Dr Nicola Paine

School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Psychological stress and cardiovascular disease risk - are we sitting on a health crisis?

Acute psychological stress is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease development and has also been reported as a trigger for acute cardiovascular events such as heart attacks. Under acute stress, physiological changes in cardiovascular and inflammatory markers are observed, which could have important implications for the risk of future cardiovascular disease development and outcomes. 

Health behaviours such as physical activity and sitting time are also established risk factors for cardiovascular disease and may interact with physiological changes seen under stress. Dr Paine will present some of her work on these topics and how being more active, and less sedentary, may help to reduce stress-related cardiovascular disease risk.

Biography

Dr Nicola Paine completed her BSc (Hons) and PhD in Sport and Exercise Sciences at the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at the University of Birmingham between 2006-2013. After this, she completed postdoctoral training in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Science at Duke University and secured renowned postdoctoral fellowships to undertake further training in Montreal in the Department of Exercise Science at Concordia University and the Montreal Behavioural Medicine Centre, within the Research Centre in the Hôpital du Sacré Coeur de Montréal.

Dr Paine joined the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences at 含羞草视频 as part of the Excellence 100 scheme. She was awarded a prestigious Springboard Fellowship from the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2021.

Time and Place

Dr Paine's lecture took place both in-person at International House on the 含羞草视频 Campus and online via MS Teams, on Wednesday 6th July 2022 2022, you can watch a recording of the lecture here.

Dr Petre Breazu

Institute for Diplomacy and International Governance, 含羞草视频 London

Romaphobia in the Age of Populism: A Comparative Study of UK and Swedish Media 

Roma continue to be the poorest and most marginalised European citizens and have historically been victims of extreme violence and social exclusion. For the last two decades we have been witnessing a surge in violence against the Roma, such as camp evictions, deportations, police brutality—actions which remain largely unchallenged or are presented as rational in media and political discourse. In this lecture, I will introduce my MSCA project carried out at the Institute for Diplomacy and International Governance under the mentorship of Professor Aidan McGarry. This project investigates contemporary expressions of racism and xenophobia toward the Roma in the context of the growing populism in Europe. 

It focuses on two specific contexts, the UK and Sweden, examining how and why Romaphobia becomes particularly widespread in times of socio-political crisis and how it is communicated across different media platforms. These two countries, whilst both democracies, have subtlety different systems of government and in both countries far-right politics have gained traction, which has implications for the treatment of Roma migrants living in UK and Sweden. Both countries have experienced inward migration of Roma communities, particularly from Eastern Europe, which has been met with resistance from political elite and wider society. 

The two-year project is comprised of two studies: (1) an examination of UK news media, YouTube, and political discourse on Roma migrants during 2016 when the UK voted to exit the European Union and (2) an examination of the most influential Swedish editorials and political opinions on Twitter on the controversial ban on begging in Sweden, in 2016, prior to and after the Swedish national elections. This project is a major intervention in the field of racism and the media at a time when populism across Europe dominates the political scene. 

Biography

Dr Petre Breazu is a Marie Sk艂odowska-Curie Fellow undertaking research within the Institute for Diplomacy and International Governance.  Petre's research lies in the area of discourse and racism, with special focus on the representation of the Roma in European media and political discourse. He works under the framework of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) to examine practices of discrimination and social exclusion with regards to Roma and other marginalised communities.

Petre's previous research has addressed the textual and visual constructions of the Roma in Romanian press, television news and social media and his work has been published in international peer-reviewed journals. Petre has taught (Multimodal) Critical Discourse Analysis, Semiotics, Visual Communication, Sociolinguistics, Pragmatics and Qualitative Research Methods.

Time and Place

Dr Breazu's lecture took place on Tuesday 14th June 2022, you can view a recording of the lecture here.

Dr Sola Afolabi

School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

Sustainable biogenic waste valorisation - a call to low carbon economy

Dr Afolabi will describe the beneficial exploitation of standalone, and novel integrated synergic waste conversion processes that render pathogenic/hazardous biogenic waste safe whilst producing clean carbon-neutral energy/soil-ameliorants that irreversibly bind carbon. He will also share his pathway to securing a Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) Engineering for Development Research Fellowship. Dr Afolabi is a Senior Lecturer in Water and Environmental Engineering, School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering.

