, we aim to bring together scholars from diverse backgrounds to discuss the potential research value of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies. The workshop will consist of two short introductory talks followed by discussion.
Please register your interest by emailing Jonathan Levin
PEFM Seminar
Panellists: Gillian Edgeworth (Unicredit), Gene Frieda (Moore Capital), Giles Moec (Deutsche Bank), Marko Skreb (Privredna Banka Zagreb)
Chair: Adam Bennett (St. Antony’s College, Oxford)
Ashmolean Lunchtime Gallery Talk: Tools from the past
1.15–2pm every open weekday, Tuesday – Friday, Gallery 21
Places (maximum 15) allocated by tokens from the Information Desk 15 mins before the talk
January
Thu 16 Tools from the past
Fri 17 Mesopotamia: the cradle of civilisation
Tue 21 Japanese arts and crafts
Wed 22 Landscape paintings
Thu 23 The Textile Gallery
Fri 24 Venetian paintings
Tue 28 Turner and Leighton
Wed 29 Early Italian art
Thu 30 The Acanthus – a floral delight
Fri 31 Victorian painting and sculpture
http://www.ashmolean.org/events/Talks/?id=105
Burning questions in these areas often lead to indecision, delays and underestimated consequences. Covering these topics early and from a founders perspective helps demystify, and frees founders to focus on their business, rather than its structure. How do funding, dilution, & vesting work? How do investors value startups at different stages? Should you focus on revenue or growth? When can you ignore your lawyer? How much equity do your cofounders, investors, advisors and employees get?
his book talk is hosted by the Oxford Martin School and the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology
Dr K. Eric Drexler, Academic Visitor at the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology, will be giving a talk on the subject of his book Radical Abundance: How a revolution in nanotechnology will change civilization.
Eric will show how rapid progress in the molecular sciences will enable the development of high-throughput atomically precise manufacturing, a technology with the power to produce radically more of what people want, and at a radically lower cost. The result will shake the foundations of our economy and our relationship to Earth’s environment, enabling us to make products of all sorts cleanly, inexpensively, and on a global scale. Radical Abundance allows us to envision a world where high-performance solar arrays cost no more than cardboard and aluminum foil, and billion-processor tablet computers cost about the same. Radical Abundance describes a world on a path to an unexpected future, and raises key questions about implications for global problems and global governance.
This talk will be followed by a drinks reception, all welcome.
Visiting Fellows Lunchtime Seminar Series – Critical Social Innovation in the ‘Smart City’ era for a City-Regional European Horizon 2020
Igor Calzada (COMPAS)
Chair: Kalypso Nicolaïdis (St Antony’s College, Oxford)
Five years on from the global financial crisis, how vulnerable are we to another crash?
At the Bank of England Andrew Haldane is responsible for developing bank policy on financial stability issues and the management of its Financial Stability Area. He is a member of the bank’s Financial Stability Executive Board and the new Financial Policy Committee, and also sits on various international public policy committees, economics associations, editorial boards and academic advisory committees.
Mr Haldane has written extensively on domestic and international monetary and financial stability and is co-founder of ‘Pro Bono Economics’, which aims to broker economists into projects in the charitable sector.
The Oxford Climate Forum is the country’s biggest student-led conference on climate change and 2014’s is even bigger. Running from the 7th-8th of February with over 30 speakers from all around the world, the theme of this year’s conference’s is ‘Climate Change: an opportunity’. Focusing on innovation, change and careers, it will comprise of panels ranging from sustainable business models and energy, to the role of the arts and fashion in climate change. Speakers include Dipal Barua (Founder of Bright Green Energy Foundation), Orsola de Castro (CEO of ‘From Somewhere’) and Benjamin Karmorh (of the Liberian Environmental Protection Agency).
We also have, for the first time, a Careers Fair with international companies head hunting for jobs and internships.
Look at our website for more details.
SEESOX Seminar
Eleni Dendrinou-Louri (Bank of Greece, Athens)
Discussant: Francisco Torres (St Antony’s College, Oxford)
Chair: Max Watson (St Antony’s College, Oxford)
In association with PEFM
creative workshop
Interested in social enterprise and development? A chance to contribute ideas on how to increase the social impact of a real business operating in Kampala. No expertise needed.
Think Week welcomes Anders Sandberg from the Future of Humanity Institute to discuss future discoveries.
We have good reasons to expect that in the future we will know vastly more than today about the world. Yet, can we say anything about *what* we will discover and how it will change our worldview? What technologies can we predict? Can we say anything about where the next Einstein will occur?
