Past Talks
Directions for Catalysts: Biofuels to Self-Healing Planes
Tue02
Oct
18:15
Directions for Catalysts: Biofuels to Self-Healing Planes
Prof. Duncan Wass
18:15, Tuesday 2 October 2018
Catalysts are the technology at the heart of the majority of industrial chemical processes, their ability to selectively and efficiently convert simple chemical building blocks into more advanced materials being crucial in these processes. This lecture will present two new directions for catalysts from my research group. Firstly, the discovery of catalysts for the upgrading of simple alcohols such as (bio) methanol and ethanol into drop-in replacements for liquid fuels such as petrol will be described. We have extended this technology to be tolerant to real fermentation broths, using alcohols drinks such as beer as a model feedstock. Secondly, we have been working on the development of self-healing carbon fibre reinforced composite materials of the type widely used in aerospace applications. Again, catalysts are the technology at the heart of achieving new materials that can repair themselves with almost full recovery of mechanical properties.
Molecules of Murder
Tue09
Oct
18:15
Molecules of Murder
Dr. John Emsley
18:15, Tuesday 9 October 2018
This talk is about the nefarious molecules with which murderers and assassins have carried out their crimes, hoping always to escape detection. Yet many such deadly molecules have long been known, and many were once widely used by doctors to treat diseases. Murders committed with them posed problems for those who would bring the murderers to justice, and chemists were to provide essential evidence. More recently, secret agents assumed that newer deadly poisons could not be detected, like that used to kill Georgi Markov in London in 1978, Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006, and Alexander Perepilichny in Weybridge in 2014. It was then up to forensic teams in the UK to discover what they had used.
Urban Water Fingerprinting to Inform of the Environment & Health
Tue16
Oct
18:15
Urban Water Fingerprinting to Inform of the Environment & Health
Dr. Barbara Kasprzyk-Hordern
18:15, Tuesday 16 October 2018
A new approach in public health epidemiology utilizing urban water fingerprinting with hyphenated mass spectrometry techniques has been recently pioneered to provide near real-time measurements of public health. Urban water fingerprinting provides anonymised but comprehensive and objective information on the health status of a population and surrounding environment in real time as urban water (sewerage system and receiving aqueous environment) pools the endo- and exogenous biomarkers of that population.
This cutting-edge approach of extracting epidemiological information from urban water emerged from Wastewater-Based Epidemiology (WBE). WBE was developed in a strong cross-sectoral and transdisciplinary collaborative ethos within SCORE (www.score-cost.eu) and SEWPROF teams (www.sewprofitn.eu), and although still in its infancy, WBE is currently used to report on community-wide illicit drug use trends and feeds into the Europe-wide evidence based early warning system by European Agency for Drugs and Drug Addiction (http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/wastewater-analysis).
This talk will introduce the concept and its rapid advances. It will focus on pharmacologically active compounds in urban water and their stereochemistry in the context of environmental risk assessment. It will also explore new avenues in the utilization of urban water fingerprinting in the assessment of population health and health risk prediction.
Mental Images & Memory Processes as Targets for Cocaine Use
Tue23
Oct
18:15
Mental Images & Memory Processes as Targets for Cocaine Use
Dr. John Marsden
18:15, Tuesday 23 October 2018
Addiction is caused by exposure and physical and mental adaptation. Addiction is treatable; but some disorders have proved resistant to medications and psychological therapies. Focusing on cocaine use disorder (CUD), John Marsden will outline learning processes that underpin and maintain CUD and describe the rationale, procedures, preliminary evidence and implications of a novel cognitive therapy.
Smart Materials
Tue13
Nov
18:15
Smart Materials
Dr. Anna Ploszajski
18:15, Tuesday 13 November 2018
Smart materials allow solid objects to sense, adapt, morph and respond to their environment. Properties like shape and colour become transient upon changes like temperature, light levels, moisture, pressure or magnetism. Many examples of smart materials exist today, but their widespread adoption has been limited. In this talk, award-winning materials engineer Dr Anna Ploszajski will explore why these remarkable materials have proven so difficult to handle, and where we might expect to see them impact our lives in the future.
Mind Reading and Interpersonal Attraction
Tue20
Nov
18:15
Mind Reading and Interpersonal Attraction
Dr. Peter Mitchell
18:15, Tuesday 20 November 2018
Most humans are good at mindreading, meaning that they are adept in interpreting signals in other's behavior to infer the cause of that behavior. The behavior in question has a proximal cause (an inner state, such as something the person is thinking), which in turn is related with a distal cause (an event in the world that triggered them to think of something in particular). The research I will present will demonstrate that people are surprisingly skilled at inferring the distal cause of others' behavior, suggesting by implication that they can infer others' inner states. Some people are easier to "read" than others. Recent evidence suggests that people who are easy to read also tend to be perceived as being likeable or interpersonally attractive.
