AccesScience 2008 Winner Billy Fleming with event host Pat Kenny
Following a successful AccessScience ’08 event, podcasts of the finalists’ presentations have been made available for download. Six postgraduate researchers from UCD Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science competed to explain their cutting-edge research in terms easily understood by an audience made up of Transition Year students and the general public.
Billy Fleming won the competition with his presentation on ‘The Nature of Chemistry’, where he spoke about the advances being made in the lab to synthesise molecules used in drug therapies in an environmentally friendly way. Billy will go on to represent UCD in the national Science Speak competition.
Belinda Maher won second prize on for her demonstration of the ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ nature of neutrophils in causing transplant rejection, and how statins are now understood to be able to combat this.
Shane Kenny told the AccesScience audience of how researchers are now finding ways to create biodegradable plastics using microbes, thus reducing the pressure on landfill sites.
Jane Ferguson spoke of how scientists are now coming to the understanding that body shape is a result of a combination of genetic factors and diet, pointing the way to individually tailored diets in the future.
Jennifer Hickey showed the audience how stents – common tools in combating thickened coronary arteries – can now be coated with drugs which improve their efficacy and minimise side-effects such as clotting.
Marco Monopoli impressed the crowd with his demonstration of how the brain changes when it learns new information, forecasting a time when this greater understanding will allow us to develop drugs for the treatment of conditions such as Alzheimer’s Disease.
Each of the six presentations is available as an audio recording with an accompanying slide-show.
Download AccessScience ’08 final podcasts
Environmentally friendly advances in chemistry capture imagination at AccesScience ’08