Anders Sandberg is a James Martin Research Fellow at the FHI, a science debater, futurist, transhumanist, computational neuroscientist and author. His research focusses on the societal and ethical issues surrounding human enhancement and new technology, as well as on assessing the capabilities and underlying science of future technologies. He has worked on cognitive enhancement, on a technical roadmap for whole brain emulation, on neuroethics; and on global catastrophic risks.
A self-experimentalist, he has admitted to using cognitive enhancers such as modafinil and to have carried out sequencing of his own genome, whose findings he is open to sharing.
National Science and Engineering Week Lecture at the Ashmolean Museum:
Scientific Analysis of Museum Objects
With Andrew Shortland from Cranfield University
Friday 14 March, 2–3pm
Ashmolean Museum Headley Lecture Theatre
Learn how forensic science helps us to uncover the histories of museum objects.
Free, no booking required.
National Science and Engineering Week Talk at the Ashmolean
Conservation Studio Visit
Meet the Ashmolean’s Conservators
Wendesday 19 March 11am–12pm & 2–3pm
A behind-the-scenes visit to the Ashmolean’s conservation studios where you can meet the conservators and see how art and science work together.
Free, but booking is essential – Click here to book online now
http://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/ticketsoxford/#search=conservation
National Science and Engineering Week Lecture
Science and the Violin
With Ben Hebbert, University of Oxford
Saturday 22 March 2–3pm
Ashmolean Headley Lecture Theatre
Violin expert, Ben Hebbert, talks about the instrument which has withstood five centuries of increasingly sophisticated use, without undergoing any significant changes to its design. He explores the advantages and drawbacks of the design and discusses how a scientifically optimal form came to exist in the absence of modern engineering and asks if the violin needs to change in the centuries to come.
Free, no booking required.
Dr Elizabeth Bruton will deliver a lecture on the vital role of wireless amateurs during World War One and their consequential influence on the development of broadcast radio in the early 1920s.
Book Launch:
Discussants: Paola Mattei Book Editor (St Antony’s College, Oxford), Sheila Lawlor (Politeia, London), Jan Sadlak (Observatory on Academic Ranking, Brussels), Corine Eyraud (Université d’Aix-Marseille), Peter Maassen (University of Oslo)
Chair: Roger Goodman (University of Oxford)
All are welcome.
Join us for a lunchtime talk by Geoff Kistruck – Associate Professor and Ron Binns Chair in Entrepreneurship at Schulich School of Business, York University. Geoff’s primary research interests involve social entrepreneurship and innovation, principally within the context of poverty alleviation efforts in base-of-the-pyramid markets.
His talk will focus on Base-of-the-Pyramid (BOP) markets and how they present significant governance challenges when undertaking large-scale investments. In the absence of strong legal institutions, organizations must design creative solutions for ensuring that local partners adhere to their agreements. Drawing upon social interdependence theory, his talk will propose that the use of alternative goal structures will serve to motivate local partners to fulfil their commitments.
The Start-Up Chile programme is now ready to select, fund and host a new round of start-ups so they develop their global business ideas in Chile, the growing start-up ecosystem that has everyone talking.
**NO PREVIOUS CHILEAN CONNECTION NEEDED!**
Did you know.. that the Chilean Government set up the Start-Up Chile programme in order to attract world-class early stage entrepreneurs to start their businesses in Chile?
The program provides US$40,000 of equity-free seed capital, and a temporary 1-year visa to develop your project for six months, along with access to the strongest social and capital networks in the country.
Click ‘join’ to come to the Meetup, and learn how you can be one of the chosen ones!
Please also share this opportunity with your network and encourage them to join in too.
Nuffield bike ride, in association with Oxford Bike Week
Time: 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm, 17th June
Location: Tourist Information Centre, 15 Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3AS
Description:
Join us on a gentle, scenic, two-hour ride to sites around Oxford connected with Lord Nuffield and Morris cars. Regular stops and information included!
RANDY RETTBERG, President of iGEM
Randy Rettberg is the man behind iGEM, the global competition for undergraduates and high school students in designing brand new biological parts, or “genetically engineered machines”. An engineer by trade he is the President of the iGEM Foundation, which operates the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, a continuously growing library of genetic parts that can be mixed and matched to enable easier construction of synthetic biology devices.
Dr. RICHARD KELWICK, Researcher at CSynBI, Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation (Imperial College)
Richard has been scientific advisor and project manager of three successful iGEM teams, 2011-2013. Most recently, he was the lead advisor for the iGEM team Plasticity, at Imperial College London, which came third out of over 200 teams at the world final, held at MIT.
Dr. JAREK BRYK, National Centre for Biotechnology Education University of Reading
Jarek works at the National Centre for Biotechnology Education on a project to facilitate teaching of synthetic biology on an undergraduate level. He develops experimental kits that will be incorporated in synthetic biology curricula.He currently mentors the iGEM Reading team.
