Thu 22 May 11:30: Nano in Precision Medicine: Applications in Early Cancer Detection and Drug Delivery
Modern molecular science, best described as the convergence of (bio)chemistry, molecular biology, physics, and the transformative power of artificial intelligence, is paving the way in design of advanced materials for precision medicine. One of the most promising innovations are bio-nano hybrids, engineered systems that seamlessly integrate biomolecules into synthetic nanostructures to bridge the gap between biology and technology.
In this talk, we will delve into the design principles and biomedical applications of organic and hybrid nanomaterials, with a focus on their role in real-time detection of senescent (aged) cells and the role they play in early cancer detection, and targeted drug delivery.
Beyond the current applications, we will also explore how the next generation of bio-nano tools could redefine the future of biomedical nanotechnology, unlocking new possibilities for disease monitoring, intervention, and treatment. We will also examine the key challenges that must be addressed to streamline the translation pipeline from labs to clinic.
- Speaker: Prof Ljiljana Fruk ( Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology)
- Thursday 22 May 2025, 11:30-12:30
- Venue: Open Plan Area, Institute for Energy and Environmental Flows, Madingley Rise CB3 0EZ.
- Series: Institute for Energy and Environmental Flows (IEEF); organiser: Catherine Pearson.
Thu 22 May 13:00: Hydrogen airplanes and why they need Heat Exchangers
Hydrogen aircraft are a promising technology in the long-term for flights beyond what is achievable with batteries. One of the key elements to make an economically competitive H2 aircraft are the heat exchangers, focus of the talk.
- Speaker: Kilian Bartsch, Department of Engineering
- Thursday 22 May 2025, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Richard King room, Darwin College.
- Series: Darwin College Science Seminars; organiser: Alexander R Epstein.
Thu 30 Oct 14:00: Electronic response to ion projectiles traversing matter from first principles
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Prof. Emilio Artacho (Cambridge & Nanogune)
- Thursday 30 October 2025, 14:00-15:30
- Venue: Seminar Room 3, RDC.
- Series: Theory of Condensed Matter; organiser: Bo Peng.
Thu 04 Jun 17:00: LLMs
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Valeria Ruscio
- Thursday 04 June 2026, 17:00-17:45
- Venue: Lecture Theatre 2, Computer Laboratory, William Gates Building.
- Series: Foundation AI; organiser: Pietro Lio.
Fri 30 May 16:00: TBA
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Hannah Banks (Cambridge U.)
- Friday 30 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Ray Dolby Centre, Seminar Room - North (Floor: 0 A0.019).
- Series: HEP phenomenology joint Cavendish-DAMTP seminar; organiser: Nico Gubernari.
Fri 23 May 08:45: JCTS Presentations
Charli Twyford: Grass Awn Foreign Bodies: Diagnosis and Retrieval in 18 Canine Patients Nicholas Kelly: Pneumoperitoneum in two cats treated with trilostane for hyperadrenocorticism Amy Lord: Antibiotics use in patients seen through a small animal internal medicine referral service
Chaired by Katie McCallum
- Speaker: Charli Twyford, Nicholas Kelly and Amy Lord, Department of Veterinary Medicine
- Friday 23 May 2025, 08:45-10:00
- Venue: LT2.
- Series: Friday Morning Seminars, Dept of Veterinary Medicine; organiser: Fiona Roby.
Fri 30 May 08:45: JCTS Presentations
Harry Peters: Does BOAS surgery reduce the incidence of neurological conditions in later life? Sub title- A brief review of the pitfalls of questionnaire based research. Anna Preston: A case of a subungual keratoacanthoma in a greyhound.
Chaired by Armando Sanchez-Lara
- Speaker: Harry Peters and Anna Preston, Department of Veterinary Medicine
- Friday 30 May 2025, 08:45-10:00
- Venue: LT2.
- Series: Friday Morning Seminars, Dept of Veterinary Medicine; organiser: Fiona Roby.
