Thu 06 Nov 14:00: Title to be confirmed Host – Kate Baker
Abstract not available
Host – Kate Baker
- Speaker: Professor Benoit Marteyn from Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology (IBMC), University of Strasbourg
- Thursday 06 November 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Biffen Lecture theatre and Zoom.
- Series: Genetics Seminar ; organiser: Caroline Newnham.
Thu 16 Oct 14:00: Title to be confirmed Host – Antoine Hocher
Abstract not available
Host – Antoine Hocher
- Speaker: Dr Tom Williams from Bristol Palaeobiology Research Group, University of Bristol
- Thursday 16 October 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Biffen Lecture theatre and Zoom.
- Series: Genetics Seminar ; organiser: Caroline Newnham.
Mon 20 Oct 14:00: From speciation studies in manganese catalysis to catalytic oscillations
The first part of the talk will focus on a research program centered on expanding the chemical space of chiral phosphine ligands of the PN, PNP , and PP through manganese-catalyzed hydrophosphination reactions. Mechanistic investigations, including detailed speciation studies designed to determine whether metal–ligand cooperation plays a critical role in the observed reactivity will be presented.
In the second part of the presentation, the focus will be on catalytic oscillations. Drawing inspiration from the interplay between catalysis and oscillatory behavior in biological systems, the research group has developed a new class of small molecule based catalytic oscillator. The development and potential applications of catalytic oscillators and avenues for extending this concept to broader chemical frameworks will be discussed.
- Speaker: Prof. Syuzanna Harutyunyan, University of Groningen.
- Monday 20 October 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Dept. of Chemistry, Wolfson Lecture Theatre.
- Series: Synthetic Chemistry Research Interest Group; organiser: Ruth Webster.
Tue 22 Jul 14:00: Fluid dynamics and quantum geometry in the quantum Hall effect
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Duncan Haldane (Princeton)
- Tuesday 22 July 2025, 14:00-15:15
- Venue: Ray Dolby Centre Lecture Theatre.
- Series: Theory of Condensed Matter; organiser: Bo Peng.
Tue 22 Jul 14:00: Fluid dynamics and quantum geometry in the quantum Hall effect
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Duncan Haldane (Princeton)
- Tuesday 22 July 2025, 14:00-15:15
- Venue: Seminar Room 3, RDC.
- Series: Theory of Condensed Matter; organiser: Bo Peng.
Mon 28 Jul 11:00: Classical Commitments to Quantum States
We define the notion of a classical commitment scheme to quantum states, which allows a quantum prover to compute a classical commitment to a quantum state, and later open each qubit of the state in either the standard or the Hadamard basis. Our notion is a strengthening of the measurement protocol from Mahadev (STOC 2018). We construct such a commitment scheme from the post-quantum Learning With Errors (LWE) assumption, and more generally from any noisy trapdoor claw-free function family that has the distributional strong adaptive hardcore bit property (a property that we define in this work). Our scheme is succinct in the sense that the running time of the verifier in the commitment phase depends only on the security parameter (independent of the size of the committed state), and its running time in the opening phase grows only with the number of qubits that are being opened (and the security parameter). As a corollary we obtain a classical succinct argument system for QMA under the post-quantum LWE assumption. Previously, this was only known assuming post-quantum secure indistinguishability obfuscation. As an additional corollary we obtain a generic way of converting any X/Z quantum PCP into a succinct argument system under the quantum hardness of LWE .
- Speaker: Agi Vilanyi (MIT)
- Monday 28 July 2025, 11:00-12:00
- Venue: Computer Laboratory, William Gates Building, Room SS03.
- Series: Quantum Computing Seminar; organiser: Tom Gur.
Wed 30 Jul 14:00: Title to be confirmed https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/82323711212?pwd=jrpvWLn5A57FGIVOAVSJ5Gv0lVLERB.1
Abstract not available
https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/82323711212?pwd=jrpvWLn5A57FGIVOAVSJ5Gv0lVLERB.1
- Speaker: Stephen Xia, Northwestern University
- Wednesday 30 July 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Computer Lab, FW26 and Online.