Biography

Dr Afolabi obtained a First-Class (Hons.) B.Eng. in Agricultural (now Agricultural and Environmental) Engineering from the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), Nigeria, and completed his MSc (with Distinction) and PhD at 含羞草视频. He has worked on several research and international development projects, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Re-invent (Phase 2 and 3) Toilet Challenge Projects. Currently, he is leading a prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) Engineering for Development Research Fellowship, awarded in 2019. He leads/contributes to the UG & PG modules, supervise doctoral researchers, and serves on the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering’s Research Committee and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee.

Time and Place

Dr Afolabi's lecture took place online via MS Teams on Friday 6th May 2022, you can view a recording of the lecture here.

Dr Emine Simsek

School of Science, Centre for Mathematical Cognition

My ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship: A 12-month research journey to explore factors relating to students’ understanding of mathematical equivalence

Mathematical equivalence is a key concept in mathematics as this concept underlies many other arithmetic and algebraic concepts in mathematics. However, many primary school students have difficulties understanding mathematical equivalence. The field has made substantial progress in understanding why children struggle to understand mathematical equivalence, specifically, that it is due in part to the way arithmetic is traditionally taught (e.g., a + b = __). However, many questions regarding factors that play a role in students’ understanding of equivalence remain unanswered.

In this talk, I will draw on my PhD research and current work which explore factors relating to students’ understanding of mathematical equivalence. I will also share my pathway to secure an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship. I will talk about challenges that I faced during the application process, the organisational structure of the fellowship, how Covid-19 affected my research activities and the outcomes from the fellowship. Finally, I will highlight my collaborative involvement in one of the projects being conducted at 含羞草视频.

Biography

Dr Simsek was a former ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Centre for Mathematical Cognition (CMC) and worked at CMC between October (2020) and September (2021). Her main interest is in studying which factors relate to students’ understanding of mathematical equivalence and how teaching equivalence in schools can be improved. She received her PhD in Mathematics Education Centre from 含羞草视频 in 2020. Following her PhD, she was a postdoctoral researcher in the Mathematics Education Centre and her work focused on the role of cognitive and behavioural executive function skills in learning new mathematics material, prior to being awarded an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship. 

Time and Place

Dr Simsek's lecture took place online via MS Teams on Thursday 24th February 2022, you can view a recording of the lecture here.

Professor Roy Kalawsky

Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

DIGITALIZATION TRANSFORMATION: A new engineering paradigm for the aerospace industry

This lecture will explore the exciting engineering revolution aiming to make the future aerospace sector more agile and sustainable. Professor Kalawsky will describe aspects of his research that form part of his prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering/Airbus Research Chair in Digital and Data Engineering Information Systems. This research involves bringing together next generation modelling and co-simulation with digital-twins, AI/Machine Learning, model-based systems engineering, digital information architectures, visual analytics, and augmented/virtual reality into a virtual collaborative design environment. He will explain how his long dual industry-academic career has helped to overcome complex challenges of moving state of the art laboratory-based research into products.

Time and Place

Professor Kalawsky's lecture took place online on Wednesday 12th January 2022, 12.30-13.30.  You can view a recording of the lecture.

Biography

Professor Roy S Kalawsky holds the Royal Academy of Engineering/Airbus Research Chair in Digital and Data Engineering Information Systems and is Director of the Advanced Virtual Reality Research Centre (AVRRC)

His industrial career began in 1978 when he joined BAE Systems as a Systems Engineer but quickly progressed to the position of Executive Specialist responsible for all Cockpit Research and Development across the whole of the Military Aircraft Division.
Concurrently, in his private time, Roy undertook an MSc in Computer Based Polarimetric Image Processing System (1984) and a PhD in Multi-Parameter Polarimetric Image Processing (1991). Following his achievements, The University of Hull awarded Roy a Visiting Research Chair in Virtual Environments and Advanced Display Technologies Chair.
In 1993 he published the world’s first technical reference book on VR “The Science of Virtual Reality and Virtual Environments” with Addison Wesley. Also, in 1993 he was awarded the Royal Aeronautical Society Medal for outstanding contribution to cockpit technology and in particular for establishing the UK's first virtual cockpit and virtual environment simulator. Aspects of his work involved working with Wright-Patterson Airforce Base, NASA Ames McDonnell-Douglas in the US and Dassault Aviation in France.

