Thu 22 May 15:00: A retelling of the Quantum Mechanics story
Abstract not available
- Speaker: John Ellis, Surface Physics Group, Cavendish Laboratory
- Thursday 22 May 2025, 15:00-16:00
- Venue: Seminar Room West, Room A0.015, Ray Dolby Centre, Cavendish Laboratory.
- Series: Physics and Chemistry of Solids Group; organiser: Stephen Walley.
Thu 15 May 15:00: Prediction and its application to mechanical properties
Virtual representation of material response is increasingly common in design of novel materials as well as in attempts to understand observed response. Mechanical properties outside the elastic region are driven by complex interactions between microstructure and fundamental material physics and prediction carries a higher burden of trust. The intent to replace empirical methods with simulation only exacerbates this burden. Prediction and predictive methods in modelling and simulation will be discussed in the light of this complex situation.
- Speaker: Peter Gould
- Thursday 15 May 2025, 15:00-16:00
- Venue: Seminar Room West, Room A0.015, Ray Dolby Centre, Cavendish Laboratory.
- Series: Physics and Chemistry of Solids Group; organiser: Stephen Walley.
Thu 08 May 15:00: Can we design fatigue-resistant alloys?
Better understanding of the origin and behaviour of fatigue cracks should lead to improved engineering design and alloying strategies for structural metals. The surface stresses caused by persistent slip bands, including a zone of infinite tensile stress at the edge of each band, seem an inevitable consequence of elastic non-linearity and hard to combat, except perhaps by the present expensive methods of shot-peening or surface removal. But the underlying process of jog movement to eliminate screw dislocation dipoles should be susceptible to control. It is important to understand better the main engineering problem: is design against persistent slip the metallurgist’s answer to crack-proof rotating machinery?
- Speaker: Mick Brown, Cavendish Laboratory
- Thursday 08 May 2025, 15:00-16:00
- Venue: Seminar Room West, Room A0.015, Ray Dolby Centre, Cavendish Laboratory.
- Series: Physics and Chemistry of Solids Group; organiser: Stephen Walley.
Thu 01 May 15:00: The mechanical properties of wood at high rates of strain
Due to its importance in the construction of ships, wood was one of the first substances to have the velocity dependence of its resistance to impact quantified. This was achieved in England and France early in the 19th century. Techniques for measuring the high-rate mechanical properties of wood were developed around the start of the 20th century. These studies involved drop-weight and pendulum machines to quantify the dynamic fracture toughness of timbers and were mostly performed by the US Forestry Service. It was not until 1977 that the first high-rate compression stress-strain curves of wood were obtained using the Kolsky bar, despite this device having been developed in Britain in the 1940s. It took until the mid-1990s and the desire to use wood to cushion the drop-impact of vessels used to transport dangerous waste that Kolsky bar studies of wood began in earnest in Britain, the Czech Republic and Russia. Even so, to date fewer than 100 such studies have been published compared to nearly 5,000 for metals. The seminar will summarize the effects of anisotropy, stress state, multiple repeat loading, moisture content, temperature, and density on the high-rate properties of a wide range of woods. The seminar will finish with suggestions for what needs doing in the future. A review paper on this topic has recently been accepted for publication in ‘Journal of Dynamic Behavior of Materials’.
- Speaker: Stephen Walley, PCS Group, Cavendish Laboratory
- Thursday 01 May 2025, 15:00-16:00
- Venue: Seminar Room West, Room A0.015, Ray Dolby Centre, Cavendish Laboratory.
- Series: Physics and Chemistry of Solids Group; organiser: Stephen Walley.
Wed 21 May 16:15: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: TBC
- Wednesday 21 May 2025, 16:15-17:15
- Venue: Venue to be confirmed.
- Series: Cavendish Quantum Colloquium; organiser: Lucas Sá.