- Series: Centre for Mobile, Wearable Systems and Augmented Intelligence Seminar Series; organiser: Cecilia Mascolo.
Tue 22 Jul 11:00: LMB Seminar - Modulation of TREM2 function and its role in anti-Amyloid immunotherapeutic approaches
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Christian Haass - Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
- Tuesday 22 July 2025, 11:00-12:00
- Venue: In person in the Max Perutz Lecture Theatre (CB2 0QH) and via Zoom link https://mrc-lmb-cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/96372751903?pwd=C2hRQ8UF0B03vDp6IHGfWuTlsqzrTi.1.
- Series: MRC LMB Seminar Series; organiser: Scientific Meetings Co-ordinator.
Thu 13 Nov 15:00: Nanoscale thermodynamics
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Andrew Briggs, Department of Materials, The University of Oxford
- Thursday 13 November 2025, 15:00-16:00
- Venue: The Cluster Room, A0.022, Ray Dolby Centre, Cavendish Laboratory.
- Series: Physics and Chemistry of Solids Group; organiser: Stephen Walley.
Thu 05 Feb 14:00: TBC
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Professor Igor Larrosa (Department of Chemistry | University of Manchester)
- Thursday 05 February 2026, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Dept. of Chemistry, Wolfson Lecture Theatre.
- Series: Synthetic Chemistry Research Interest Group; organiser: Jasmine Mitchell.
Wed 26 Nov 14:00: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Or Ordentlich
- Wednesday 26 November 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: MR5, CMS Pavilion A.
- Series: Information Theory Seminar; organiser: Dr Varun Jog.
Mon 17 Nov 19:30: CSAR Lecture: Biopharmaceutical Development - The Journey from Molecule to Medicine
This lecture will provide an inside look at biopharmaceutical development at AstraZeneca, where multidisciplinary science, advanced engineering, and strategic business thinking converge to transform ground breaking molecules into life-changing medicines. This talk will reveal the remarkable spectrum of expertise—spanning molecular biology, cell culture, fermentation sciences, purification, formulation, analytical chemistry, and regulatory strategy—that drives successful innovation and delivery of modern biotherapeutics.
Professor Darton will explore the regulatory approval pathway and the business’s need for diverse scientific specialisations to navigate shifting therapeutic landscapes and bring safe, effective medicines to market. He will speak about the key stages of drug production, from the engineering of host cells and the art and science of fermentation, to the complex purification processes ensuring exceptional purity and safety.
The talk will examine how formulation scientists turn biologics into stable, deliverable medicines by leveraging sophisticated excipient technologies and delivery systems tailored for patients worldwide. Finally, discover the critical role of analytical sciences, where pioneering biophysical techniques enable us to understand, monitor, and consistently assure the quality of every therapeutic protein released.
Whether you are an academic, student, or alum, this talk will inspire with real-world insights into the collaborative journey of transforming molecular breakthroughs into life-saving medicines.
All welcome. More details here.
- Speaker: Professor Nicholas Darton, Associate Director of Biopharmaceutical Development at AstraZeneca, Honorary Professor of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at the University of Nottingham
- Monday 17 November 2025, 19:30-21:00
- Venue: Location: Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Churchill College, and Zoom.
- Series: Cambridge Society for the Application of Research (CSAR); organiser: John Cook.
Mon 20 Oct 19:30: Artificial Intelligence in Radiotherapy
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Professor Raj Jena, Clinical Professor, Data Science & Machine Learning in Radiotherapy, University of Cambridge Department of Oncology
- Monday 20 October 2025, 19:30-21:00
- Venue: Location: Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Churchill College, and Zoom.
- Series: Cambridge Society for the Application of Research (CSAR); organiser: John Cook.
