The brain is arguably the most important organ, controlling most other body systems and enabling reasoning, cognition, and emotion. Given its importance, all mammals, including humans, have evolved a variety of protective measures to prevent physical damage to the brain; it sits in a solid bony case, the skull, and is wrapped in water-tight membranes called the meninges. What has been less clear is how the body defends the brain from microbial invasion and infection, because immune cells and antibodies were historically thought to be excluded from the brain. This talk will explore how Prof. Clatworthy’s team discovered a direct immune link between the gut and the brain. They found that immune cells activated by gut microbes or infections migrate from the gastrointestinal tract to the meninges and brain. This system establishes long-lasting immune memory cells at the brain borders, strengthening the brain’s defence against blood-borne pathogens. It also has other potential consequences. Some of the signals produced by immune cells can directly affect neurons, brain function and behaviours like anxiety, socialisation and learning. It may also explain why some neurodegenerative diseases that affect the brain, like Parkinson’s disease, start with gut symptoms. This accessible talk will discuss this fascinating emerging field.

Brigadier (Retired) Dr Gareth Collett CBE rose to lead the UK’s bomb disposal profession, commanding specialist teams across Iraq, Afghanistan and other conflict zones and advising internationally on counter-terrorism, explosive threats and blast mitigation. Following military service, Gareth continued his work internationally, including as a United Nations Chief Technical Advisor, while developing an academic career focused on explosives engineering, chemical precursors, post-blast war crime investigation and the occupational health consequences of exposure to energetic materials. He holds a PhD in Defence and Security and is a Chartered Engineer and Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Explosive Engineers. Diagnosed with high-risk, high-grade non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer in 2023, Gareth subsequently turned his research experience towards investigating the apparent incidence of bladder cancer among bomb disposal personnel. His work has helped bring greater attention to possible links between occupational exposure to explosives and urological cancer.

This talk will share how Dr Rhys Jones’ passion for nature shaped his path into academia, authorship, and wildlife and science presenting. His shows are available worldwide on BBC, Discovery, National Geographic, Amazon Prime, and Disney Channel. Rather than a conventional route, Dr. Jones reflects on overcoming the challenges of being a dyslexic high school dropout to achieve his goal of becoming a Russell Group Associate Professor. Few can claim to have worked with Queen Elizabeth II, to have had a van gifted by King Charles, or to have filmed BBC documentaries with Sir David Attenborough. His journey has indeed been a wild adventure.

This talk will explore how both sciences and humanities make assumptions about the nature of human knowing that may converge as much as they differ. Recognizing that we learn in different ways is basic to understanding our human situation, and we shall be looking at some recent discussion of how both science and philosophy approach this.

This lecture will take place in the Large Chemistry Lecture Theatre and will be open to CSS members and non-members. Registration will be essential to reserve a space - click the link below.

Despite no formal barriers still existing for women to pursue careers within the sciences, the numbers still show a dispiriting shortage of women in sectors based on Physics - including Engineering - and Computing. Why should this be so? In this talk I will look at what still deters girls taking up these subjects or succeeding in the sectors derived from them. Many of the issues are cultural, but education can still perpetuate outdated stereotypes reinforcing the messages children hear around them. Diversity in the scientific workforce matters for many reasons, so improving the situation is crucial for everything from women's health to creating unbiased algorithms, as well as growing our economy.

Mycorrhizal networks are widely recognised as an iconic example of biological connectivity, yet fundamental questions remain about how they actually function, how dynamic they are, and how resource movement through them is regulated. Recent advances are reshaping this picture, revealing a diversity, dynamism, and regulatory complexity in mycorrhizal networks that challenge long-standing assumptions about their ecological role. Far from being static conduits for “cooperative resource sharing”, arbuscular mycorrhizal networks respond dynamically to biotic pressures, from aboveground aphid herbivory to belowground plant-parasitic nematodes, revealing a regulatory sensitivity that complicates simple mutualistic narratives. This talk will also explore the remarkable diversity of fungal symbionts sustaining these underground networks, including the growing recognition of Mucoromycotina ‘fine root endophytes’ (MFRE) as widespread and functionally significant plant partners. Their emergence as a distinct mycorrhiza-forming group if fungi raises new questions about the range of nutritional strategies at work below ground, and what this diversity means for how we understand plant-fungal symbiosis more broadly.

