Highlights will include using smartphones to detect cancer, fighting superbugs and using technology to track epidemics and a new material, gallium nitride, which can save us energy, reduce our carbon footprint, purify water, reduce infections and help to treat illnesses, from cancer to depression.
The annual women in science engineering and technology initiative (WiSETI) lecture, the mobile revolution, takes place this evening (Monday 9 March). It will feature nanotechnologist, Professor Rachel McKendry**, who will discuss her early warning system for detecting the spread of infectious disease outbreaks, from flu to MRSA and HIV. Her research is a distinctive combination of fields spanning nanotechnology, programing and telecommunications as well as medicine and disease.
On 16 March, Professor Sir Colin Humphreys will present out of the red and into the blue: making the LED revolution cost-effective. He will discuss his many different research interests in the areas of physics and material sciences before revealing his latest work developing gallium nitride, which he suggests, could solve many of the world’s leading issues in science and engineering.
Talking about his work, Professor Humphreys said: “My research group grows the semiconductor material, gallium nitride, atom by atom. It is a wonderful new material to study because it is both scientifically fascinating and also hugely useful to society… mixtures of gallium nitride are able to kill viruses and bacteria. We can use it to purify water, saving millions of lives in the developing world. Gallium nitride LEDs can transmit Wi-Fi; a technology called Li-Fi. The LEDs can also be developed to more accurately mimic sunlight; reducing depression, headaches and possibly cancers, whilst improving our productivity and exam performance.”
Elsewhere in the Festival, Cambridge engineering students, the Robogals, will be providing hands-on experience with their robot menagerie in Robogals: escape from the zoo today (Monday 9 March) and Wednesday 11 March, where visitors will learn about engineering as they compete to be the first to steer their robot out of the Robot Zoo maze.
Esther Sidebotham, Robogals committee member and third year civil engineering student, said: “Our event is based around a programming task – using light sensors to navigate robots around a ‘zoo’. We are aiming the event at ages 12+, especially at girls but all are welcome. The LEGO mindstorms sets that we use to build our robots are very easy to program, without needing any special skills, which means that our workshops are fun and accessible whilst introducing some concepts of programming.
“There is something very satisfying about programming. It can be frustrating when you write code and it doesn't work at first, but when you get it working it's very cool to know you wrote the program behind the thing. As an engineer you've got the opportunity to be involved in some really new and exciting projects. I know a lot of people who do engineering also enjoy being able to understand how everything work.”
The future of human engineering will be explored on Wednesday 18 March. The drop-in session Machines that reconstruct the world examines the surprisingly difficult challenge of creating machines that are able to see and respond to the world around them in the same way that we do. Vision is not just about seeing what’s in front of you but about understanding what you are looking at and what you can do about it. This will be directly followed by Connectivity and flow in future cities, a look forward to the year 2050, where more than 70% of us are expected to be living in cities. This will require big changes in the infrastructure of cities, making the cities of the future very different from the cities of today. The discussion panel will look at how to maintain a sustainable urban society and keep everyone supplied with essential amenities.
The final Saturday (21 March) of the Festival will feature events across west Cambridge. Focus around the Department of Materials & Metallurgy and Institute of Manufacturing (IfM) and the chance to discover gallium nitride for yourself, as well as super-steels and the future of edible technology. There will also be Raspberry Pi demos, rocket building, lasers and the latest research from University of Cambridge engineers.
Professor of Laser Engineering at IfM, Bill O’Neill, said: “The Institute for Manufacturing will be hosting many exciting events as part of the Science Festival. This will include a number of fun activities for children, tours and talks. Among the highlights are: using lasers to engrave your own ID card; seeing water droplets being frozen in mid-air; watching the latest laser technologies in action; nano-scale machining using focused ion beams, ultra-fast lasers at work and holographic cameras.
“Advances in this type of manufacturing allow us to make products that require extraordinary levels of precision at the nano-scale. This includes flexible display screens, more efficient solar cells and smaller, more powerful computer chips.”
Other Festival events, celebrating invention and engineering, include:
11 March – There is more to touch than meets the eye: The role of touch in consumer behaviour. Dr Cathrine Jansson-Boyd, Reader in Consumer Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University, talks about how touch has the capacity to impact on consumer decision making and perception.
12 March – How many light bulbs does it take? Dr Stephen Peake of The Open University explores the history of lighting and asks questions about sustainability. What might a low carbon low energy society look like and how do we get there?
13 March – Searching for intelligence in the legs: robots that walk, run and dance. Robotic legs are very challenging to engineer. Dr Fumiya Iida discusses why legs are so special, and whether we will see robots running around any time soon.
14 March – Journey to Mars and beyond. Meet Bruno the Mars rover. Part of CSF@the Guildhall.
19 March – Synchronised fireflies and balancing broomsticks (or why bridges wobble!). Supporting a stationary traffic jam in the sky is easy: it just needs cables, towers and one line of calculation. Things become much trickier when the wind blows. Cambridge Physics Centre presents a public lecture on bridge design by Dr Allan McRobie.
For further information about the Cambridge Science Festival or to browse the full range of events and book tickets, please visit: www.sciencefestival.cam.ac.uk
** Professor McKendry works at UCL between the London Centre for Nanotechnology and Division of Medicine. She is also Director of the £11M i-Sense centre developing an early-warning sensing systems for infectious diseases. In 2014, she was presented with the Rosalind Franklin award by the Royal Society in recognition of her work to create a national phone app competition that encouraged women to consider taking leadership roles in science, technology, engineering and maths.
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