Wed 28 May 16:00: Typical hyperbolic surfaces have an optimal spectral gap
The first non-zero Laplace eigenvalue of a hyperbolic surface, or its spectral gap, measures how well-connected the surface is: surfaces with a large spectral gap are hard to cut in pieces, have a small diameter and fast mixing times. For large hyperbolic surfaces (of large area or large genus g, equivalently), we know that the spectral gap is asymptotically bounded above by 1/4. The aim of this talk is to present joint work with Nalini Anantharaman, where we prove that most hyperbolic surfaces have a near-optimal spectral gap. That is to say, we prove that, for any ε>0, the Weil-Petersson probability for a hyperbolic surface of genus g to have a spectral gap greater than 1/4-ε goes to one as g goes to infinity. This statement is analogous to Alon’s 1986 conjecture for regular graphs, proven by Friedman in 2003. I will present our approach, which shares many similarities with Friedman’s work, and introduce new tools and ideas that we have developed in order to tackle this problem.
- Speaker: Laura Monk (Bristol)
- Wednesday 28 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: MR13.
- Series: Differential Geometry and Topology Seminar; organiser: Oscar Randal-Williams.
Thu 22 May 13:00: Compute Cluster and Storage
Abstract
Designing and building a distributed processing cluster of GPUs and CPUs with petabytes of storage, geared towards processing environmental data.
Bio
Mark is a Senior Research Software Engineer and Tarides Fellow in the Energy and Environment Group. His areas of interest are the OCaml ecosystem, large-scale distributed computing clusters.
- Speaker: Mark Elvers, University of Cambridge
- Thursday 22 May 2025, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Room GS15 at the William Gates Building and on Zoom: https://cl-cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/4361570789?pwd=Nkl2T3ZLaTZwRm05bzRTOUUxY3Q4QT09&from=addon .
- Series: Energy and Environment Group, Department of CST; organiser: lyr24.
Fri 31 Oct 14:00: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Dr Shelly Zhang, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Friday 31 October 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Oatley 1 Meeting Room, Department of Engineering.
- Series: Engineering - Mechanics and Materials Seminar Series; organiser: div-c.
Tue 20 May 14:00: Mixing of a random walk on a randomly twisted hypercube
We consider `randomly twisted hypercubes’, i.e.\ random graphs $G$ for $n\ge0$ that can be defined recursively as follows. Let $G{(0)}$ be a graph consisting of a single vertex, and for $n\ge1$ let $G$ be obtained by considering two independent copies $G{(n-1,1)}$ and $G$ of $G{(n-1)}$ and adding the edges corresponding to a uniform random matching between their vertices. We study a lazy or simple random walk on these and in both cases establish that their mixing times are of order $n$ and they do not exhibit cutoff. In this talk I hope to have enough time to discuss this model and the results and also present most of the ideas of the proofs. Joint work with An{\dj}ela \v{S}arkovi\’c; based on a joint work with Jonathan Hermon, An{\dj}ela \v{S}arkovi\’c, Allan Sly and Perla Sousi.
- Speaker: Zsuzsa Baran (Cambridge)
- Tuesday 20 May 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: MR12.
- Series: Probability; organiser: Perla Sousi.
Thu 22 May 16:00: Immune Escape and Immune Suppression in Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma
This Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar will take place on Thursday 22 May 2025, starting at 4:00pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Prof. Vincenzo Bronte, Universita di Verona, Italy
Title: ‘Immune Escape and Immune Suppression in Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma’
Host: Virginia Pedicord, CITIID , Cambridge
Refreshments will be available following the seminar.
- Speaker: Prof. Vincenzo Bronte, Universita di Verona, Italy
- Thursday 22 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Thu 22 May 14:00: Engineering Genetic Controllers to Accelerate Adaptation and Attenuate Cellular Noise
Cells excel at regulating internal processes with speed, precision, and resilience. Inspired by this, synthetic biology increasingly employs feedback control to engineer robust, adaptive behaviors. Yet, molecular noise, saturation, nonlinearities, and structural constraints pose major design challenges. This talk explores molecular feedback controllers that achieve Robust Perfect Adaptation (RPA)—maintaining steady-state output despite persistent disturbances—while improving dynamic response and suppressing intrinsic noise.
