Mike Mesterton-Gibbons grew up in Coventry and graduated in 1974 with a BA in Mathematics from the University of York and in 1977 with a DPhil in Applied Mathematics from the University of Oxford. He moved to the US in 1982 for a tenure-track position in the Department of Mathematics at Florida State University, where he has been a full professor since 1996 and recently became an emeritus professor. His research develops game-theoretic models of animal behaviour, on which he has published numerous articles. He is also the author of three texts on modelling and optimization, and until recently was an editor for Journal of Theoretical Biology.

Abstract: I joined Florida State University as an assistant professor in 1982 to teach mathematics and to do research on fluid dynamics, a natural enough progression,since my DPhil thesis was on magnetohydrodynamics and I had later worked on helicopter dynamics. Yet I have done no research on fluid dynamics ever since. Improbably, given that I have never taken a course in biology, my career has instead been dominated by models of animal behaviour known as games, usually developed in collaboration with biologists in an effort to answer questions raised by their field studies. I will begin my presentation by describing the work that I ended up doing (in a wholly non-technical fashion). I will then talk about how I got there, sharing my perspective on life abroad in academe.

Katharine Hayhoe has been named one of FORTUNE’s ‘World’s Greatest Leaders’, TIME’s ‘100 Most Influential People’ and Huffington Post’s ‘20 Climate Champions’, and has shared the stage with Barack Obama and Leonardo DiCaprio to talk about climate change.

She is a climate scientist and a Christian based in Texas and has pioneered a way of talking about climate change that truly engages people as human beings and reaches even the most resistant of audiences.

Katharine’s approach is patient and compassionate and modeled after conversations she had with her husband, a linguistics professor and pastor who once himself had doubts about climate change. She is a brilliant communicator who spends her time talking with all sorts of people, from oil field engineers to Christian college students. She believes that “each of us, exactly as we are, with the values we already have, has every reason we need to care about climate change.”

She will be coming to Oxford on Wednesday 15th November 2017 as a guest of Climate Outreach, in partnership with The University Church of St Mary. At this not-to-be-missed event, Katharine will be in conversation with Climate Outreach’s founder George Marshall about how we can use community values to get people on board with climate change, why social science is more effective than statistics, graphs and facts in engaging people, and why we all need to get talking, and keep talking, about climate change.

The event will take place at The University Church of St Mary in Oxford on 15 November. Doors will open at 7pm for a 7:30pm start, and the event will be followed by a drinks reception.

Tickets cost £3 but students can attend for free upon showing a valid student ID on the night, but please register your place online to reserve a space.
This event is wheelchair accessible.

By the end of the century our energy system will have to be transformed. However it is not clear when and how.

Professor Steve Cowley, Acting Director of the Oxford Martin School and President of Corpus Christi, will discuss the issues and particularly the role of Nuclear energy in the transition.

What is the naughtiest word you can think of? The baddest of bad language, the monarch of F-bombs? The word you swore you’d NEVER say, but sometimes makes a sneaky reappearance after a stubbed toe or a football loss. Well for one night only you can put away the swear box, take yourself off the naughty step and join Science Oxford for an evening of purposeful profanity.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) researcher and swearing enthusiast Emma Byrne – author of Swearing Is Good For You explores how bad words might actually be good for us. At this interactive event, you’ll get the chance to see and try out some AI and swearing experiments, including playing with web robots, designing your own swearing test, and perhaps, just perhaps, taking on the ‘ice water challenge’ to experience how swearing affects your resilience in extreme conditions!

Emma Byrne is an AI researcher with an interest in the neuroscience of swearing. She likes to explore methods for conducting unusual experiments to find out the weird and wonderful stuff in our minds.

Copies of ‘Swearing is Good for You’ will be available to purchase on the night and Emma will be doing a book signing.

Suitable for ages 16+

The Oxford constituency of the Spanish Researchers in the United Kingdom (SRUK) is holding a discussion panel entitled “Women in science and the glass ceiling” where three invited speakers will give a short talk about the topic, followed by a discussion where the attendees can actively participate.