Thu 17 Jul 16:00: Elucidating T Cell Signalling Dynamics Using Reconstitution and Optogenetics
This Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar will take place on Thursday 17 July 2025, starting at 4:00pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Dr John James, Associate Professor, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick
Title: Elucidating T Cell Signalling Dynamics Using Reconstitution and Optogenetics
Abstract: T cells are an essential part of our immune system; they detect infected cells and either directly kill or orchestrate their removal to keep us healthy despite constant exposure to potential pathogens. Great progress has been made in identifying the parts of the signalling networks that T cells use to execute these decision-making processes, and we now have near-complete lists of these pathways. However, to fully describe T cell function we must also understand how signals traverse these network connections, but this knowledge remains far more limited in T cells.
To address this limitation, we use cellular reconstitution and light-mediated control over these signalling pathways to directly and quantitively investigate T cell signalling in the cellular context. In the talk, I will show how we have used these discovery-based tools to better understand the mechanisms of action for new therapeutics (bispecifics/CAR-T), as well as preliminary data on quantifying inhibitory receptor function. I will also present our reconstitution work on how the pre-T cell receptor can drive commitment to the αβ-T cell lineage in the absence of ligand.
Host: Maike De La Roche, CRUK Cambridge
Refreshments will be available following the seminar.
- Speaker: Dr John James, Warwick Medical School. Warwick Medical School
- Thursday 17 July 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Tue 29 Jul 11:00: Systems Vaccinology
This Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar will take place on Tuesday 29 July 2025, starting at 11:00am, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Dr. Bali Pulendran, Violetta L. Horton Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and Director of the Institute for Immunology, Transplantation and Infection, Departments of Pathology and Microbiology & Immunology.
Title: Systems Vaccinology
Abstract: Although the development of effective vaccines has saved countless lives from infectious diseases, the basic workings of the human immune system are complex and have required the development of animal models, such as inbred mice, to define mechanisms of immunity. However, past results are not necessarily a reliable guide to the future, and a notable limitation of animal models has been their failure to accurately model some human diseases and their inability to predict human immune responses in many cases. In the past decade there has been an explosion of new approaches and technologies to explore the human immune system with unprecedented precision. Insights into the human immune response to vaccination, cancers, and viral infections such as COVID -19 have come from high-throughput “omics” technologies that measure the behavior of genes, mRNA, proteins, metabolites, cells, and epigenetic modifications, coupled with computational approaches. I will discuss how these “Systems Vaccinology” approaches are advancing our mechanistic understanding of the human system and its response to vaccines and infections and facilitating the development of vaccines against HIV , malaria and other infectious diseases.
Short Bio: Bali Pulendran is the Violetta L. Horton Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and Director of the Institute for Immunology, Transplantation, and Infection, at Stanford University. He received his undergraduate degree from Cambridge University, and his Ph.D., from the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia, under the supervision of Sir Gustav Nossal. He then did his post-doctoral work at Immunex Corporation in Seattle.
Dr. Pulendran has had a transformative impact on human immunology and vaccinology by pioneering the use of systems approaches to probe immunity to vaccination and infection in humans. In addition, Dr. Pulendran discovered that dendritic cells, one of the key cell types orchestrating the immune response, consist of multiple subtypes, which are functionally distinct. He also discovered the mechanisms by which microbial stimuli program DCs to modulate T-helper responses and helped establish Flt3-Ligand as the key growth factor for DCs in vivo. These groundbreaking findings helped define major paradigms in innate immunity.
Dr. Pulendran’s research is published in front line journals such as Nature, Science, Cell, Nature Medicine, and Nature Immunology. Dr. Pulendran serves on many advisory boards including that of Keystone Symposia and on the External Immunology Network of GSK . He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the recipient of several honors and awards, including two concurrent MERIT awards from the NIH , the AAI Ralph Steinman Award for Human Immunology, the Albert Levy Prize, the ViE Award for the Best Research Team at the World Vaccine Congress, and is listed on Thomson Reuter’s list of Highly Cited Researchers, which recognizes the world’s most influential researchers of the past decade, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations.
