Research talks

It's back! The one time a year when YSA does science! Join us for an exciting and educational set of talks from the cutting edge of science research. You'll get to hear all about their research and have an opportunity to ask plenty of questions if you're keen to know more.

We will be hearing from scientists in a wide range of fields, from computer science to biology.  Keep an eye on your emails and our social media for more information about our wonderful presenters over the next few weeks. 

Interested? Of course you are! Join us on our discord server on Sunday 19th September from 2PM for a fun afternoon of science!

https://discord.io/ysamelbourne

Details? 

WHO? 

You! (Plus any other friends you want to invite!)

WHAT? 

Riveting science research presentations!

WHERE? 

On the YSA Discord server! 

WHEN? 

Sunday the 19th September from 2PM

WHY? 

Because who doesn't love a bit of science?

 

Our Presenters

Thomas Nobes

My project addresses the issue of pipe-routing in chemical plants through the lens of a multi-agent pathfinding problem. Here, we treat each pipe as an individual agent and must find an optimal route for each pipe that not only avoids each other, but is further subject to a wide variety of engineering and safety constraints. While 2D pathfinding is well studied, pathfinding in 3D is relatively unexplored and poses significantly more difficulty and scale. This is a computational problem that we hope to tackle through the development of faster and more efficient 3D pathfinding algorithms that can reason better about the environment and exploit symmetries in 3D space.

Shon Kolomoisky

My research involves creating ways to control how light interacts with metal using nanoparticles. I use the properties of two broad classes of nanoparticles, plasmonic and excitonic, to trap light into nanoscale volumes smaller than its wavelength and then control how it travels through the system, and how it is reemitted. In general, this research attempts to be able to impose the same control over light as modern electronic circuitry does on electrons. Hopefully, one day we can have computers that run exclusively using light rather than electricity!

Rylan Jardine

Core Collapse Supernovae (CCSNe) are some of the most energetic events in the universe, violent stellar explosions that take place at the end of a massive stars’ life. The largest of them are believed to be shaped by strong rotation and magnetic fields producing heavy elements such as gold, silver and lead. The recent gravitational wave (GW) detections of merging binary black holes, has opened up the prospect of observing the GW signal of CCSNe for the first time. Simulating these events and their predicted GW signals is vital for increasing our likelihood of detections and our understanding of the universe.

Kristian Barry

To protect our bodies from invaders and damage our immune system employs a range of pattern recognition receptors to detect insult and invasion. One of these receptors; NLRP3, forms a large protein structure in the cell called the inflammasome once it has been activated and is responsible for activating inflammatory signals. The role of this inflammasome however is a double-edged sword, with early activation required to effectively kill off invaders, while prolonged inflammasome signaling is detrimental to the host. My project aims to determine which cell types are responsible for both the “good” and “bad” sides of inflammasome signaling, with the aim of informing more targeted therapeutics for a range of inflammasome related diseases.

Emily Jones

Breast cancer is the most common cancer worldwide and Estrogen receptor (ER) positive/luminal breast cancer is the most common subtype, accounting for around 70% of the total cases. Currently anti-estrogen therapies are used as an effective treatment method for this subtype, however around 30-50% of patients eventually relapse and develop resistance to these treatments. Therefore, in order to improve patient outcome new therapeutic pathways need to be identified. My project is investigating the signaling pathways of P-Rex1, a protein which is overexpressed in ER positive breast cancer to hopefully identify new therapeutic targets for patients with ER positive breast cancer.