The invited experts will highlight how the world of science needs to become accessible for everyone, women and girls. The discussion will cover the earlier stages of education, where children become interested in science, to the later stages of the scientific career, where excellent science and innovation require the talents of both women and men. We will evaluate why women’s progress in research is slow and why there are too few female scientists occupying top positions in scientific decision-making, limiting the important potential of highly skilled human capital.

The event will take place on the 18th of November at the The Jam Factory (Hollybush Row, Oxford, OX1 1HU) and it will start at 10:30AM.

This is a free event and open to the public, but registration is needed via Eventbrite.

Professor Tim Shreeve will explore why different species of butterflies have alternative responses to environmental change.

Butterflies are important indicators of environmental change and their status in the UK and Europe is changing rapidly. Tim’s research encompasses thermoregulation, behaviour, wing colouration, microhabitat use and phylogenetics. This has led to new ways of understanding butterflies responses to land use and climate changes. Whilst this aids their conservation – the more that is learnt, the more unanswered questions emerge.

Tim will also address intriguing questions about the identity of the species populations we are trying to conserve. He will draw on current work identifying separate ‘evolutionary units’ using DNA barcoding – revealing that the identification and preservation of biodiversity is a complex issue that cannot be dealt with by treating species as single units.

THIS EVENT HAS UNFORTUNATELY BEEN CANCELLED

Time to chill? Skate down to The Bullingdon this Christmas for a blizzard of talks by our talented Oxford science performers. Watch them take to the stage to deliver some of the coolest science of all time, with arctic acts and live liquid nitrogen demos that will give you the chills. Journey below zero and discover what happens to the world when the temperature drops, how do animals survive? It’s going to be a stormingly good night!

Amongst the acts is singing mathematician (and 2016 FameLab UK winner) Kyle D Evans, who’ll be giving us his own take on The Twelve days of Christmas. Kathryn Boast – Quantum Materials Outreach Officer for @OxfordPhysics and Dark Matter aficionado – who will be making objects levitate using liquid nitrogen, and Science Oxford’s very own ice-cream lady (and Director of Education and Engagement) Bridget Holligan who will be serving up half-time chilly treats! The evening will be compered by writer and film maker, Mark Pritchard.

For information on our booking terms and conditions visit the website.

CARU | Arts re Search Annual Conference 2017

“What does it mean to research art / to research through art?”

CARU brings together artists and researchers for yet another day of cross-disciplinary exploration into arts research! The event will consist of an exciting mixture of talks and performances from a variety of creative and academic disciplines, including Fine Art, Live Art, Social Practice, Art History, Anthropology, Education, Science and Technology, to question and debate various areas of arts research, such as themes, material/form, documentation and practice methodology.

Keynote talk: ‘Resonances and Discords’
Speaker: Prof. Kerstin Mey
PVC and Dean, Westminster School of Media, Arts and Design, University of Westminster
“The presentation will explore research in art at the interface to other epistemological systems and approaches. Drawing on case studies, it will explore key strategies and tactical manoeuvres of knowledge making in order to explore the hermeneutics of practice led inquiry in the space of art.”

Presentations include:

“The artist in the boardroom: Action research within decision-making spaces”

“Exploring the Art space as fluid cultural site through the immediacy of the performance and its inherent collaborative ethos”

“Chapter 1 (draft): Using text in performance: a range of strategies”

“Memory and identity within Bosnia’s Mass Graves”

“Fermenting conversations”

“Arcade Interface Art Research”

“Making sounds happen is more important than careful listening (with cups)”

“Shadow:Other:myself / photographic research from 2010”

“Un-knowing unknowing in painting as research”

“Developing an artistic epistemology”

Register at: www.ars2017.eventbrite.co.uk

Today we are witnessing many shifts in scholarly practice, in and across multiple disciplines, as researchers embrace digital techniques to tackle established questions in new ways and new questions afforded by our increasingly digital society and digitised collections.

These methods include computational techniques but also citizen science, and the notion of Social Machines provides a lens onto this scholarly ecosystem. Looking ahead we see greater citizen engagement and increasing automation, with massive data supply through living in the Internet of Things and the adoption of machine learning. Ultimately this is about the role of the human in the future of research, and with it the ethics of responsible innovation.