In 1995 Roy accepted a Chair at 含羞草视频 of as Professor of Human Computer Integration, where he established the Advanced VR Research Centre (opened by HRH Duke of Edinburgh in 1996) which is a state-of-the-art centre for Virtual Engineering research. In 1999 he joined the Department of Computer Science and became Head of Department (2000-2004). In 2005 Roy transferred to the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering and between (2006 – 2013) was the Technical Head of 含羞草视频, BAE Systems and East Midlands Development Agency’s £60m Systems Engineering Innovation Centre, and concurrently, as the 含羞草视频’s Director of the Research School of Systems Engineering. In 2007 he was awarded the Da Vinci Award (First Prize) for a ‘ground-breaking technique’ that allows clinicians to remotely access superior quality 3D images of heart patients through a system of systems engineering approach. In 2009 Roy received the BAE Systems Directors’ Award for ‘Significant Contribution and Services to Systems Engineering’. Other significant roles in the field of engineering have been ‘Head of Systems Division’, in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at 含羞草视频, Associate Dean (Enterprise) and Adjunct Professor, Defence and Systems Institute, University of South Australia in Adelaide. Following amalgamation of two Departments at 含羞草视频 he joined the Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering.

In 2017 Roy was awarded the Airbus Research Chair in Digitalization and in 2018 the prestigious five-year Royal Academy of Engineering/Airbus Research Chair in Digital and Data Engineering Information Systems. In this current role Roy works in conjunction with Airbus Helicopters (UK), Airbus Commercial in Filton, Broughton, Toulouse, Paris and Hamburg. Also, he collaborates with many industrial companies and other research institutions including the Fraunhofer Institute.

Roy is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Chartered Engineer. In his spare time Roy is a watchmaker specialising in the restoration of extremely rare pocket watches dating back to the early 1700’s and other more recent timepieces.

Dr Mahsa Derakhshani

Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Toward Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Wireless Communications: Leveraging Risk Sensitive Resource Allocation

With the proliferation of machine-to-machine communications, especially in mission-critical applications such as autonomous systems, wireless networks are becoming far more complex and essential than ever before. For example, extensive, responsive and reliable networks are required to enable vehicle-to-everything (V2X) connectivity to improve road safety (e.g. cooperative collision avoidance) and traffic efficiency (e.g. cooperative platoon driving). V2X needs wireless communications with high reliability and extremely short delay between a vehicle and road infrastructure as well as other vehicles. Despite such importance, implementing ultra-reliable low-latency communications remains a challenging endeavour as it comprises two conflicting goals of high reliability and low latency, both under resource availability constraints. This presentation will describe how risk-sensitive resource allocation can enable tackling the reliability-latency trade-off in wireless networks by leveraging stochastic optimisation and risk-aware machine learning techniques. In this talk, I will also share my pathway to develop and secure a Royal Academy of Engineering/Leverhulme Trust Fellowship.

Biography

Dr Mahsa Derakhshani is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Communications with the Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering, 含羞草视频, UK. She has a strong track record in the development and analysis of mathematical optimisations and machine learning solutions for wireless networks and has published 60 journal/conference articles and two books. She received several awards and fellowships, including Royal Academy of Engineering/The Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Postdoctoral Fellowships, the Fonds de Recherche du Québec–Nature et Technologies (FRQNT) Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the John Bonsall Porter Prize, the McGill Engineering Doctoral Award. Prior to joining 含羞草视频, she was an Honorary NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow at Imperial College London (2015-2016) and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Toronto, Canada (2013-2015). She received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering degree from McGill University, Canada in 2013. Currently, she serves as the Editor for IEEE IoT Magazine, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, and IET Signal Processing Journal.

Time and Place

Mahsa's lecture took place on Friday 26th November 2021, 12.30-13.30.  You can watch a recording of the lecture here.