Age-Related Changes in Synaptic Transmission in Cognitive Design
Tue27
Nov
18:15
Age-Related Changes in Synaptic Transmission in Cognitive Design
Dr. Stephen Brickley
18:15, Tuesday 27 November 2018
Cognitive decline is considered an inevitable consequence of ageing with human brain-imaging studies suggesting that functional changes in connectivity underlies this decline. My laboratory is exploring the hypothesis that cognitive decline is caused by changes in the number and/or the strength of synaptic connections. I will briefly describe the longitudinal behavioural strategies we use to monitor changes in cognitive performance. I will then introduce the automated two-photon imaging and 3D tomography techniques we have developed to trace neuronal connections. Finally, I will discuss the feasibility of combining mGRASP (mammalian GFP reconstitution across synaptic partners) with optogenetics to reveal age-related differences in the synaptic weighting of defined neuronal projections. The aim of this work is to better understand the changes taking place in the brain that could explain the inevitable cognitive decline that is associated with ageing.
Molecules in Space: Our Astrochemical Origins
Tue04
Dec
18:15
Molecules in Space: Our Astrochemical Origins
Dr. Catherine Walsh
18:15, Tuesday 4 December 2018
Molecules are found everywhere in space: in cold and dense clouds in the interstellar medium of galaxies, in planet-forming disks around young stars, and in the atmospheres of hot gas-giant exoplanets. The field of astrochemistry brings together astronomers, physicists, and chemists working on observations, theory, and experiments to increase our understanding of the chemistry that occurs under the extreme conditions in space, and to exploit the information contained within observations that can reveal the chemical, physical, and dynamical properties of astrophysical environments. In this talk I will describe how the origin of complexity seen in our Solar System and that has been exposed in the molecular inventory of comets, has its heritage in the exotic chemistry that happens in the coldest and most quiescent region in space, the interstellar medium. Along the way, I will present results from state-of-the-art space missions and telescopes that are uncovering our astrochemical origins.
Past Talks
Why We Must Change the Drug Laws to Liberate Research and Treatment
Tue08
Jan
18:15
Why We Must Change the Drug Laws to Liberate Research and Treatment
Professor David Nutt, Imperial College London
18:15, Tuesday 8 January 2019
Professor Nutt will argue that the drug laws as codified in the UN Conventions are the worst censorship of research in the history of science. For over 50 years, they have denied many opportunities for innovative treatments, many of which were established in the 1950s and 60s. Worse, they have probably increased rather than decreased the harms of drug use. He will give examples of all these and show how himself and others are beginning to move the field forward with neuroscience research.
Dr. Lizzy Ostler, University of Brighton
Tue15
Jan
18:15
Dr. Lizzy Ostler, University of Brighton
Will Red Wine and Chocolate Really Keep You Young and Healthy?
18:15, Tuesday 15 January 2019
There is growing evidence that many of the deleterious processes of ageing, such as heart disease, dementia and arthritis, could be prevented or remediated by simple chemical compounds. Recent work has demonstrated that the removal or alteration of phenotype of senescent cells has the potential to reduce multiple age-related pathologies. The development of orally-available broad-spectrum anti-degenerative medicines is now a realistic goal. A wide variety of polyphenolic natural products, often isolated from “super-foods” including grapes and cocoa beans, have long been identified as potential lead compounds for anti-ageing therapeutics. However, many such compounds have multiple biological activities, and may be poorly absorbed. We have established simple, robust and high-yielding syntheses to facilitate access to a broad range of structural variants of compounds based on Resveratrol, and subjected this panel of “Resveralogues” to a wide variety of in vitro assays, with a particular focus on activities related to cell growth and senescence. A subset of our compounds is able to “rejuvenate” cultures of senescent cells by altering RNA splicing patterns, lengthening telomeres, and enabling a significant fraction of cells to re-enter normal cell cycle. The implications of this novel mechanism for the design of future anti-degeneratives will be presented.
Perfume = Chemistry + Artistry: An Interactive Talk
Tue22
Jan
18:15
Perfume = Chemistry + Artistry: An Interactive Talk
Ruth Mastenbroek, Ruth Mastenbroek Fragrances
18:15, Tuesday 22 January 2019
(Perfume smelling interactive talk). Ruth will show some key synthetic ingredients that have changed the world of perfume, and talk about how she went from being an Oxford Chemistry graduate to the only independent perfumer in Britain today.
