Inaugural science lecture at Imperial’s White City campus – with Professor Oscar Ces
public in-person lecture
Friends first lecture at Imperial’s White City campus - Artificial Cells and the White City Innovation District.
Professor Oscar Ces - Head of Department, August von Hofmann Chair of Chemistry, Dept. of Chemistry, Imperial College London.
Cells are the building blocks of life. They have been sculpted over billions of years of evolution to perform some of the most complex tasks known to humankind. However, at their core, they can be thought of as a web of interacting molecules, albeit a very complex one. We can ask ourselves: what if we could create entirely synthetic cells from scratch? Can we make life from inanimate matter?
Achieving this ambitious objective will pave the way for groundbreaking applications to address some of the grand societal challenges of our time, and transform our understanding of biology by building a new biology.
The ultimate aim of synthetic cell research is to manufacture synthetic "microrobots" that possess the hallmark behaviours of cellular life, including the ability to move, harvest and convert energy, communicate with each other and with biological cells, adapt to the environment, replicate, make 'decisions', repair themselves, grow, divide, and even evolve. A goal so ambitious requires cross-fertilisation of ideas from life, physical, mathematical & computational sciences, engineering & design disciplines and beyond, as well as new tools and technologies specifically developed to meet this challenge.
The White City Innovation Campus which aims to co-locate academia and industry and pioneer new ways of working provides the ideal ecosystems for this kind of multi-disciplinary research.
This talk will give an overview of ground-breaking research at Imperial College London in the area of artificial cells, an introduction to the White City Innovation Campus and an overview of how it is supporting fundamental and translational research.
Professor Oscar Ces is a Professor in Chemical Biology, the Head of the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College, and the Hofmann Chair of Chemistry, a position that commemorates the memory of chemist August Wilhelm von Hofmann (1818-1892). The Hofmann Chair of Chemistry is awarded to chemists at Imperial who have made positive and significant contributions to the Department of Chemistry, and to the advancement of Chemistry in London and the UK.
He is a specialist in microfluidics, soft condensed matter, chemical biology, microfluidics, artificial cell science, drug delivery systems, single cell analysis technologies and membrane mechanics. Since 2006 he has raised >£80m in funding, published over 100 papers and given 60 invited lectures. He has active research programmes with industry including with AstraZeneca, GSK, P&G and Syngenta.
During and prior to his role as Head of Department he has played a pivotal role in establishing Imperial’s White City Campus.
Within the Department of Chemistry, Professor Ces has acted as Director of Development, Theme Leader for Chemical Biology & Healthcare and co-Director of the Membrane Biophysics Platform.
Alongside these roles he was previously Director of the Institute of Chemical Biology, the Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Chemical Biology, as well as the Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Doctoral Training in Cellular Bionics.
Through these roles, as well as working with others in the Department, Professor Ces has co-developed and realised the vision for the Molecular Sciences Research Hub in White City and helped found the Agilent Measurement Suite, the Imperial College Advanced Hackspace, the Deep Tech Network (in partnership with Upstream) and the Invention Rooms. Most recently he co-founded fabriCELL, an Imperial College Network of Excellence in Synthetic Cell Science and digiFAB, a new cross-faculty institute focusing on the development of Digital Chemistry which is part of the Academic Strategy.
This event is open to everyone, simply book places below.
We do not issue tickets, the email sent to you upon booking will act as your confirmation. The location for this event is on Imperial's White City campus, Wood Lane, London, W12 0BZ. Nearer the time we will email you with the exact lecture theatre and directions.
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