Dr Alister Smith

School of Architecture, Building, and Civil Engineering

Listening to Infrastructure: Acoustic Emission Monitoring in Geotechnical Engineering

Existing infrastructure assets are deteriorating, and new assets are being designed and constructed to withstand uncertain future conditions. There is urgent need for improved and affordable health monitoring capability to facilitate geotechnical infrastructure stewardship (e.g. slopes, foundations, dams and pipes). All infrastructure rests in or on the ground (i.e. soil). Proportions of energy dissipated during deformation of soil, soil-structural interactions and soil seepage processes are converted to heat and sound. The high-frequency (>10kHz) component of this sound energy is called acoustic emission (AE). It has been established that detected AE rates are proportional to rates of soil deformation and can be used to provide early information on deterioration and failure. AE instrumentation is now available for continuous and real-time geotechnical monitoring. This presentation will introduce AE generation mechanisms and monitoring approaches in geotechnical engineering, it will describe the development and use of AE sensors for landslide early warning and detail on-going research to deliver AE monitoring solutions for a range of geotechnical applications (e.g. buried pipelines and earth dams).

Biography

Dr Alister Smith is a Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering in the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering. He leads the Listening to Infrastructure research programme, which is developing acoustic emission (AE) sensing technologies for health monitoring of buried infrastructure systems. Alister’s research has been funded by a series of personal awards, including a Doctoral Prize Fellowship, an EPSRC Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Engineering. He was a co-inventor of AE landslide early warning systems that have been commercialised by RST Instruments Ltd (Geo Acoustic Aware). He is also a Co-Investigator of the EPSRC Programme Grant, ACHILLES, which is investigating the impacts of climate change on infrastructure earthworks. He has received multiple awards for his research and enterprise activities, including the Thomas Telford Premium and the Hawley Award for Engineering Innovation. 

Time and Place

Alister's lecture took place on Tuesday 27th April 2021, 12.30-13.30.  You can watch a recording of the lecture here.

Dr Ignacio Martin-Fabiani

School of Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering

Can you make an academic career out of watching paint dry?: Harnessing fundamental science to improve functional coatings

The process of paint drying involves the assembly of its different ingredients, in the form of micro and nanoparticles and aggregates in suspension, into a film as the solvent evaporates. The ways in which these particles are assembled will dictate the final architecture of the final coating and therefore its performance. For example, in the case of antibacterial paint, the amount of bactericidal agent that accumulates at the top surface will determine its effectiveness against microorganisms. The talk will describe how we can harness physical and chemical insights on the assembly process to tailor the final coating structure and functionality. These concepts are applicable to not only functional coatings but also to a wider range of products based on the drying of particle suspensions such as inks, adhesives, or cosmetics. The presentation will share details of my journey towards securing a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.

Biography

Dr Nacho Martin-Fabiani is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Materials Science in the Department of Materials at 含羞草视频. He leads an experimental research group working in the fields of colloid, interface, and soft matter science. His contributions to these areas, including a new method to structure coatings covered by BBC News and other outlets, have led to the award of the Polymer Lecture Exchange Prize from the Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society. Nacho has vast knowledge in the use of advanced scanning probe and fluorescence microscopies and scattering techniques to retrieve insightful information from a range of materials. He is currently working on the development of the new generation of functional coatings, including antibacterial and abrasion resistant surfaces. Moreover, he is also interested in other soft materials applications such as inks, adhesives, cosmetics, or crop protection.

Prior to his current appointment, he held a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowship at 含羞草视频 from 2016 to 2020 and was a Research Fellow at the University of Surrey between 2014 and 2016.

Time and Place

Dr Martin-Fabiani's lecture took place on Friday the 12th March 2021. A recording of the presentation is available.

Professor Wen-Hua Chen

EPSRC Established Career Fellow, Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering

Are we safe to move into a highly automated society?

Driverless cars, unmanned aircraft, fully automated mining in deep ground/sea, and healthcare robots looking after elder and disabled people — these are hot hot topics that are appearing in the media and being debated in our homes. There is a huge aspiration about future highly automated society. There is a huge aspiration to create a future highly automated society. But are we ready for this? Are these technologies safe? This talk will discuss some key enabled technologies involved in these highly automated systems, our progress to date and the challenges that remain. Prof Chen argues that significant progress has been made in individual functions, such as perception and decision making, but more is required to understand their interactions and their influence on overall performance and safety at a system level. Prof Chen’s fellowship involves developing new control theory to provide efficient design and analysis tools and safeguard the behaviour of these highly automated systems. The links and the differences between this approach and artificial intelligence/machine learning will be discussed. The journey of building up a significant research profile from scratch will also briefly be shared.

Biography

Professor Wen-Hua Chen holds a Chair in Autonomous Vehicles in the Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering at 含羞草视频. Professor Chen has a considerable experience in control, signal processing and artificial intelligence and their applications in aerospace, automotive and agriculture systems. He joined 含羞草视频 in 2000 as a Lecturer. In the last 15 years, he has been working on the development and application of unmanned aircraft system and intelligent vehicle technologies, spanning autopilots, situational awareness, decision making, verification, remote sensing for precision agriculture and environment monitoring. His unmanned vehicles related research is widely supported by the UK government and industry. He is a Chartered Engineer, and a Fellow of IEEE, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Institution of Engineering and Technology, UK. Recently Professor Chen was awarded an EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Science Research Council) Established Career Fellowship in developing control theory for next generation of control systems to enable high levels of automation such as robotics and autonomous systems. He has published about 300 papers with over 12,000 citations.

Time and Place

Professor Chen's lecture will took place on Microsoft Teams, on Thursday the 11th February 2021.  A recording of the lecture is available here.

Dr Ana Cristina Suzina

Institute for Media and Creative Industries, 含羞草视频 London

Voice, imagination and action: media usage and visions of development

The development of digital technologies creates an illusion of equality of voices, making us believe that anyone can express their views and reach audiences anywhere. Scholars and practitioners in different regions of the world unfold ideas such as the capacity of reaching massive audiences through individual communication, the elimination of filters such as mainstream media to express ideas, the expansion of exchanges through a networked society, among others. I argue that digital disruption reveals a deeper level of inequality, highlighting the fundamental question of parity of participation in the search of social justice.

In this presentation, I will expose how my previous research has led me to address voice asymmetries and how they suggest that the quest for appropriating platforms of communication constitutes a struggle around the definition of social meanings. I will propose a three-dimensional analytical charter in which I relate the expression of political voice to the constitution of political imagination and the articulation of political action, a debate that is in the heart of my current research.

Biography

Ana Cristina Suzina is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Institute for Media and Creative Industries at 含羞草视频 London. She has an interdisciplinary background with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, an MA in History and another in Political Science, and a PhD in Social Sciences. She has studied at universities in Brazil, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom. Ana’s research focuses on the relationship between communication, social movements and democracy, with special interest in Latin American societies. For around 15 years, she has worked in projects related to communication for social change, both in NGOs and corporate foundations, in the fields of children rights and nature conservation. She is the editor of the forthcoming book The Evolution of Popular Communication in Latin America.

Time and Place

Ana's lecture took place on the 4th of November 2020, you can view a recording of the lecture here.

Dr Bianca Howard‌

School of Architecture, Building, and Civil Engineering

The pathway to FlexTECC: Flexible Timing of Energy Consumption in Communities

There is a growing need for energy demand to be flexible, i.e. to easily change when energy is consumed, due to the unpredictable nature of the wind-driven electricity grid envisioned for the UK’s future low-carbon energy system. Building heating systems can be a relatively inexpensive option to provide that flexibility due to the inherent ability to store energy within the system and the thermal mass of the building itself. However, still is much unknown about the amount of flexibility that can be delivered from buildings and how that flexibility can be used to support the electricity grid. Additionally, individual buildings, due to the current regulatory framework, are too small to contribute flexible demand directly to the electricity system. They must be aggregated to be large enough to meet connection requirements and therefore must work together as a community. The focus of my fellowship is to generate new knowledge on intelligent control strategies that enable buildings to work together and to understand the factors that affect the flexibility they will ultimately be able to deliver. In this talk, I will discuss my pathway way to developing this fellowship from a career perspective, the organisational structure of the fellowship, and the initial findings from the research.

Biography

Dr. Howard is an EPSRC Innovation Fellow and lecturer in urban energy modelling in the School of Architecture, Building, and Civil Engineering. Her main interest is in studying how data-driven and intelligent planning, design, operation, and maintenance of building energy systems can enable low-carbon, efficient, and flexible buildings and communities. She received her PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Columbia University in 2016 where she was a US National Science Foundation Interdisciplinary Graduate Engineering Research Trainee in “Solving Urbanization Challenges through Design”. Following her PhD, she was a postdoctoral researcher in the Urban Systems Laboratory in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Imperial College London, and was hired as a lecturer in urban energy modelling at 含羞草视频 through the Excellence 100 programme in 2017.