The Science of Climate Change – and what we can do about it.
Tue29
Jan
18:15
The Science of Climate Change – and what we can do about it.
Professor Joanna Haigh, Imperial College London
18:15, Tuesday 29 January 2019
Since the industrial revolution the surface temperature of the Earth has increased by about 1°C and climate scientists are overwhelmingly of the opinion that this largely due to the effect of gases released into the atmosphere by human activities. How can we be sure that this is the case? Does it matter? What can we say about the future? In this talk Jo Haigh will outline the evidence for climate change, in temperature and other measures, globally and regionally in the context of natural variations in climate, and she will discuss what is well known and what less certain. She will describe how the climate reflects a delicate balance between the energy coming in from the Sun and the heat energy leaving Earth for space, and how this can be disrupted by increasing concentrations of “greenhouse gases”, especially carbon dioxide (CO2). She will show how basic physical science can be used to construct computer models of the climate which can then be employed to investigate how climate processes work and what increasing CO2 may mean for the future. The talk will conclude with a discussion around different approaches to tackling climate change and where the world is heading following the recent United Nations climate conferences.
The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again?) of Probiotics
Tue05
Feb
18:15
The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again?) of Probiotics
Dr Linda Thomas
18:15, Tuesday 5 February 2019
The talk describes how the probiotic concept developed and was commercialised. It will explain how probiotics became popular and why the word ‘probiotic’ started to disappear from commercial use. It will finish by explaining why Linda believes this type of product will re-emerge, because of the critical effects of the gut microbiota on health, throughout life.
The First Prize Medal for Science: The Origin of the Royal Society’s Copley Medal
Tue19
Feb
18:15
The First Prize Medal for Science: The Origin of the Royal Society’s Copley Medal
Dr. Rebekah Higgitt, University of Kent
18:15, Tuesday 19 February 2019
It has become common for exceptional achievements, including within science, to be rewarded with a prize medal. The ubiquity of prize medals for science today means that the history of the first, the Copley Medal, has been overlooked. Rather than simply noting the exploits of famous winners - such as Franklin, Priestley and Herschel - this talk explores the creation of a novelty and the meaning of medals to the Royal Society's 18th-century fellows. The scheme required an investment of time, money, thought and skill, and the creation of a design that borrowed from contemporary ideas about experimental philosophy, antiquarianism and Freemasonry. The Copley Medal did not arrive fully formed as a reward system, but accrued meaning and value from its associations.
3D Printing and its Applications Across Pharmacy and Chemical Synthesis
Tue26
Feb
18:15
3D Printing and its Applications Across Pharmacy and Chemical Synthesis
Dr Stephen Hilton, University College London
18:15, Tuesday 26 February 2019
This lecture describes the use of 3D printing and its applications in the fields of Chemistry and Pharmacy. This lecture covers our experience of 3D printing and how it changed our research in chemical synthesis and drug delivery. The implications for this and its facilitation of cross-disciplinary research will be described.
Measuring the Dark Web
Tue05
Mar
18:15
Measuring the Dark Web
Cerys Bradley, University College London
18:15, Tuesday 5 March 2019
The Dark Web is a hidden part of our world populated by anonymous users and unknown to search engines. How then, do researchers understand this space? PhD student Cerys Bradley will discuss their research on Dark Net Markets and their role in the online drugs trade and describe how you conduct research on a population deliberately trying to remain hidden. This talk is intended for an audience with little to no prior knowledge of the Dark Web and contains a small interactive element for willing participants.
In Vino Veritas (et Moleculis)
Tue19
Mar
18:15
In Vino Veritas (et Moleculis)
Dr Stephen Potts (Presidential Lecture)
18:15, Tuesday 19 March 2019
Some might say wine is a solution to problems, but in truth it is simply just a solution. Many of the flavours and textures in the glass come from what chemists know and love: molecules! This talk will take you through the molecules responsible for the acidity, sweetness and flavour of wine, including aromas that are typical of specific grape varieties, the production process itself and wine faults. There will be an opportunity to sniff some of the molecules in question, so come with a clear mind and nostrils!
Our weekly talks are held on Tuesday evenings during UCL teaching terms (Autumn & Spring) and are relaxed & informal and open to all who are curious about the world around! Our talks are social events so arrive early for tea and doughnuts and stay a bit later for some wine, cheese and a chat.
17:45 Tea, coffee, biscuits in the Nyholm Room
18:15 Lecture in the Ramsay Lecture Theatre
19:15 Wine, juice, nibbles in the Nyholm Room
UCL Chemistry, 20 Gordon Street
click anywhere to close