Pint of Science

Last week the pubs were even more crowded than usual. Not because of a special drinks offer, but instead to meet a group of scientists. Across 6 countries and in 21 cities, everyone was enjoying their “Pint of Science”. Guest blogger Amanda helped organise the event in York and is here to explain all.

To the pub

Almost a year ago I received an email looking for volunteers to help organise an international outreach festival, Pint of Science. The event combined two of my favourite things, hearing about exciting new research and going to the pub! It later became apparent this wasn’t going to be a small event. The festival was running 12 events within each city involved, over 3 evenings. Last year, Pint of Science was run in London, Oxford and Cambridge, stimulating and engaging the public about current research and why science is relevant to their everyday lives. Now, a team of York postgraduates were challenged with extending the festival up to the north of England.

What really excited me about the festival was removing science outreach events from lacklustre venues and into a relaxed environment that is well known for fuelling the generation of many great scientific ideas. For example, James Watson admitted that many crucial discussions between him and Crick were at pubs in Cambridge during their discovery of the DNA alpha helix.

In the 10 months leading up to the event we put together a programme of talks covering all areas of science. The talks included mind reading using MRI, plasma science as sustainable energy sources and fish and (computer) chips for understanding Parkinson’s disease.

My personal highlight was a talk at Brigantes bar, given by Professor Dave Smith, a previous lecturer of mine and famous for his YouTube videos. In “From G&T to TLC – how chemistry helps you feel better”, he demonstrated the healing properties of tonic water, and his own research on gene delivery using self-assembly techniques in an engaging an interactive talk. Other highlights across the pubs in York included a very large and loud plasma reactor and a Gangnam Style dancing robot!

A great success of the festival was the interaction between the audience and the speakers. The informal environment really encouraged discussions around the topics being presented, with a pint in hand.

The PhD that was

After having submitted my thesis last week, I thought it time to retire the PhD page from my blog. So here it is for posterity...

I had the pleasure of working with Dr Bruce Turnbull at Leeds. My project was to develop general strategies towards controlling protein self-assembly into designed nanostructures.

Taking advantage of weak protein-carbohydrate interactions we aim to construct three-dimensional nanoscale virus-like particles and other nanoarchitecture (my new favourite word). Ligands of various lengths, and with different carbohydrate moieties of varying affinity, have been covalently attached to the cholera toxin B‑pentamer (CTB). The carbohydrate units bind into the natural binding pocket of another CTB pentamer, bringing the proteins together to form different aggregates and particles. Analysis of the structures can be performed with AUC, MS, AFM, SEC, ITC, DLS and any other acronym you can think of.

So what does it all mean?

Well, to simplify things just imagine a brick. Now stick some velcro to that brick. Then get a load of these in a bag, shake them about a bit and hopefully out should pop a discrete spherical object. If this sounds unlikely and a bit crazy then you've grasped the idea perfectly.

If we can build organised, controlled structures on the nanoscale then this opens up possibilities for nanomachines, templated reactions and drug delivery vehicles.

PhD life

Doing a PhD is stressful, hard work and immensely fun. The work differs day to day with massive highs when your reactions unexpectedly work and terrible lows when your proteins commit suicide. There is a lot of self-motivation and commitment needed to complete a successful PhD, and it also helps having a great team around you and a kind word of encouragement every now and then (cheers Bruce). All for the advancement of the human race, and maybe also for the title of Dr before your name.

 

Geek week communication

It is geek week on Youtube and so I thought as science falls firmly into this category I'd highlight a few short videos I'd class as great science communication. They are all quite different and show the variety of things possible in front of a camera. I wrote a post not long ago about how words are important for communication, but of course that is not the only medium available for telling your story. Videos can be a great source of information and far more appealing in some cases. 

The complex life of sugars

This film was made for the Royal Society Summer Science exhibition that took place in London earlier in July. It's a nice whizz through all the areas of normal life where carbohydrates are found. The graphics are amazing, it keeps things very simple from tree bark to microarrays. Importantly also, the chemical structures are accurately shown which is unfortunately not always the case in popular science.

Conference call

The second film is a discussion of what is synthetic biology and where is it going. The film was produced at a conference of the Synthetic Components Network and nicely combines interviews, discussions and fancy images of proteins. Make sure you pay attention at 1.30 for a cameo appearance from yours truly. As a finger is pointed towards my poster, Beth Bromley says, "...they have no idea of what's impossible". Thanks Beth.

An extreme sport

The third video here might have been just a bit of fun, but it is really fantastic and a great example of how anyone with a camera can make an exciting and engaging short film (about chemistry!). I bet you've never seen a camera on a rotavap before...

For more great science videos have a look at Kyle Hill's round up for Scientific American and of course for all the ladies out there I couldn't write this post without mentioning the amazing awful "science: it's a girl thing".

My first conference talk

The chemistry postgraduate conference was at Leeds last week and I gave my first ever proper conference talk. Being in the last couple months of my PhD and therefore extra busy, extra stressed and with no time for distractions like these silly presentations, I left things to the last minute.

So it was only an internal meeting and the audience mostly made up of other postgrads from the organic section, but speaking to a full room is never an easy task.

The build up

A hash together of group meeting slides and figures from previous reports gave me something to practice in front of the lab group, with 3 days to go. I tend to think I am quite good at winging it and this is generally my theory for life, but in this case it wasn't great. I realised this was kind of a big deal and therefore I should put a bit of effort in. Therefore next couple days were spent creating ChemDraw schemes, making cartoon figures and in 3 hour meetings with my supervisor.

Athene Donald wrote a great blog post about the pitfalls of conference presentations, with the key point being practice, practice, practice! I can only agree with her. I also got a handy tip from my supervisor to make sure it started well. he suggested that I learnt a script for the first couple slides of introduction so that I knew exactly what to say at the beginning and wouldn't stumble through incomprehensible mumbles.

Amazingly, it all went rather well. I knew what I wanted to say and said it. I spoke confidently and even managed to get a couple small laughs in, thankfully no tumbleweed moments. I handled some probing questions, avoiding anything too deep on the synthesis or too general on the reasons (applications are overrated). Shown above is one of my slides giving the (one day) infamous cartoon depiction of the cholera toxin protein, everyone knows that it's red right? In our lab, every protein has its own colour.

And relax

My talk was the last one of the day, a potentially awful slot if everyone is fed up by then and itching to get to the wine reception. But it was nice afterwards to not have to sit through any more pretending to listen whilst going over my notes. I had some great feedback from friends and academics and then got in to the bitching about some of the other talks.

Blue background and then blue data points on a graph, bad idea. Switching to a second presentation because you left out or forgot to talk about something, bad idea. Talking in a voice so deep you make the floor vibrate, bad idea (maybe I'm just jealous about not having a deep manly voice for this point).

I now know what to expect next time around and what to do better. I'll always remember this as a first effort and maybe with some feeling of nostalgia. The conference was followed by a ball in the evening that was also a memorable event, or not so for those of us overindulging in the free wine.