Tuesday 18th June 2024 from 19:00 for 19:30
Abingdon United Football Club (Northcourt Rd, OX14 1PL, Abingdon)

In the midst of global warming and climate change, it is important to decrease the impact we have on the planet. Our daily lives require a great amount of energy, from commuting to computing. Renewable energy is the only sustainable way forward. To fuel the energy demands of the world throughout the year, we need this renewable energy everywhere and at all times. There remains an issue for applications such as solar and wind power, where the energy source is supplied intermittently. This is where energy storage comes into play, powering our homes and cell phones even in the darkest of times. Energy storage enables the utilisation and mobilisation of renewable energy to power our everyday lives.

Speaker: Robert Young

Scott Young is a PhD researcher studying the degradation of solid-state lithium-ion batteries at University College London (UCL). