Some face-to-face events are returning. Check carefully for any requirements.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or “drones”) have been in consumer hands and newspaper headlines for several years now. While their much-touted potential to dramatically change modern existence is slowly beginning to emerge, it sometimes seems like their most notable success thus far has been in crashing into everything in sight.
This talk will take a brief look at the devices currently available for the everyday consumer and what to expect in the near future. It will then explore some exciting legitimate uses as well as the manifold creative misuses people have devised. Finally it will discuss the potential countermeasures that have been proposed to detect UAVs, disable or commandeer them, and trace misuse back to operators.
Richard Baker is a member of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Cybersecurity, within the Software and Systems Security group. His DPhil work focuses on the opportunities that UAVs provide as an inexpensive mobile platform, as well as technologies to help protect privacy despite their widespread use. Prior to studying in Oxford he was a software developer for a number of years, in the UK and Switzerland. He holds an MEng degree in Computer Science from Imperial College London.
Mitigating climate requires a transition to low carbon energy systems and renewable energy looks increasingly likely to play a key role, but the most important resources are intermittent.
This lecture will describe the research of the Oxford Martin Programme on Integrating Renewable Energy, on how intermittency and related challenges can be addressed, technically and in markets and policy.
Registration required

After being diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (MND), Ted goes on the trip of a lifetime…and so does his pet fish. As the disease starts to cause his mobility to degenerate, Ted rushes to experience a world that is outside of his comfort zone; from the streets of Lille to the romance of Venice.
Humorous, heart-warming and hopeful, CELL features charming puppetry, physical theatre and an original score to tell the story of one man’s final adventure to create enough memories to last a lifetime.
The performance will be followed by a discussion with a member of the cast and Kevin Talbot a Motor Neurone Disease expert.
Nominated for a Peter Brook Award, CELL is the outcome of a new collaboration between two of the most exciting young companies in the UK.
★★★★ “A celebration of technique and emotion” – The Stage
★★★★ “Combining a mix of puppetry forms and an evocative original score with breathtaking technical brilliance, CELL is a visual theatre gem.” – The List
★★★★★ “As perfect a piece of theatre as one is likely to see.” – The New Current
Suitable for ages 11+
Smoking Apples and Dogfish production www.cell-show.co.uk
CELL is presented at the Old Fire Station in partnership with Science Oxford.

The Biological Society are very pleased to announce that Sir Paul Nurse will be giving a talk on Friday 13th May.
Sir Paul Nurse won the Nobel Prize in 2001 alongside Sir Tim Hunt and Leland Hartwell for the discovery of the molecules that are active in controlling the cell cycle. He has previously been chair of Microbiology at Oxford, and was President of the Royal Society for 5 years. He is now Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute in London.
He will be giving a talk on the work contributing towards his Nobel Prize, and more recent work.
This is a fantastic opportunity to hear Sir Paul talk and have the opportunity to ask questions, and we really hope many of you will be interested
This talk will be at 6pm on Friday 13th May, in the Goss lecture theatre, Medical Sciences teaching building
The talk is free for members, and £3 for non-members, with membership available on the door
In this talk Professor Daniel Kammen, Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow at INET Oxford, will discuss the strategies emerging to cost-effectively decarbonise energy systems worldwide. This work integrates elements of the science and engineering of energy systems, regional and global energy and environmental policy, and mandates and mission objectives that have emerged from the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, and energy and climate planning in both developed and developing nations.
As Science Envoy for the US Secretary of State, Kammen will also examine opportunities that have arisen as result of the Paris Climate Accord, and US and Chinese climate agreement.
This lecture will be followed by a drinks reception, all welcome.
Registration required.

As part of National Dementia Week and in partnership with the Ultimate Picture Palace, Science Oxford hosts a showing of Iris.
She wrote about the power of the unconscious – but it was memory that consumed her.
This award-winning, biographical film tells the story of a romance between two Oxford students – the wilful, philosophical novelist Iris Murdoch and her devoted husband, English scholar John Bayley. Starring Dame Judi Dench, Kate Winslet and Jim Broadbent, it charts Iris’ early life and tragic decline as Alzheimer’s disease took hold of this once brilliant woman. The film will be followed by a discussion (led by a dementia expert) which explores the role reversals, relationship strains and identity crises that can accompany Alzheimer’s disease.
’An intelligent, literate film with a sure sense of its world and honest, moving performances.’ Geoff Andrew, Time Out
Age 15+
Vector-borne diseases are transmitted to humans through another living organism, such as malaria via the mosquito. This type of disease accounts for roughly 17% of all disease and causes nearly a million deaths annually. In this talk Professor Michael Bonsall will discuss vector-borne diseases, how we might control them and how maths and modern genetics might help. He will also provide some recent insights from work in the Zoology Department in Oxford on the unfolding Zika epidemic in the Americas.