Wed 09 Apr 15:00: Exploring the Spatial and Temporal Variability in Water Column Properties in Tidewater Glacier-Ocean Systems in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago
The Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA) is home to over 300 marine-terminating glaciers facing retreat with ongoing Arctic change, increasing glacial meltwater delivery to the ocean. Subglacial discharge can produce meltwater plumes that promote upwelling and enhance mixing near glacier termini, impacting water column structure, turbidity, and other biogeochemical properties in the proximate ocean. Despite their abundance, knowledge is lacking on glacier-ocean systems across the CAA , specifically how glacial meltwater is influencing and modifying the marine environment in the coastal ocean. This talk explores the 4 years of late summer in-situ observations of marine-terminating glacier-ocean systems and non-glacierized systems in Jones Sound, a glacier rich region of the CAA . Specifically, we examine the systematic influence of marine-terminating glacier presence on the chemical and physical marine environment and contrast marine-terminating glacier systems with riverine systems in the same region. We find marine-terminating glaciers host late-summer nutrient enhancement above the region’s characteristic nutricline year over year. This contrasts riverine systems that show rare nutrient enhancement above the characteristic nutricline. Ongoing retreat may shift these systems towards riverine-like systems, reducing this above-nutricline nutrient enhancement that may impact phytoplankton community composition, which may have subsequent impacts on carbon sequestration and food web function. This work also informs the Inuit community of Ausuittuq (Grise Fiord, NU), who live in Jones Sound and use the neighbouring ocean for traditional hunting, culture, and economic benefit, about the ongoing change in their local environment.
- Speaker: Claire Parrott, University of British Columbia
- Wednesday 09 April 2025, 15:00-16:00
- Venue: BAS Seminar Room 2.
- Series: British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series; organiser: Dr Birgit Rogalla.
Tue 08 Apr 15:00: Recent aspects of chaperone functions in health and disease - A BIOLOGICAL RIG SEMINAR
Recent aspects of molecular chaperone function in health and disease F. Ulrich Hartl Department of Cellular Biochemistry, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany While protein folding was originally assumed to occur spontaneously, we now appreciate that in the crowded environment of cells, newly-synthesized polypeptides depend on molecular chaperones to reach their folded states efficiently and at a biologically relevant time scale. Assistance of protein folding is provided by members of different chaperone classes acting to facilitate the interconversion of folding intermediates, preventing misfolding and off-pathway aggregation, often in an ATP -dependent mechanism. A well-studied example are the cylindrical chaperonins (GroEL/ES in bacteria, Hsp60 in mitochondria, TRiC in the eukaryotic cytosol), which form nano-cages for single protein molecules to fold unimpaired by aggregation. As an added benefit, encapsulation results in entropic confinement of dynamic folding intermediates, thereby markedly accelerating folding for some proteins over the spontaneous folding rate.
Once folded, many proteins continue to require chaperone surveillance to retain their functional states, especially under conditions of cell stress. Failure of the chaperone machinery to maintain proteostasis, i.e. the conformational integrity and balance of the cellular proteome, facilitates the manifestation of diseases in which proteins misfold and form toxic aggregates. These disorders include, among others, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s disease.
I will provide an overview of chaperone mechanisms and then discuss recent work providing new insights into the role of chaperones in protein folding and proteostasis maintenance, with a focus on observations in intact cells.
- Speaker: Prof. Ulrich Hartl - Max-Planck-Institute of Biochemistry
- Tuesday 08 April 2025, 15:00-16:00
- Venue: Department of Chemistry, Cambridge, Pfizer LT.
- Series: Biological Chemistry Research Interest Group; organiser: Echo Wu Williamson.
Fri 04 Apr 13:00: Deep convection and ocean overturning
The ocean’s circulation plays a pivotal role in Earth’s climate system, with its changes during climate transitions being of critical importance. This study, grounded in the principle of dynamical similarity, employs Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) in an idealized setup to dissect the complexities of ocean circulation, with a particular focus on the North Atlantic and the role of buoyancy and wind in shaping the hydrological cycle.
We begin with a simple system—a non-rotating ocean forced by a single scalar—then gradually introduce complexity by adding constant/variable rotation, wind forcing, and a second scalar. Surprisingly, our results show the spontaneous formation of gyres and a western boundary current, along with full-depth overturning, even without the introduction of wind. Wind forcing further localizes upwelling near the western boundary current and primarily strengthens the gyres while having less influence on overturning circulation. With the introduction of a second scalar (salinity), our results become more representative of the real ocean, reproducing key features such as mode water formation, mid-latitude deeper thermocline structures, and polar haloclines, both with and without wind forcing. Our DNS framework is well-suited for resolving convection processes, including diffusive convection near the poles and salt fingering in mid-latitudes, both of which are crucial for establishing mixed layers and pycnoclines in these regions.