Host: Teichmann Research Group, Cambridge Stem Cell Institute & Department of Medicine
- Speaker: Dr. Bali Pulendran, Violetta L. Horton Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and Director of the Institute for Immunology, Transplantation and Infection, and the Departments of Pathology and Microbiology & Immunology.
- Tuesday 29 July 2025, 11:00-12:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Thu 17 Jul 16:00: Elucidating T Cell Signalling Dynamics Using Reconstitution and Optogenetics
This Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar will take place on Thursday 17 July 2025, starting at 4:00pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Dr John James, Associate Professor, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick
Title: Elucidating T Cell Signalling Dynamics Using Reconstitution and Optogenetics
Abstract: T cells are an essential part of our immune system; they detect infected cells and either directly kill or orchestrate their removal to keep us healthy despite constant exposure to potential pathogens. Great progress has been made in identifying the parts of the signalling networks that T cells use to execute these decision-making processes, and we now have near-complete lists of these pathways. However, to fully describe T cell function we must also understand how signals traverse these network connections, but this knowledge remains far more limited in T cells.
To address this limitation, we use cellular reconstitution and light-mediated control over these signalling pathways to directly and quantitively investigate T cell signalling in the cellular context. In the talk, I will show how we have used these discovery-based tools to better understand the mechanisms of action for new therapeutics (bispecifics/CAR-T), as well as preliminary data on quantifying inhibitory receptor function. I will also present our reconstitution work on how the pre-T cell receptor can drive commitment to the αβ-T cell lineage in the absence of ligand.
Host: Mathilde Colombe and Tim Halim, CRUK Cambridge
Refreshments will be available following the seminar.
- Speaker: Dr John James, Warwick Medical School. Warwick Medical School
- Thursday 17 July 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Tue 15 Jul 14:00: "Please Verify": How Human Behavior Undermines Blockchain Security
Humans are a critical link to the security of any complex system, and blockchains are no exception. Sometimes, even basic assumptions are not met in practice; we observed that some service providers or users do not properly check transactions, whether purposefully (for latency benefits) or inadvertently (due to operational mistakes). These unexpected behaviors pose new challenges to blockchain security. The first part of this talk will examine a network layer vulnerability—a “blockchain amplification attack.” Some Ethereum nodes appear to sidestep transaction validations to achieve lower latency, making them vulnerable to a flood of invalid transactions. We quantify its attack damage through mathematical modeling, network monitoring, and local simulation, and compare it with the potential economic gains of latency reduction. The second part focuses on a wallet-level attack—“blockchain address poisoning.” Attackers generate addresses resembling the victim’s recipient’s address to fool the victim into sending their assets to the attacker by mistake. We develop a detection algorithm to scan two years of Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain (BSC), characterize attack patterns, extrapolate large attack groups, and bound the attacker’s computational capability through measurement and simulation. We will also discuss our initiatives to make our research accessible to end users.
- Speaker: Taro Tsuchiya, Carnegie Mellon University
- Tuesday 15 July 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Webinar & LT2, Computer Laboratory, William Gates Building..
- Series: Computer Laboratory Security Seminar; organiser: Alexandre Pauwels.
Fri 11 Jul 14:30: The Valencia-Bristol low-level vision MindSet
Recent claims about the superiority of deep-nets to model human vision are based on the reproduction of either (a) neural recordings from different brain layers or (b) high-level behaviors included in Brain-Score. However, high correlations in such tasks do not guarantee the functional similarity of the underlying mechanisms in models and humans. In particular, appart from exceptions (like your work ;-), not many people is looking at the bottleneck of artificial systems as characterized by low-level visual psychophysics. In this talk we present stimuli for 20 different experiments that highlight basic color/texture/motion perception facts, and how the trends of the artificial responses can be used to assess the similarities with human vision.