The Technology and Management Centre for Development at the Oxford Department of International Development invites you to our upcoming research seminars.
These research seminars are intended to connect active researchers and students on the topics of innovation, technology and management for development. This is a chance to exchange ideas, learn and connect not just with TMCD staff, researchers and fellows but also the innovation research community at large at Oxford. These afternoons are a great opportunity to seek feedback and learn new viewpoints on our research interests.
Sandwiches and refreshments will be provided.
Open to students, lecturers, practitioners and researchers.
Prevention and management of infectious diseases remains one of this century’s biggest challenges. As drugs and vaccinations have proliferated, protection from disease has increasingly been seen as an individual problem, requiring individual action. But due to the evolution of anti-microbial resistance, vaccine refusal and rapid disease transmission through global trade and travel, the impact of the drugs and vaccines that we have come to take for granted is undermined.
This lecture will explore the importance of understanding the ‘Human Factor’ in disease management, looking at the effects of policy on individual and group behaviour and at the role psychology plays in developing a new understanding of collective moral responsibility for infectious disease. The lecture is an introduction to the Oxford Martin Programme on Collective Responsibility for Infectious Disease, an interdisciplinary team from zoology, history, philosophy, psychology and medicine.
Registration required.

Kamal Mahtani, NHS GP, NIHR Clinical Lecturer and Deputy Director at the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine.
Kamal Mahtani will be giving a free talk as part of the MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care Programme.
Kamal’s main activities are divided between providing direct clinical care to patients, research and teaching. Kamal’s main focus is on evidence synthesis and the acquisition and generation of high quality evidence that can support and underpin clinical practice and policy. Kamal also has experience in clinical trials, database analysis and qualitative work.

Data, long understood as essential evidence for scholarship, are now viewed as products to be shared, reused, and curated. Libraries, long understood to be responsible for curating the products of scholarship, are now assessing their roles in acquiring, managing, and sustaining access to research data. While libraries have adapted to the evolution of document technologies for centuries – from papyri to eReaders – accepting long-term obligations for research data may reposition the role of the library in the university. Publications, the traditional remit of libraries, play established roles in scholarship. Data are much different entities than publications. Rarely do they stand alone, separable from software, protocols, lab and field conditions, and other context. Data practices are local, varying from field to field, individual to individual, and country to country. They are a lens to observe the rapidly changing landscape of scholarly work in the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. Inside the black box of data is a plethora of research, technology, and policy issues. Concerns for data sharing and open access raise questions about what data to keep, what to share, when, how, and with whom. The stakes and stakeholders in research data are many and varied, posing new challenges for scholars, librarians, policy makers, publishers, students, and their partners. This talk is drawn from Big Data, Little Data, No Data: Scholarship in the Networked World (MIT Press, 2015), much of which was written at the University of Oxford when the author was an Oliver Smithies Fellow at Balliol College in 2012-2013.
Christine L. Borgman, Distinguished Professor and Presidential Chair in Information Studies at UCLA, is the author of more than 250 publications in information studies, computer science, and communication. These include three books from MIT Press: Big Data, Little Data, No Data: Scholarship in the Networked World (2015), winner of the 2015 American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Award) in Computing and Information Sciences; Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet (2007); and From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure: Access to Information in a Networked World (2000). The latter two books won the Best Information Science Book of the Year award from the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIST). She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Association for Computing Machinery; a member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Privacy Information Center; U.S. Co-Chair of the CODATA-ICSTI Task Group on Data Citation and Attribution; and previously served on the U.S. National Academies’ Board on Research Data and Information and the U.S. National CODATA. She received the Paul Evan Peters Award from the Coalition for Networked Information, Association for Research Libraries, and EDUCAUSE, and the Research in Information Science Award from ASIST. In 2004-2005 she was a Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Internet Institute; in 2012-2013, she was an Oliver Smithies Fellow at Balliol College and a Visiting Scholar at both the Oxford Internet Institute and the Oxford eResearch Centre, University of Oxford. Prof. Borgman directs the Center for Knowledge Infrastructures at UCLA with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

Research into the brain basis of neuropsychiatric conditions can use clues to identify which brain regions are implicated, based on the known relationships between brain structure and function. Using human brain tissue donations as well as live brain scanning, in Oxford University we are conducting research into the brain architecture of basic sensory processing and higher cognitive functions which are disrupted in these neuropsychiatric conditions. This talk describes recent developments that will fuel current and future neurobiological and clinical research, including potential new biomarkers and neuroimaging technology.
Steven Chance: After studying for an undergraduate degree in Human Sciences at UCL in London, Dr Chance undertook his doctoral research in psychiatry and neuroscience at the University of Oxford. He was then awarded a research fellowship and he and his research group have since conducted several research projects on the neurobiology and functional anatomy of autism, schizophrenia and dementia. He is now Associate Professor in Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford where he is also co-director of the UK Autism Brain Bank. He has been one of the pioneers in the application of post-mortem brain imaging and in the assessment of columnar organization of the cerebral cortex in neuropsychiatric conditions.
Moisés Hernández-Fernandez from the Oxford Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain, University of Oxford, UK will present a seminar on the
1st of June 2016, (at 1pm) entitled
“White Matter Tractography and Human Brain
Connections Using GPUs”
Abstract
Understanding the human brain is one of the key scientific challenges of the 21st century. A key component for gaining insight into brain functional mechanisms is understanding the underlying anatomical and structural organisation and how functional subunits are interconnected at the global and local scale. Studying brain organisation (and its potential disruptions) is also a necessary first step for investigating the etiology, progression and pathology of neurological and psychiatric diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease. Diffusion MRI (dMRI) uniquely allows us to study such organisation, reveal the wiring diagram of the brain, and provide estimates of tissue microstructure non-invasively and in-vivo. Despite its great potential and its wide use, the analysis includes the very time-consuming statistical modelling of four-dimensional datasets that restrict the potential and the clinical applicability of the technology. We present a novel parallel framework for analysis of dMRI data that exploits the immense computational power provided by modern GPUs and allows accelerations of up to two orders of magnitude when comparing GPU performance with a single-threaded CPU implementation.
This talk details the research that led to the NVIDIA 2016 GPU Centre of Excellence Achievement Award.
About the speaker
Moisés Hernández-Fernandez is a DPhil student at the Oxford Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain, University of Oxford. His research focuses on high performance computing applied to the analysis of diffusion MRI (dMRI) data. He is interested in how parallel computer architectures, such as Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), can be used in scientific applications that require very high computational resources. His current work uses GPUs for resolving tissue microstructural patterns and for estimating long-range brain connectivity.
This seminar is open to all and will start at 1pm in the OeRc Conference Room
(Room 278)
****Lunch will be made available****
Where poetry meets science creative sparks fly, so come along and hear ideas catch fire at SciPo – a day of talks, panel discussions and readings with the distinguished Welsh poet, Tony Curtis, Director of Medicine Unboxed, Samir Guglani, multi-award-winning poet Lesley Saunders and St Hilda’s College’s own resident science poet – Sarah Watkinson. The event will be introduced by Jenny Lewis of the Poet’s House, Oxford.
“Where have all the bumblebees gone?”
Since the mid-nineteenth century, three species of bumblebee in the British Isles have gone extinct, and several other species have become so rare that they are at risk of extinction. In this talk, Dr Darren Jeffers will discuss the causes of the decline in British bumblebees; their key role in pollination; how we might reverse
the losses and the likely effects of climate change. He will also share the results of some recent research using museum specimens of extinct species and proffers the question: Can we learn anything from these dusty depositories of ecological data to aid the conservation effort?
This is a free event with no pre-booking required.
British Science Association Oxford Branch
http://www.oxfordscibar.com/
twitter @oxfordscibar
facebook ‘British Science Association Oxfordshire Branch’

We’ve all heard of genes – they make your eyes blue, hair curly or nose straight. But how do they actually work and why do siblings look so different when they share much of their genetic makeup? Kat Arney, author of ‘Herding Hemingway’s Cats’, and her sister, comedian Helen Arney, set aside their shared genetic quirks and sibling rivalry to explain the latest thinking, telling stories with their trademark flair and wit about cats with thumbs, fish with hips and wobbly worms.

Herding Hemingway’s Cats – Understanding how our genes work
We’ve all heard of genes – they make your eyes blue, hair curly or nose straight. But how do they actually work and why do siblings look so different when they share much of their genetic makeup? Kat Arney, author of ‘Herding Hemingway’s Cats’, and her sister, comedian Helen Arney, set aside their shared genetic quirks and sibling rivalry to explain the latest thinking, telling stories with their trademark flair and wit about cats with thumbs, fish with hips and wobbly worms.