A key highlight of our study is capturing ocean circulation across multiple scales—from basin-scale overturning and gyres to mesoscale eddies, submesoscale dynamics, and millimeter-scale convection. These multiscale interactions regulate heat, salt, and tracer transport. Our highresolution approach explicitly resolves the interplay between large-scale circulation and small-scale turbulent mixing, offering deeper insights into ocean stratification, ventilation, and buoyancy-driven flows, providing critical insights for forecasting the evolving dynamics of the North Atlantic.
- Speaker: Bishakh Gayen, University of Melbourne
- Friday 04 April 2025, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: BAS Seminar Room 1.
- Series: British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series; organiser: Dr Birgit Rogalla.
Tue 01 Apr 11:00: Searching for light-dark matter with Spherical Proportional Counters
The precise particle nature of dark matter, which makes up most of the matter in the universe, remains elusive and is one of the leading open questions in physics. The NEWS -G collaboration is searching for light dark matter candidates with a novel gaseous detector concept, the spherical proportional counter. Access to the mass range from 0.05 to 10 GeV is enabled by the combination of low energy threshold, light gaseous targets (H, He, Ne), and highly radio-pure detector construction. Initial NEWS -G results obtained with SEDINE , a 60 cm in diameter spherical proportional counter operating at LSM (France), excluded for the first time WIMP -like dark matter candidates down to masses of 0.5 GeV. The collaboration currently operates a 140 cm in diameter spherical proportional counter, SNOGLOBE , constructed at LSM using 4N copper with 500 um electroplated inner layer, which is currently collecting data in SNOLAB (Canada). This seminar will discuss recent NEWS -G results and the developments in spherical proportional counter instrumentation and detector understanding that contributed to the first results with SNOGLOBE from its commissioning data. The next stage of the experiment, using detectors constructed from ultra-pure electroformed copper directly in the underground laboratory where they will be operated will be presented, with the construction of a 30 cm in diameter detector commencing this year in the Boulby underground laboratory, and the plans to construct a larger scale detector, DarkSPHERE – with both detectors having the potential to break new ground in the dark matter puzzle.
- Speaker: Prof./Dr. Patrick Knights, University of Birmingham
- Tuesday 01 April 2025, 11:00-12:00
- Venue: Seminar Room -- RDC D2.002 .
- Series: Cavendish HEP Seminars; organiser: Dr. Aashaq Shah.
Wed 18 Jun 14:00: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Speaker to be confirmed
- Wednesday 18 June 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: BAS Seminar Room 1.
- Series: British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series; organiser: Dr Birgit Rogalla.
Wed 07 May 14:00: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Speaker to be confirmed
- Wednesday 07 May 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: BAS Seminar Room 1.
- Series: British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series; organiser: Dr Birgit Rogalla.
Wed 04 Jun 14:00: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Speaker to be confirmed
- Wednesday 04 June 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: BAS Seminar Room 1.
- Series: British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series; organiser: Dr Birgit Rogalla.
Mon 31 Mar 15:00: DNA-Encoded Chemical Libraries - A BIOLOGICAL RIG SEMINAR
The discovery of small organic ligands, capable of specific recognition of protein targets of interest, is a central problem in Chemistry, Pharmacy, Biology and Medicine. Traditionally, small organic ligands to proteins are discovered by screening, one by one, individual compounds from chemical libraries. However, the technology is cumbersome, very expensive and is typically limited to the testing of up to one million compounds. DNA -encoded chemical library (DEL) technology allows the construction and screening of much larger compound libraries, without the need for expensive instrumentations and logistics. DELs are collections of molecules, individually coupled to distinctive DNA fragments, serving as amplifiable identification barcodes. Binding compounds can be selected using affinity capture procedures, with the protein target of interest immobilised on magnetic beads. After this “fishing” experiment, the DNA barcodes can be PCR amplified and quantified using high-throughput DNA sequencing [1]. In this lecture, I will present theory and applications of DEL technology. I will also show examples of DEL -derived ligands, isolated in our laboratories, which have been tested in patients with cancer, with promising clinical results.
- Speaker: Professor Dario Neri - CEO and CSO of Philogen, Professor of ETH Zürich, Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow, Department of Radiology, University of Cambridge (UK)
- Monday 31 March 2025, 15:00-16:00
- Venue: Department of Chemistry, Cambridge, Pfizer LT.