Recommended reading:- Li, Gomez-Villa, Bertalmío & Malo Contrast sensitivity functions in autoencoders Journal of Vision (May 2022), Vol.22, 8. doi:https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.22.6.8
- Malo, Vila-Tomas, Hernandez-Camara, Li, Laparra A Turing Test for Artificial Nets devoted to model Human Vision (june 2022) http://isp.uv.es/docs/talk_AI_Bristol_Malo_et_al_2022.pdf
- Malo & Bowers The Low-Level vision MindSet. Talk at the Seminars on Generalisation in Mind and Machine. (sept. 2024) http://isp.uv.es/docs/Low_Level_MindSet_3.pptx
Zoom link: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/81459588387?pwd=Uyq625q1QSKJ15ZvvSnzAbV44NTf1w.1
- Speaker: Jesús Malo
- Friday 11 July 2025, 14:30-15:00
- Venue: SS03 - William Gates Building.
- Series: Rainbow Group Seminars; organiser: Yancheng Cai.
Fri 11 Jul 14:00: Emerging perceptual properties in foundation models: a vision science perspective
The empirical theory of vision suggests that what we see reflects statistical regularities learned through experience rather than direct representations of physical reality. Recent advances in machine learning, particularly in foundation models, have revealed intriguing parallels with human visual perception. However, the differences between biological and artificial vision systems are equally enlightening, offering unique windows into the nature of visual processing. In this talk, we will discuss how studying these artificial systems can deepen our understanding of human visual processing, while insights from vision science can guide the development of more robust and interpretable deep learning models.
Recommended papers:- Gomez-Villa, A., Martín, A., Vazquez-Corral, J., Bertalmío, M., & Malo, J. (2020). Color illusions also deceive CNNs for low-level vision tasks: Analysis and implications. Vision Research, 176, 156-174.
- Hirsch, E., & Tal, A. (2020). Color visual illusions: A statistics-based computational model. Advances in neural information processing systems, 33, 9447-9458.
- Huh, M., Cheung, B., Wang, T., & Isola, P (2023). Position: The Platonic Representation Hypothesis. In Forty-first International Conference on Machine Learning.
- Gomez-Villa, A., Wang, K., Parraga, A. C., Twardowski, B., Malo, J., Vazquez-Corral, J., & van de Weijer, J. The Art of Deception: Color Visual Illusions and Diffusion Models. CVPR (2025).
Zoom link: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/81459588387?pwd=Uyq625q1QSKJ15ZvvSnzAbV44NTf1w.1
- Speaker: Alexandra Gomez-Villa
- Friday 11 July 2025, 14:00-14:30
- Venue: SS03 - William Gates Building.
- Series: Rainbow Group Seminars; organiser: Yancheng Cai.
Thu 10 Jul 14:00: Encoding Angular Information into Computational Imaging
Angular information is applied across domains such as navigation, virtual and augmented reality, and robotics to tackle research problems related to directions and orientations. It can be encoded into polarization to reveal hidden content, and it can also be encoded into parallax to track an object with high accuracy. This talk starts from exploring the potential of polarization and how angular information plays a crucial role in uncovering hidden phenomena, along with real-world applications. It then introduces two stable and precise visual methods for measuring directional information. The first approach was to design a passive marker, MoiréTag, that exploited the moiré effect to encode high accuracy angular information into moiré patterns generated by periodic binary structures printed on both sides of a glass wafer. We then extended the continuous tracking approach into a discrete fashion by introducing a scannable QR-design marker. High frequency information encoded in the QR-Tag can be reliably decoded by a phone camera from different positions at a certain distance.
Zoom link: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/85729309331?pwd=zK1iDpj3DEGEIaYCWJMYBvLLcbCY4I.1
- Speaker: Simeng Qiu, Swansea University
- Thursday 10 July 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: SS03 - William Gates Building.
- Series: Rainbow Group Seminars; organiser: Yancheng Cai.