Image credit: Angela Guyton

William Myers (author of Bio Art: Altered Realities) explains how BioArt responds to our changing definitions of life, nature, and identity.

Part of the special exhibition Anna Dumitriu: BioArt and Bacteria

Professor Fabrizio Schifano studied at the University of Padua, qualifying in both psychiatry and clinical pharmacology. He spent several years as a consultant in the Italian health service before moving to the UK to lecture at St George’s University of London. In 2006 he joined the University of Hertfordshire as Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics – a role he combines with part-time work as an addiction psychiatrist for the Hertfordshire NHS Trust.

Given that, according to statistics, between 15% and 25% of Oxbridge students take or have at some point taken cognitive enhancers, it is becoming increasingly vital to have an informed conversation about their effects, risks and benefits. Professor Fabrizio Schifano, the Chair in Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of Hertfordshire, is an expert on drug abuse and novel psychoactive substances, having worked closely with the EU to address the issues of legal highs, cognitive enhancers and other grey area compounds often taken recreationally.

£2 on the door for non-members. Membership allows you to enter any of our regular talks for free, and is available on the door for purchase:
£10 a year or £20 for life. Also includes membership of the Cambridge University Scientific Society.

What makes chemistry so boring?

Talk followed by questions and discussion.

All wecome

This is one of a series of weekly talks organized by the Oxford Communist Corresponding Society. These talks are held every Thursday from 7:30pm to 9:00pm in the Mitre (upstairs function room), which is on the junction of High St and Turl St. The full list is:

Thursday 18 January
What makes chemistry so boring?

Thursday 25 January
Bitcoin: tulips from cyberspace

Thursday 1 February
The golden hammer: Druidism and its class background

Thursday 8 February
Marxism and gender identity

Thursday 15 February
The gates of mercy in arbitrary space: the National Health state

Thursday 22 February
The dream of human life: art in the Italian Renaissance

Thursday 1 March
The political economy of neural networks

Thursday 8 March
Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) and the road to power

A free lecture by Robert O. Ritchie of Lawrence Berkeley (USA). Free pre-lecture drinks and nibbles and free post-lecture buffet and drinks (please email lorraine.laird@materials.ox.ac.uk to reserve a place). Abstract:
The ability of a material to undergo limited deformation is a critical aspect of conferring toughness as this feature enables the local dissipation of high stresses which would otherwise cause fracture. The mechanisms of such deformation can be widely diverse. Although plasticity from dislocation motion in crystalline materials is most documented, inelastic deformation can also occur via in situ phase transformations in certain metals and ceramics, sliding of mineralized collagen fibrils in tooth dentin and bone, rotation of such fibrils in skin, frictional motion between mineral “platelets” in seashells, and even by mechanisms that also lead to fracture such as shear banding in glasses and microcracking in geological materials and bone. Resistance to fracture (toughness) is thus a compromise – a combination of two, often mutually exclusive, properties of strength and deformability. It can also be considered as a mutual competition between intrinsic damage processes that operate ahead of the tip of a crack to promote its advance and extrinsic crack-tip shielding mechanisms that act mostly behind the crack tip to locally diminish crack-tip stresses and strains. Here we examine the interplay between strength and ductility and between intrinsic and extrinsic mechanisms in developing toughness in a range of biological and natural materials, including bone, skin and fish scales, and in certain advanced metallic alloys, including bulk-metallic glasses and high-entropy alloys.

Dr. Claire Patterson is Associate Principal Scientist in Biopharmaceutics at AstaraZeneca, Macclesfield. She works at the interface between formulation development and in vivo product performance.

Claire’s talk will introduce concepts in building mechanistic models of intestinal drug absorption to ensure safe, efficacious, and robust performance of medicines in patients.

Immense ingenuity and unprecedented levels of funding are available for drug discovery, yet pharmaceutical research and development is failing to produce the medicines society requires. New organisational models of drug discovery are clearly needed, and members of the Oxford Martin Programme on Affordable Medicines will contend that open science approaches represent a promising path forward.