- Series: Biological Chemistry Research Interest Group; organiser: Xani Thorman.
Tue 08 Apr 13:30: Recent aspects of chaperone functions in health and disease - A BIOLOGICAL RIG SEMINAR
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Prof. Ulrich Hartl - Max-Planck-Institute of Biochemistry
- Tuesday 08 April 2025, 13:30-14:30
- Venue: Department of Chemistry, Cambridge, Pfizer LT.
- Series: Biological Chemistry Research Interest Group; organiser: Xani Thorman.
Fri 23 May 14:00: Joint ChemBio and Synthesis RIG Seminar - Chemical Biology Tools for Measuring Drug Delivery
Large-molecule therapeutics including peptides, oligonucleotides, and proteins make up a large and growing portion of the drug development pipeline. One of the greatest barriers to developing these drugs is cell penetration. Most enter the cell through a complex pathway involving endocytosis followed by endosomal escape. This process is so poorly understood and difficult to study that it is challenging simply to measure how much compound has actually accessed the cytosol at any given point. The Kritzer Lab has developed new tools for making these and related measurements. The Chloroalkane Penetration Assay (CAPA) is a versatile assay that measures cell penetration using cellularly expressed HaloTag protein and a small chloroalkane tag on the molecule-of-interest. CAPA has been used by the Kritzer group to measure cell penetration for many classes of peptide and oligonucleotide therapeutics, to measure penetration to different subcellular compartments, and to measure relative penetration in different cell types. CAPA has also been adopted by academic and industrial groups all over the world to investigate cell penetration. The Kritzer group has also used molecular evolution to produce new HaloTag variants which work optimally with a fluorogenic benzothiadiazole dye. The resulting “BenzoTag” system allows for turn-on, no-wash cell labeling in seconds. BenzoTag is currently being applied to produce a “turn-on” version of CAPA for continued investigation of drug delivery and mechanisms of endosomal escape
- Speaker: Joshua Kritzer (Tufts University)
- Friday 23 May 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Dept. of Chemistry, Wolfson Lecture Theatre.
- Series: Synthetic Chemistry Research Interest Group; organiser: Jasmine Mitchell.
Tue 01 Apr 14:30: The Druggable Transcriptome Project: From Chemical Probes to Precision Medicines
A scientific challenge is to understand biological pathways and to exploit the targets within them for therapeutic development. Coding and non-coding RNAs both directly cause disease, whether by mutation or aberrant expression. Akin to proteins, RNA structure often dictates its function in health or dysfunction in disease. RNA , however, is generally not considered a target for small molecule chemical probes and lead medicines, despite its immense potential. The focus of our research program is to uncover fundamental principles that govern the molecular recognition of RNA structures by small molecules to enable design of chemical probes that targeting disease relevant RNA structures to perturb and study their function.
I will describe using evolutionary principles to identify molecular recognition patterns between small molecules and RNA structures by studying the binding of RNA fold libraries to small molecule libraries. These interactions are computationally mined across the human transcriptome to define cellular RNAs with targetable structure. Such an approach has afforded bioactive interactions that have uncovered new biology, where the small molecules bind to functional structures within a target RNA . We have devised a strategy to imbue biologically silent RNA -small molecule interactions with cellular activity. Chimeras comprising an inactive small molecule and ribonuclease recruiter trigger targeted degradation of disease-causing RNAs. These degraders affect the biology of RNA in specific ways in cells and in mouse models of various diseases and can rationally reprogram protein-targeted medicines for RNA . Lastly, we have recently devised unbiased transcriptome wide approaches to define the RNA bound by small molecules is live cells. This allows us to study the RNA targets that are bound by small molecules, the selectivity of these interactions, and ways in which compounds of various types can modulate disease biology.
- Speaker: Matthew Disney - Scripps Research Institute
- Tuesday 01 April 2025, 14:30-15:30
- Venue: Department of Chemistry, Cambridge, Pfizer lecture theatre.
- Series: Biological Chemistry Research Interest Group; organiser: Xani Thorman.