We begin with the Antithetic Integral Feedback (AIF) motif, a chemical reaction network (CRN) implementing integral control, and extend it to nonlinear architectures that emulate PID control through biologically feasible feedback circuits. These designs respect strict CRN constraints, introducing unique synthesis and analysis challenges. I also briefly touch on anti-windup strategies that mitigate performance degradation under saturation.
Next, we examine simpler architectures that exploit nonlinearities to realize PI control with minimal complexity—an especially valuable trait for practical implementation in synthetic biology. Despite their simplicity, these controllers deliver RPA , high dynamic performance, and intrinsic noise suppression. I present theoretical results showing these minimal designs outperform standard negative feedback loops, even under non-ideal conditions. Building on these insights, we outline practical guidelines for modifying negative feedback circuits, built with genetic repressors, to improve disturbance rejection, dynamic response, and noise suppression. Finally, I present an experimental implementation using inteins, protein elements that catalyze splicing. The strong alignment between theory and experiment underscores a robust, versatile framework for synthetic feedback control, with applications from therapeutic systems to advanced biotechnologies.
The seminar will be held in JDB Seminar Room, Department of Engineering, and online (zoom): https://newnham.zoom.us/j/92544958528?pwd=YS9PcGRnbXBOcStBdStNb3E0SHN1UT09
- Speaker: Maurice Filo, ETH Zurich
- Thursday 22 May 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: JDB Seminar Room, Department of Engineering and online (Zoom).
- Series: CUED Control Group Seminars; organiser: Fulvio Forni.
Fri 30 May 14:00: In-sample calibration yields conformal calibration guarantees
Conformal predictive systems allow forecasters to issue predictive distributions for real-valued future outcomes that have out-of-sample calibration guarantees. On a more abstract level, conformal prediction makes use of in-sample calibration guarantees to construct bands of predictions with out-of-sample guarantees under exchangeability. The calibration guarantees are typically that prediction intervals derived from the predictive distributions have the correct marginal coverage. We extend this line of reasoning to stronger notions of calibration that are common in statistical forecasting theory.
We take two prediction methods that are calibrated in-sample, and conformalize them to obtain conformal predictive systems with stronger out-of-sample calibration guarantees than existing approaches. The first method corresponds to a binning of the data, while the second leverages isotonic distributional regression (IDR), a non-parametric distributional regression method under order constraints. We study the theoretical properties of these new conformal predictive systems, and compare their performance in a simulation experiment. They are then applied to two case studies on European temperature forecasts and on predictions for the length of patient stay in Swiss intensive care units. Both approaches are found to outperform existing conformal predictive systems, while conformal IDR additionally provides a natural method for quantifying epistemic uncertainty of the predictions.
- Speaker: Johanna Ziegel (ETH Zurich)
- Friday 30 May 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: MR12, Centre for Mathematical Sciences.
- Series: Statistics; organiser: Qingyuan Zhao.
Tue 20 May 11:15: A 21-cm Cosmologist’s Journey: From Cambridge to North America and Back Again
In this talk, I’ll take you on a whistle-stop tour of my journey in 21-cm cosmology – from my PhD days in Cambridge to fellowship and research scientist positions in the USA and Canada. I’ll discuss the significance of 21-cm cosmology in understanding the Universe’s first billion years and describe key projects I’ve worked on, including the SKA , HERA, EDGES and REACH . Along the way, I’ll share some personal highlights from my time in North America.
- Speaker: Dr. Peter Sims (University of Cambridge)
- Tuesday 20 May 2025, 11:15-12:00
- Venue: Martin Ryle Seminar Room, Kavli Institute.
- Series: Hills Coffee Talks; organiser: Charles Walker.