Time and Place

Bianca's lecture took place on the 25th of September 2020, you can view a recording of the lecture here.

Dr Long Seng To

School of Social Sciences and Humanities

Community Energy Resilience

Globally, there are about 1 billion people with no access to electricity and about 3 billion relying on traditional fuels for cooking and heating. The UN Sustainable Development Goal 7 aims bring universal energy access to all by 2030. At the same time, developing countries are facing multiple stresses, including climate change, natural disasters and conflicts that can cause disruption to their critical infrastructure, such as energy. Progress towards development goals cannot be maintained without building more resilience.

In this talk, I will highlight the need for solutions that build on local capacity, and include different stakeholders and knowledges. I will draw on my current work with communities in Nepal and Malawi which starts from an understanding of the existing resilience strategies that communities use to gain or maintain access to energy. The talk will end with some reflections on technological innovation, the impact that research can make and the emerging field of Humanitarian Engineering.

Biography

Long Seng is an Engineering for Development Research Fellow funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering. She has an interdisciplinary background with a BEng in Photovoltaic and Solar Energy Engineering, a BA in History and Philosophy of Science, and a PhD that spans both disciplines. Her previous research included mapping the synergies and trade-offs between energy and the Sustainable Development Goals; agro-industries and clean energy in Africa; capacity development for renewable energy projects in rural China and Indonesia; solar-powered water purification in remote areas in Australia; and local manufacture of solar photovoltaic systems in Nicaragua. She also engages regularly with policy-makers, most recently providing capacity building support for the Department for International Development’s Transforming Energy Access Programme as part of the Low Carbon Energy for Development Network. 

Time and Place

Long Seng's lecture took place on Wednesday 23rd October 2019, follow this link to access a recording of the slides and audio.

Dr Ignacio Martin-Fabiani

School of Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering

Design and Fabrication of Functional Coatings: Where Physics, Chemistry and Biology meet Engineering

The development of novel functional surfaces, such as antibacterial or scratch resistant coatings, demands a multidisciplinary approach that has to encompass research excellence in different areas. It starts with Chemistry, required to synthesize the building blocks of many paints and coatings: tiny polymer particles dispersed in water, also known as latex. Physics plays a crucial role in understanding and controlling the film formation process of this dispersion. The physical processes that take place during drying will determine the final coating structure and, as a consequence, its properties. Surface Engineering is needed as well to guide the knowledge transfer and optimize the manufacturing process. If an antibacterial functionality is desired, the understanding of the Biology of bacterial strains is key to design surfaces that will prevent the adhesion of bacteria. 

In this talk, I will present different methods to structure coatings and how these arrangements affect their final properties. First, a stratification mechanism in which the coating is self-organized in two distinct layers will be discussed. As a result, the coating can be designed so that its surface properties (e.g. tack, wetting, gloss) differ from the bulk properties.  Then, I will show how by accelerating the drying process it is possible to create arrays of structures on the surface of the coating that might lead to self-cleaning and antibacterial properties.

The talk will end with the view of an early career researcher as myself on how to be able to (or be allowed to!) carry out independent and high quality research. 

Biography

Ignacio (Nacho) was born and raised in Madrid (Spain), where after much hesitation he chose to study Physics instead of his other passion, History. He obtained a Materials Physics BSc (Complutense University of Madrid) and an MSc on Polymer Science (Menendez Pelayo International University), before completing a PhD on polymer nanostructures at the end of 2013 (Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)). After that he headed for the UK to join the University of Surrey where he spent two and a half years developing environmentally friendly paints and coatings for a cleaner future. Nacho took up a Vice-Chancellor’s fellowship at 含羞草视频 in 2016, and is now working on antibacterial surfaces to stop the spread of antimicrobial resistance.

Time and Place

This lecture took place on Friday 20 April 2018, 12.30-13.30; the lecture was recorded and can be watched via the University's ReVIEW lecture capture system.

