eSI Public Lecture: "Modelling and Microbiology Theme Opening Lecture" - Bacteria: An Unseen World by Dr. Rosalind Allen

27 September, 2010 04:00 PM - 05:30 PM

e-Science Institute, 15 South College Street, Edinburgh

Dr Rosalind J Allen Royal Society University Research Fellow School of Physics and Astronomy University of Edinburgh The e-Science Institute is delighted to host a public lecture by Dr Rosalind J Allen. The public lecture is open to all interested parties in academia and industry. There is no need to register for this event and those attending the lecture are invited to join us for drinks and nibbles afterwards at 17:00. This Public Lecture is scheduled to be webcast live. For further information see below.

Dr Rosalind J Allen

Abstract

In 1683, a Dutch microscopist, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, wrote a letter to the Royal Society of London describing his discovery that tooth plaque was teeming with tiny "animalcules", invisible to the human eye but visible under his microscope. This was the first human observation of bacteria, tiny, single-celled organisms which have in fact inhabited the Earth for about 3.8 billion years. In this lecture, I will discuss why these "animalcules" are crucially important to the health of both us and the planet, how our knowledge of them has improved since 1683, and how microbiologists are now teaming up with physicists, computer scientists and mathematicians to try to find ways to use this knowledge in healthcare and technology.

Biography

Dr. Rosalind Allen is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and proleptic lecturer in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Edinburgh University. She has extensive expertise in computer simulation of biological systems. Her research achievements include the development of the Forward Flux Sampling method for simulating rare events in nonequilibrium systems, which is widely used in soft matter and biological physics, and the discovery of intermittent wetting dynamics in hydrophobic nanopores, which is important in biological ion channel gating. Dr. Allen currently uses both computational and experimental methods to study microbial ecosystems and gene regulation.

Webcast

This meeting is due to be webcast live. The link to the webcast will appear here 1 hour before the meeting / webcast is due to be broadcast.

For the majority of the meetings that we broadcast, we keep a copy (for a limited period) and make it available from the event material page. This copy of the webcast is normally available the day after the meeting.

Travel

Full details on how to get to the e-Science Institute are available at:

http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/esi_travel.html

Enquiries

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http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/