Professor Bill Fulford is a Fellow of St Catherine’s College and Member of the Philosophy Faculty, University of Oxford; Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Mental Health, University of Warwick Medical School; and Director of the Collaborating Centre for Values-based Practice, St Catherine’s College, Oxford (valuesbasedpractice.org).
The title of their talk is ‘The Montgomery ruling on consent: values and evidence in surgical care’.
Professor Ashok Handa is Associate Professor in Surgery and Director of Surgical Education at the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences at the Univeristy of Oxford.
The title of their talk is ‘The Montgomery ruling on consent: values and evidence in surgical care’.

Kay Davies has dedicated her life to the cure of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, which is one of the most common, fatal genetic disorders diagnosed in children. She contributed to the design of the pre-natal tests used around the world. Her team isolated a key gene sequence for the potential treatment of the disease, and she’s now leading clinical trials for the development of a cure. Learn about this scientific journey, and engage in a
conversation with one of the most remarkable Oxford scientists.

Leopold Eyharts flew on the Atlantis Shuttle to the International Space Station in 2008. Part of his mission included the installation of the Colombus Space Laboratory, the main contribution of Europe to the International Space Station. In 1998, Leopold flew
on a Soyouz Space Shuttle to the Russian MIR station. Engage in a conversation about his adventures and the future of manned exploration of space. Chaired by Valerie Jamieson, Editorial Content Director, New Scientist.

We all know that our satnav systems use GPS and weather forecasting uses meteorological satellites, but do you know that satellites are also used in farming, finance, transport systems, helping with natural disaster management, tracking wildlife and helping to eradicate illegal fishing? Learn about the latest satellite
technology, and how space is part of our everyday life.
Book on http://www.oxfordshiresciencefestival.com/space-day.html

Date/Time: Saturday 25 June, 15:00
Venue: Story Museum, Pembroke Street, Oxford
Admissions: £5/£4(conc.)/£16(fam.)
Suitability: 14+
Book here:
http://www.oxfordshiresciencefestival.com/sat-opening-weekend.html
How does our lifestyle affect the likelihood of developing dementia? What choices can you make to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s? Join John Gallacher for a lively discussion and Q&A on exciting new research that indicates a healthier lifestyle – including exercising, limited alcohol intake, and not smoking – is more important than genetics for cutting the risk of Alzheimer’s.

How did the Universe begin? We are now on the hunt to find signals from the Big Bang itself, looking for ripples in space-time put in at the beginning of time. Engage in a fascinating conversation with cosmologist Jo Dunkley, and find out how new telescopes in Chile and the South Pole might give us the answer!

Date/Time: Saturday 25 June, 15:00
Venue: Oxford Town Hall, Long Room
Admissions: £5/£4(conc.)/£16(fam.)
Suitability: 14+
Book here:
http://www.oxfordshiresciencefestival.com/sat-opening-weekend.html
Neural implants, nanomedicine, brain enhancing drugs, genetic engineering…
Many human enhancement technologies are emerging and raise ethical and legal
challenges. This interactive event will present scenarios and take you on a
journey to the edge of technologies and ethics.

Date/Time: Saturday 25 June, 16:30
Venue: Oxford Town Hall, Assembly Room
Admissions: £5/£4(conc.)/£16(fam.)
Suitability: 14+
Book here:
http://www.oxfordshiresciencefestival.com/sat-opening-weekend.html
Have you ever wondered if you could really grow plants on Mars? You’ve seen the movie, now come see the science behind The Martian, with Kyle Grant. His project specialises in the design of bacteria and plants that can colonise and survive in Martian and Lunar settings. In collaboration with NASA, the project hopes to one day provide crop plants and engineered bacterial counterparts for the support of astronauts on space missions.

Date/Time: Saturday 25 June, 16:30
Venue: Story Museum, Pembroke Street, Oxford
Admissions: £5/£4(conc.)/£16(fam.)
Suitability: 16+
Book here:
http://www.oxfordshiresciencefestival.com/sat-opening-weekend.html
Apocalypses and politics go hand in hand as University of Oxford physicist Fran Day takes a break from studying particles that probably don’t exist to take to the stage in
a stand-up comedy spectacular that is witty, irreverent and occasionally surreal. Equipped with bundles of laughs, what better way is there to spend your Saturday afternoon?

Date/Time: Saturday 25 June, 17:00
Venue: Oxford Town Hall, Long Room
Admissions: £5/£4(conc.)/£16(fam.)
Suitability: 14+
Book here:
http://www.oxfordshiresciencefestival.com/sat-opening-weekend.html
Why do people move? How do you decide between the risk it takes to make the journey, and the opportunities it may bring you? Based on a live experiment on Broad Street (which will take place earlier on Saturday 25 June), this discussion explores the personal characteristics one needs to have to become a migrant, and highlights the latest research on migrations.