Part of the Hilary Term Lecture Series “Health: Fresh perspectives”

Further information and registration: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/event/2522

This fifteen-year project has studied the fates and fortunes of 400 or so of the rarest plants in the county. The rate of loss of species has risen sharply from about one per decade to over ten per decade in the 1970s to 90s. Some of the loss has been due to habitats becoming unsuitable – as arable fields are now too clean for wild-flowers. Too much nutrient enrichment also makes habitats unsuitable, particularly water courses. Management is often important – small acid-loving plants have been shaded out on the Chiltern Commons when grazing has ceased. Active measures may be stemming the tide, and species are even returning – last year the Loddon pondweed returned to the Thames, and dioecious sedge was refound at the Lye Valley in Oxford.

As a graphic designer, publisher and wildlife expert, Peter Creed brings a keen eye for detail and a passion for wildlife into all of his design projects. He provides a wealth of experience of printed and online wildlife media to NatureBureau and hosts an image library of thousands of flora and fauna. He is also much in demand for leading wildlife walks and giving lectures.

Dr Lambrick studied botany at Cambridge and in New Guinea before she came to Oxford in 1978. Here she worked briefly for BBOWT as an orchid warden, and was involved in starting the Oxford Conservation Volunteers. In 1993 she set up ANHSO’s Rare Plants Group, now the Oxfordshire Flora Group, which works in partnerships with many bodies to carry out monitoring, experiments and introductions to protect endangered plants in the county. From 2000-07 she was employed to carry out biological surveys on the Local Wildlife Sites by the Thames Valley Environmental Records Centre.

The Oxford constituency participates in the commemoration of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science with a guided tour through some of the most iconic places in Oxford city center, linking them to the women who made decisive contributions to science and arts.

The tour will last around two hours, starting at 12 pm from the main entrance at History of Science Museum (Broad Street, OX1 3AZ Oxford). This event is free and open to the public, so we encourage all of you to attend.

We look forward to seeing you there!

If you have an idea but you don’t know where to start or if you are interested in entrepreneurship, this is a must-attend event for you!
Time: 5:30 pm on 12th February
Venue: Main Seminar Room, New Biochemistry, south Parks road
In this event, participants will have the opportunity to engage in a science innovation workshop.
Speakers will present their experiences as either successful science entrepreneurs or investors, giving valuable tips on how to make the transition from a good idea to building a start-up and securing investment. At the end, participants will have the chance to take part in a “hands-on” activity and interact with our experienced speakers. Limited spots available.
There will be a networking & drinks reception after the event!
As always, this event is free and everyone is welcome!

About the speakers:

Lachlan is an investor at Oxford Sciences Innovation, a £600m fund launched in 2015 to back IP driven business originating from University of Oxford research. Lachlan studied Chemistry at Oxford before joining OSI and has made 6 investments in technologies at the intersection of physical and life sciences, including ONI and Spybiotech.
Dr Michalis Papadakis is a co-founder and the CEO of Brainomix, an award winning University of Oxford spin-out. Building the company from the ground up he has significant experience in start-ups and innovation. He has led the development, regulatory clearance and commercialisation of medical imaging, decision support tools for stroke diagnosis and treatment. He has secured and managed more than £1.5 million of Innovate UK funding and £2.7 million of private investment. He has a BSc Honours in Biochemistry from Imperial College and a PhD in Neurosciences from UCL School of Pharmacy. In 2005, he joined the Laboratory of Cerebral Ischaemia at the University of Oxford where he was the scientific director. He has been an invited speaker at international stroke conferences and has more than 25 publications in the field of cerebral ischemia and translational stroke research studies.

They say you never forget your first love. David Acheson believes you never forget your first moment of real excitement in mathematics, either. So why not join him for an informal and off-beat look at mathematics at its very best, with a bit of romantic guitar playing thrown in for good measure.

David Acheson is an Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, and author of the best-selling popular maths book ‘1089 and All That’, which has now been translated into 11 languages. His new book The Calculus Story was one of New Scientist’s ‘picks for Christmas’.

Old Images of Abingdon – various images and what they show.

Speakers AAAHS members: Anne Smithson, Judy White, Jackie Smith, Jessica Brod, Manfred Brod and John Foreman.