Wed 23 Apr 14:00: Ocean dynamics in the Ross Ice Shelf cavity from in situ observations
The future response of ice shelves to climate through ocean warming is a key unknown for climate projections, especially global sea level rise. The Ross Ice Shelf ocean cavity is one of the least observed regions in the ocean, with its broad circulation patterns primarily inferred from remotely sensed estimates of tides, bathymetry, and melt rates. I aim to advance our understanding of the ocean cavity under the Ross Ice Shelf – the southern-most and largest-by area of all Earth’s ice shelves. To achieve this, I analyzed a multi-year hydrographic moored timeseries from the central Ross Ice Shelf cavity (80◦39.497′S, 174◦27.678′E). These data help address three key processes: (i) the general circulation; (ii) the appearance and impact of baroclinic eddy events; and (iii) tidal modulation of the ice-ocean boundary layer structure and the implications for ice melting. In terms of circulation and the inter-annual changes, stronger melting/refreezing occurred between late September 2019 to late December 2019, which is linked to the inter-annual sea ice production in the Ross Ice Shelf Polynya. Notably, cold-water interleaving in the mid-water column exhibits distinct seasonality. An analysis of baroclinic eddies identifies coherent structures that are around 22 km in diameter with a velocity scale of between 0.8 and 1.8 cm/s. The thermohaline structure of the eddies suggests that they have the potential to entrain High Salinity Shelf Water from the benthic water column to the mid-water column. On the question of tidal modulation of the ice shelf-ocean interaction, the results suggest that tides modulate the melt rate by altering the boundary layer structure over a spring-neap cycle. These new findings demonstrate the rich variability within the Ross Ice Shelf ocean cavity, ranging from large interannual-seasonal scales, through to multi-week eddy scales and then down to tidal and mixing timescales.
- Speaker: Yingpu Xiahou, University of Auckland
- Wednesday 23 April 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: BAS Seminar Room 330b.
- Series: British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series; organiser: Dr Birgit Rogalla.
Tue 08 Apr 13:00: Recent aspects of chaperone functions in health and disease - A BIORIG SEMINAR
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Prof. Ulrich Hartl
- Tuesday 08 April 2025, 13:00-15:00
- Venue: Department of Chemistry, Cambridge, Unilever lecture theatre.
- Series: Biological Chemistry Research Interest Group; organiser: Xani Thorman.
Mon 31 Mar 15:00: DNA-Encoded Chemical Libraries - A BIOLOGICAL RIG SEMINAR
The discovery of small organic ligands, capable of specific recognition of protein targets of interest, is a central problem in Chemistry, Pharmacy, Biology and Medicine. Traditionally, small organic ligands to proteins are discovered by screening, one by one, individual compounds from chemical libraries. However, the technology is cumbersome, very expensive and is typically limited to the testing of up to one million compounds. DNA -encoded chemical library (DEL) technology allows the construction and screening of much larger compound libraries, without the need for expensive instrumentations and logistics. DELs are collections of molecules, individually coupled to distinctive DNA fragments, serving as amplifiable identification barcodes. Binding compounds can be selected using affinity capture procedures, with the protein target of interest immobilised on magnetic beads. After this “fishing” experiment, the DNA barcodes can be PCR amplified and quantified using high-throughput DNA sequencing [1]. In this lecture, I will present theory and applications of DEL technology. I will also show examples of DEL -derived ligands, isolated in our laboratories, which have been tested in patients with cancer, with promising clinical results.
- Speaker: Professor Dario Neri - CEO and CSO of Philogen, Professor of ETH Zürich, Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow, Department of Radiology, University of Cambridge (UK)
- Monday 31 March 2025, 15:00-16:00
- Venue: Department of Chemistry, Cambridge, Wolfson Lecture Theatre.
- Series: Biological Chemistry Research Interest Group; organiser: Xani Thorman.
Tue 25 Mar 10:00: Irreducibility of Severi varieties on toric surfaces
Severi varieties parametrize integral curves of fixed geometric genus in a given linear system on a surface. In this talk, I will discuss the classical question of whether Severi varieties are irreducible and its relation to the irreducibility of other moduli spaces of curves. I will indicate how tropical methods can be used to answer such irreducibility questions. The new results are from ongoing joint work with Xiang He and Ilya Tyomkin.
- Speaker: Karl Christ, Università degli studi di Torino
- Tuesday 25 March 2025, 10:00-11:00
- Venue: CMS MR13.
- Series: Algebraic Geometry Seminar; organiser: Dhruv Ranganathan.