Globalized finance poses major challenges for emerging economies. The Gobal Economic Governance Programme’s Annual Lecture provides an exciting chance to hear from one of Latin America’s leading policy makers. Governor Vergara will share his experiences and insights on the most pressing opportunities and challenges facing emerging economies, particularly in Latin America. How can Latin American countries foster financial stability and economic growth in this new era of global finance? What are the most and least effective policy responses? What can we learn from Chile’s experience?
The Colloquium is a seminar series at Kellogg College, Oxford.
Ian Berryman is currently reading for a DPhil in Engineering Science. His thesis builds on work to bring a cheap solar powered oven to the world’s masses. He is also the President of the Oxford Energy Society.
In the past 5 years there has been an explosion of interest in a new way to raise capital for projects for entrepreneurs and start-ups: Crowdfunding. It has seen projects as diverse as video games consoles, television series and even breweries opening around the world, and allows the general public the chance to become intimately involved with the projects that they back.
‘Cosy’ is a home environment-control product developed by Green Energy Options (GEO) that was successfully launched on Kickstarter in 2013, raising over £20,000. Since then Cosy has been going from strength to strength, even with tough competition from the likes of Nest and Tado.
Simon Anderson, the Chief Strategy Officer of GEO, will coming to discuss how Crowdfunding is allowing for a fundamental shift in how small companies and start-ups can launch their products. He will discuss the unique challenges that Crowdfunding creates, the many advantages, and ultimately how it is allowing rapid technological change across a range of industries.
Professor David Vines, Director, Ethics & Economics, The Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, will talk about his new book Capital Failure: Rebuilding Trust in Financial Services.
The book talk will be followed by a book signing
About the Speaker
David Vines is Director, Ethics & Economics, The Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School; Professor of Economics, and a Fellow of Balliol College, at the University of Oxford. He is also Adjunct Professor of Economics at the Australian National University, and a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research.
From 2008 to 2012 he was the Research Director of the European Union’s Framework Seven PEGGED Research Program, which analysed Global Economic Governance within Europe. Professor Vines received a BA from Melbourne University in 1971, and subsequently an MA and PhD from Cambridge University. From 1985 to 1992 he was Adam Smith Professor of Political Economy at the University of Glasgow.
His research interests are in macroeconomics, including financial frictions, fiscal and monetary interactions, and financial crisis. His recent books include: The Leaderless Economy: Why the World Economic System Fell Apart and How to Fix It (Princeton University Press, 2013, with Peter Temin); The IMF and its Critics: Reform of Global Financial Architecture (Cambridge University Press, 2004, with Christopher Gilbert); The Asian Financial Crisis: Causes, Contagion and Consequences (Cambridge University Press, 1999, with Pierre-Richard Agénor, Marcus Miller, and Axel Weber) and his latest book Capital Failure: Rebuilding Trust in Financial Services (Oxford University Press, 2014, with Nicholas Morris).
About the Book
Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ relied on the self-interest of individuals to produce good outcomes. Economists’ belief in efficient markets took this idea further by assuming that all individuals are selfish. This belief underpinned financial deregulation, and the theories on incentives and performance which supported it. However, although Adam Smith argued that although individuals may be self-interested, he argued that they also have other-regarding motivations, including a desire for the approbation of others. This book argues that the trust-intensive nature of financial services makes it essential to cultivate such other-regarding motivations, and it provides proposals on how this might be done.
Trustworthiness in the financial services industry was eroded by deregulation and by the changes to industry structure which followed. Incentive structures encouraged managers to disguise risky products as yielding high returns, and regulation failed to curb this risk-taking, rent-seeking behaviour. The book makes a number of proposals for reforms of governance, and of legal and regulatory arrangements, to address these issues. The proposals seek to harness values and norms that would reinforce ‘other-regarding’ behaviour, so that the firms and individuals in the financial services act in a more trustworthy manner.
Interested in nano research combining physics, chemistry, engineering and materials science? The following talk may be of interest:
Nanoscience is the science of the very small. But why is that interesting? Alexandra Grigore and Tarun Vemulkar, both PhD students at ‘the other place’, will talk about their experience working in this multidisciplinary field and what the future could hold for someone working in the area. Things that they will talk about will include DNA origami and nanopores for faster genetic sequencing, nanomagnetic devices, photonic structures in butterfly wings, latest solar cell technologies, 3D metamaterials and more. If you are considering a PhD, this is also a chance to ask them questions about their interdisciplinary 4 year MRes + PhD programme at the Nano Doctoral Training Centre (NanoDTC) in Cambridge, in addition to your other questions about nanotechnology.