Month: July 2026

Date and Time: 28th August, 19.00-21.00

Location: Howard Building Assembly Room

You’re an epidemiologist who’s arrived at a refugee camp where there’s been an increase in disease incidence among the camp residents. What should you do? What specialists do you need, what must you find out, and how are you going to stop the disease spreading?

This event will be run by Dr Charlotte Hammer, Fellow in Epidemiology at Downing, along with some Fellows and postgrad students as facilitators for groups of you all. You don’t need any prior experience in planning a response to a disease outbreak (!) – indeed, you don’t even need to be a medic or a biologist, just have a willingness to look at an unfamiliar situation and start to think about what you might do. Feedback from previous groups is that this is a fascinating insight into how medicine and science are used in the real world, and that it’s good fun, too. Free pizza provided!

Date and Time: 9th March, 18.00-19.00

Location: online

Sustainable chemical synthesis: Photoelectrochemical fuel synthesis using organic semiconductors with (bio)molecular catalysts

Dr Celine Yeung is a recent Downing alumnus, having completed her PhD in the Reisner lab, Department of Chemistry. Her work involved developing ‘a hybrid device that combines light-harvesting organic polymers with bacterial enzymes to convert sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into formate, a fuel that can drive further chemical transformations’. By utilising enzymes immobilised in a porous titania structure, it allows the system to function without unstainable additives, aligning with Dr Yeung’s goals of a circular economy. Dr Yeung is now a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Hu lab at the EPFL in Switzerland, working on solid oxide electrolysis. 

For more information on her work on photoelectrochemical fuel synthesis click here.

Date and Time: 18.00-19.00

Location: Maitland Room

Talk covering sustainable design and manufacturing, in the context of thermal energy stores

This talk was followed by a free academic formal for a chance to discuss with the speaker.

Date and Time: 9th February 18.00-19.00

Location: The Wilkins Room

Quantum Error Correction

Date and Time: 12th February, 18.00-19.30

Location: The Wilkins Room

Cancer evolution and detection

An introduction to cancer evolution – Dr Emma Hazelwood

Dr Emma Hazelwood is a Research Associate in Cancer Evolution at the Early Cancer Institute and an Everitt Butterfield Research Fellow here at Downing College. Her work focuses on ‘how inherited genetic factors interact with lifestyle exposures to shape cancer risk and tumour evolution’ through investigation of ‘large-scale epidemiological cohorts and deeply sequenced tumour datasets’. This talk be an introduction into cancer evolution, exploring her work on biological mechanisms and biomarkers associated with lung cancer, and how this can improve risk stratification, early diagnosis, and more effective treatment. 

Long-read sequencing for the detection of short tumour DNA in blood – Dr Carolin Sauer

Dr Carolin Sauer is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the EMBL-EBI in the Cortes Ciriano Group. Her work involves the analysis of long read sequencing data to explore various factors in cancer such as predicting resistance to chemotherapies, analysis of somatic structural variants and copy number aberrations, and understanding subtype specific evolution and epigenetic states of various cancers. This talk will explore the applications of long-read sequencing for detection of short tumour DNA in the blood. 

Workshop on scientific industry operations consulting and technical problem solving. Led by Panna Chauhan and Aidan Marks.