Wed 21 May 14:15: Noether-Lefschetz cycles on the moduli space of abelian varieties
We study $A_g$, the moduli space of principally polarized abelian varieties of dimension $g$. The tautological ring, generated by the chern classes of the Hodge bundle, was fully determined by Gerard van der Geer in 1999, but the question of which geometrically defined cycles belong to this subring remains open. In 2024, Canning, Oprea and Pandharipande showed that $[A_1 \times A_5]$ is not tautological in $A_6$, and later I showed that $[A_1 \times A_{g-1}]$ is not tautological for $g=12$ or $g \geq 16$ even.
The cycle $[A_1\times A_{g-1}]$ is one of the Noether-Lefschetz cycles on the moduli spaces. With Greer and Lian, we conjecture that these cycles are related to modular forms of weight $2g$.
A new technique, which was not available in 1999 is the existence of a projection operator by Canning, Oprea, Molcho and Pandharipande onto the tautological ring. This leads to interesting conjectures about Gromov-Witten invariants on a moving elliptic curve, which now have been proven in collaboration with Pandharipande and Tseng, and are also connected to the failure of the Gorenstein conjecture on the moduli space of curves of compact type
The talk will be an overview of the intersection theory of $A_g$ and the moduli space of curves, and I will explain briefly the ideas behind some proofs.
- Speaker: Aitor Iribar Lopez, ETH Zurich
- Wednesday 21 May 2025, 14:15-15:15
- Venue: CMS MR13.
- Series: Algebraic Geometry Seminar; organiser: Dhruv Ranganathan.
Wed 21 May 13:30: Random multiplicative functions and beyond
In this talk, I will survey recent progress on random multiplicative functions, a probabilistic model for multiplicative functions. I will also discuss its connections to other problems, such as the Erdos multiplication table problem, Fydorov-Hiary-Keating conjecture, and Polya’s conjecture on positive definite quadratic characters.
- Speaker: Max Xu (Courant Institute, NYU)
- Wednesday 21 May 2025, 13:30-15:00
- Venue: MR4, CMS.
- Series: Discrete Analysis Seminar; organiser: Julia Wolf.
Fri 23 May 14:30: Recent advances in critical infrastructures forecasting via Physics-Enhanced Machine Learning
This talk will introduce the concept of Physics-Enhanced Machine Learning (PEML) which combines data, physics and expert and domain knowledge to enhance modelling and forecasting capabilities of critical infrastructures such as bridges, ferry quays and wind turbines. PEML approaches developed to address challenges such as parameter identification and virtual sensing will be described. An overview of recent developments on model updates in the presence of sparse information, equation discovery in the presence of non-smooth nonlinearity, and measurements disentanglement will be provided. Finally open challenges are going to be summarised.
- Speaker: Alice Cicirello, University of Cambridge, UK
- Friday 23 May 2025, 14:30-15:30
- Venue: CivEng Seminar Room (1-33) (Civil Engineering Building).
- Series: Engineering Department Structures Research Seminars; organiser: Shehara Perera.
Thu 05 Jun 16:00: Dr Ewan Harrison, Wellcome Sanger Institute
This Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar will take place on Thursday 5 June 2025, starting at 4:00pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Dr Ewan Harrison, Head of Respiratory Virus and Microbiome Initiative, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Title: TBC
Host: Patrycja Kozik, MRC -LMB, Cambridge
Refreshments will be available following the seminar.
- Speaker: Dr Ewan Harrison, Wellcome Sanger Institute
- Thursday 05 June 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Thu 29 May 16:00: Regulation of human T cell responses by the microenvironment – novel mechanisms underlying T cell cytotoxicity
This Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar will take place on Thursday 29 May 2025, starting at 4:00pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Prof. Christina Zielinski, Chair of Infection Immunology at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology and the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, where she works on the regulation of human T cells and their translational impact in autoimmunity, infections, and cancer.
Title: ‘Regulation of human T cell responses by the microenvironment – novel mechanisms underlying T cell cytotoxicity’
Host: Rahul Roychoudhuri, Professor of Cancer Immunology, Pathology
Refreshments will be available following the seminar.
- Speaker: Prof. Christina Zielinski, Chair of Infection Immunology, Leibniz Institute HKI
- Thursday 29 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Ruth Paton.