The meeting will consist of a number of shorter presentations about different paintings, pictures or photographs that are of interest to the speakers based around an image of Abingdon or images that has local connections.

For more information please visit www.aaahs.org.uk
Visitors are very welcome to attend meetings at a cost of £3.
If you want to join the Abingdon Area Archaeological & Historical Society, there’s a membership form on this website, or you can contact any of the committee members.

As part of Bletchley Park Week 2018 Ben Goldacre will be giving this talk entitled ‘Bad Science, Better Data’.

Ben Goldacre is a doctor, researcher, best-selling author, and Director of the DataLab at the Dept of Primary Care in the University of Oxford. The DataLab is a multidisciplinary team of researchers, clinicians and software engineers, working together to build useful data-driven tools, in addition to academic papers. This talk will cover the full range of their work, putting data into action: from efforts to make NHS informatics less bad, through to services that spotlight unreported clinical trials.

All are welcome to join us for this talk, booking is required. To book your free place please book here. Refreshments will be served from 15:00, the talk will begin at 15:30

Mental health, like other areas of medicine, is set to benefit from dramatic advances in the biological and medical sciences – yet values (what matters or is important to those concerned) are key to the differentiation between pathological delusions and positive spiritual experiences. The discussion will explore, from both philosophical and medical perspectives, how values and science come together in mental health indicating, in particular, the role of cultural values in how delusions are experienced and hence how they impact on the lives of those concerned.

Do we need more management and leadership skills? Do we need to know more about intellectual property? Perhaps we should learn more about the benefits of programming? As future leaders in science, we need to be trained as confident researchers, group leaders, founders of companies and industry executives.

Professor Stephen Caddick will discuss the current strategy of the Wellcome Trust with regard to innovation and will share his experience as a leader at one of the UK’s most important funding bodies. A panel of DPhil students and early career researchers will share their ideas on the matter and maybe even influence the current strategy that the Wellcome Trust will be implementing.

We are inviting you to make a real difference! The Wellcome Trust is looking for methods to improve the training of early career researchers. So come and discuss your ideas with Professor Stephen Caddick!

Time: 6:00 pm on 6th March
Venue: Main Seminar Room, New Biochemistry, South Parks Road

Limited spots available.
There will be a networking & drinks reception after the event.
As always, this event is free and everyone is welcome!

Biography:
Professor Stephen Caddick joined the Wellcome Trust in June 2015 and leads the Innovations division. Previously, he was Vice Provost (Enterprise & London) and Vernon Professor of Organic Chemistry and Chemical Biology at University College London. Stephen is a member of the London Local Enterprise Panel and the Scientific Advisory Board for MRC Technology, and Chair of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) Enterprise and Innovation Community. He is co-founder of Synthetic Pages, an open access website, and Thiologics, an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) biotech spin-out company. His laboratory focuses on chemical modification of proteins and antibodies for development of therapeutics and diagnostics. He has played an important role in the development of the chemical biology strategy and facilities within the Francis Crick Institute.

Worcester Medical Society is incredibly excited to bring you a talk by Dr Ben Goldacre, author of “Bad Science”, “Bad Pharma”, and plenty of fascinating articles on how science is used and misused. He has published extensively in all major newspapers and academic journals, and appears regularly on radio and TV from Newsnight to QI.

He has written government papers and reports on evidence-based policy, founded a successful global campaign for research transparency, and currently works as an academic at Oxford, where he runs the EBMdataLab building live data tools to make science and medicine better, like OpenPrescribing and OpenTrials. His blog is at www.badscience.net and he is @bengoldacre on twitter.

Please join us at 8pm on Tuesday 6th March in the beautiful new Nazrin Shah building at Worcester to hear this fascinating talk!

Bright Club is a night of academics, researchers and scientists turning their work into stand-up for your entertainment. Part of a national network, Bright Club trains academics to make their work accessible, interesting and above all funny

Hosted by Iszi Lawrence and headlined by climate scientist Matt Winning

Dr Simone Sturniolo will talk about How computational science helps us understand the world and how you can try it too.