Successes in characterising vanishingly small amounts of pheromones and other signalling compounds (semiochemicals) of agricultural pests has opened similar opportunities for insect vectors of human pathogens. Although these compounds comprise small lipophilic molecules, sophistication in structural requirements for biological activity of the often-novel chemical structures must be accommodated. Crucial, in this process, is the direct coupling of chromatography with electrophysiological preparations including from single olfactory neurons in insect antennae, by collaboration with Biosciences at Cardiff. Production of important semiochemicals in the terpenoid class can exploit natural catalytic (bio-catalytic) systems for synthesis with the exact natural isomeric chemistry. Particularly useful are promiscuous kinase enzymes, developed at Cardiff, from extremophile organisms that can robustly accept wider ranges of biochemical reaction conditions as well as novel substrates. New developments in sustainable food production have followed with delivery including such biotechnological production, plant genetic engineering and ecosystem management, and offer opportunities in Wales. To these are added more sustainable approaches to human health, as potential impact from infectious disease grows, and towards achieving the One Health global concept.

We all highlight the relevance of our research in grant applications, but few of us are privileged enough to see the fruits of that activity resulting in global impact. This talk will track the journey, from the UK’s youngest female Professor joining Cardiff in the early 1990s working on the biochemistry and molecular biology of insecticide resistance in mosquitoes, to establishing and running two major product development partnerships (PDPs). Along the way there was time to reinvigorate the World’s oldest School of Tropical Medicine in Liverpool and spin out three new companies. The first PDP, IVCC, brought in major Gates funding and established a much-needed pipeline of new public health insecticides. The second PDP, iiCON, has helped bring 36 new infection therapeutics to market in the last 6 years, with 5 billion units of these getting to the people and populations that need them most. A true story of innovation to impact.

Groundwater is arguably the most important substance on Earth that many people have never heard of, yet it has played a central, if hidden, role in the history of life on this planet and on the emergence of human culture as we know it. This talk will trace that story back to the emergence of our hominin ancestors in East Africa, and then explore the co-evolution of groundwater and humans across four fields of development - behaviour, systems, psychology, and culture – over the past 2 million years up to the present day. The way modern humans now perceive and relate to groundwater as a resource has led to seemingly incredible benefits to society globally, but has become maladaptive by contributing to multiple evolving global ’crises’. How could changing our way of thinking about and relating to water, and nature more broadly, lead to more effective responses to some of the global predicaments we currently face?

Scotland’s Astronomer Royal, Prof. Catherine Heymans, is having an existential crisis! Ever since her son asked, ‘could we be living inside a computer game?’ she’s been questioning everything she sees. Throwing all the science that she knows at the problem, Catherine explores whether humanity could ever create a virtual universe as rich and diverse as our own. Unpack the rules that appear to govern our existence as we journey from the quirky quantum world, up into the wild dark Universe. Will technology ever be able to replicate the complexity of life? Could consciousness be coded? Catherine invites you to reconsider what it means to be real.

Three of the greatest western physical scientists ever known, Isaac Newton, Thomas Young and Albert Einstein were much distracted by the question ‘What exactly is light’. Newton had developed a particle model of light, coming to this conclusion partly from the observation that light is split into two beams by certain transparent crystals. Some 100 years later Thomas Young undertook his famous experiment ‘Young’s double slit’ concluding that a wave model for light is more suitable. Another century passes before Albert Einstein, in explaining the photoelectric effect, reinforced a particle (quantum) model of light. But who is actually correct? Light illustrates the extraordinary wave-particle duality of the Universe. Newton, Young and Einstein were all correct. This demonstration lecture will explore some aspects of light and wave-particle duality.