Dr Ahren Warner

School of the Arts, English and Drama

Certain Very Bold Instructions: Poetry, New Media and the Lyric Idea

In the late nineteenth century, the French poet Stephane Mallarmé wrote that his latest, and most revolutionary, poetic work – A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance – was still a little “timid”. Mallarmé justified such timidity by writing that “it is not for me, save by a special pagination or volume of my own, in a periodical so courageous, gracious and accommodating as it shows itself to be to real freedom, to act too contrary to custom”.

As generations of thinkers and critics have written on Mallarmé’s poetry, so some of the greatest minds – from Jacques Derrida to Alain Badiou – have come back to Mallarmé’s essential use of the white space of the page to amplify the effects and possibilities of poetic “syntax”, of how words and phrases are articulated to and against each other to produce what Badiou called “an Idea of which both the object and objectivity represent nothing but pale copies”.

In this talk, I want to primarily discuss my own practice-based research, to show a poem or two that happen to occur within digital media, and to keep one eye on these philosophical and literary historical contexts. Yet, as both a poet and literary critic, my interests lie in how the expanded potential of media other than the page and book might not simply open up new avenues for the dissemination of literature, but might also offer up new forms and new ways of using words to affect the reader.

From a historical perspective, the slow pace of literature’s embrace of new media, compared to the parallel history of visual art, will also offer up a way to talk about how my own creative research is interested in an ‘expanded’ model of poetry, that – drawing on filmmakers like Chris Marker or fine artists such as Harun Farocki – allows lyric language to operate across media, as well as into and via other literary and cultural forms.

Biography

Ahren is a poet, editor and critic. He completed his PhD – on twentieth-century poetry, the commodity fetish and continental philosophy – at Queen Mary, University of London in 2013. His books of poetry include, Confer (2011), Pretty (2013) and Hello. Your promise has been extracted (2017), and have received awards including an Arts Foundation Fellowship, Society of Authors Eric Gregory Award and Royal Society of Literature J.B. Priestley Award. Ahren’s poems, essays and criticism have appeared in journals such as The Guardian, Poetry Review, Poetry (Chicago) and Granta, whilst he is also the Poetry Editor of Poetry London. Recent interdisciplinary work has been exhibited at the Newcastle Poetry Festival and the Great North Museum, and he is currently working on both a series of creative research projects and a longform critical film exploring the parallel histories and effects of new media on twentieth-century poetry and fine art.

Time and Place

This lecture took place Tuesday 27 March 2018, 12.30-13.30; Brockington U0.05.

Dr Oonagh Markey

School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Can changing the fat composition of the diet reduce cardiometabolic disease risk?

Obesity-related cardiometabolic disorders, including cardiovascular disease (CVD) and type 2 diabetes, are one of the greatest global public health burdens. In the UK, CVD is accountable for >25% of deaths and costs the economy approximately £19 billion/annum. There is an urgent need to focus on improving modifiable contributors to CVD risk, including dietary fat intake. Replacement of saturated with unsaturated fats (polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats) is advised as a key strategy for CVD risk reduction.

In her lecture, Oonagh will consider the evidence linking dietary fats with cardiometabolic disease risk. She will discuss novel research conducted at the University of Reading which has demonstrated that consumption of saturated fat-reduced, monounsaturated fat-enriched dairy products can significantly prevent the increase in low-density lipoprotein (bad) cholesterol produced by unmodified dairy in adults at risk of developing CVD.

Oonagh will then discuss her current independent line of research which is focussing on the impact of diet on key inflammatory signalling pathways in white adipose tissue (abdominal fat). Finally, she will highlight her collaborative involvement in multidisciplinary projects being conducted at 含羞草视频.

Biography

Oonagh Markey is a Registered Nutrition Scientist with expertise in cardiometabolic health. Oonagh received her PhD in Physiology and Nutrition from the University of Limerick, Ireland in Jan 2012. Shortly after completion of her PhD, Oonagh was appointed as a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Reading’s Hugh Sinclair Unit of Human Nutrition (2012-2016), where she investigated the effect of dietary components on risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Oonagh joined the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences as a Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow in October 2016.

Time and Place

This lecture took place Wednesday 21 February 2018, 12.30-13.30.

Dr Mark Greenaway

School of Science

Beyond graphene: 2D crystal stacks

Graphene, an atomically thin, two-dimensional (2D) crystal of Carbon atoms, is the strongest and one of the most conductive materials that has ever been measured.  The discovery of graphene’s remarkable properties since its isolation in 2004 by using Scotch tape to peel back the layers of graphite until only a single atomic layer is left, has inspired the isolation and characterisation of a vast number of other 2D crystals, for example hexagonal boron nitride and the transmission metal dichalcogenides, each with unique and useful properties. 

Recently it has been shown that by stacking these 2D crystals it is possible to create a new class of “designer” materials known as van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures which offer a way to tune and exploit the novel and exotic quantum properties of electrons in 2D materials.  These stacked materials are particularly exciting because we can design the structures to exhibit electron transport characteristics that are tailored for specific device applications, by choosing the appropriate combination of layer materials from the growing library of 2D crystals. 

In this talk, Mark will highlight some of the unusual and exciting properties of 2D materials and consider some of their potential applications.  Mark will then describe various new fundamental physical phenomena recently observed when these layers are stacked together. In particular, he will introduce the graphene-boron nitride tunnel transistor, consisting of two layers of graphene separated by a few layers of boron nitride.  Finally, Mark will show how the unusual properties of the graphene layers determine the quantum mechanical tunnelling of electrons between the layers, and how tunnelling can be tuned by changing the layer configuration to create structures useful for logic devices and high frequency electronics.  

Biography

Mark is a theoretical condensed matter physicist with research that currently includes the electronic properties of van der Waals heterostructures (which consist of stacks of different types of 2D crystals), the dynamics of electrons in semiconductor superlattices and the dynamics of ultracold atoms in optical lattices. 

He completed his PhD at the University of Nottingham in 2010, after which he was awarded funding for a Knowledge Transfer Secondment with e2v technologies.  Then, in 2013 he was awarded an Early Career Leverhulme Fellowship at Nottingham to investigate resonant electron tunnelling between the layers of van der Waals heterostructures. He moved to 含羞草视频 as a Vice Chancellor’s Research fellow in October 2016.  

Time and Place

This lecture took place Friday 12 January 2018, 12.30-13.30 in room WPT005, in the West Park Teaching Hub. 

Dr Antonis Vradis

School of Social, Political and Geographical Sciences

The New Spatial Contract: the way we move (and live) in cities today

We perfectly understand the meaning of being "on time". So much of our daily lives revolves around this : scheduling meetings, meeting deadlines, running errands and doing chores at set intervals鈥昳n short, managing when we do what. But what about where we do what? Here, I believe, there is a gap in our understanding. Even though we are equally鈥昳f not more鈥昦ware of the invisible barriers that separate the spaces through which we move, we lack the words to describe these. Take the example of the campus: a lecture theatre is the space to deliver lectures, a kitchenette is where you will prepare a cup of tea or some food, an office is where an academic will work, meet colleagues, etc. Mix up any of these spaces and their use, and things can get pretty strange, pretty fast.

I call this invisible human agreement a "spatial contract". I believe it works in ways that are very similar to the social contract, this implicit agreement we have with the authorities that govern us in terms of how we are meant to act and what we can expect in exchange. And similarly with our conceptualisation of time, the barriers are socially constructed but nevertheless extremely robust. To understand what breaking them could possibly entail, I have been studying contemporary cases where the spatial contract is tested to its limits. From the Brazilian favelas, to migrant camps, to the Greek riots, my aim is to understand the state of the spatial contract today: how and why people challenge the current spatial status quo, and what it might look like in the future.

Biography

Antonis grew up in Patras, Greece’s port city and gateway to the West: he has been fascinated by people moving in and through cities ever since. Antonis studied Sociology at University of Leeds, the academic home of Zygmunt Bauman, before moving to London School of Economics to study for two Masters, followed by his PhD, completed under the supervision of Diane Perrons in 2013. Antonis was a Junior Research Fellow at Durham University (2014-2016) before moving to 含羞草视频 as a Vice Chancellor's Research Fellow in September 2016.

Time and Place

This lecture took place Wednesday 22 November 2017, 12.30-13.30, Brockington U005.

Recording

This lecture was recorded by the ReVIEW lecture capture system and can be viewed via this link.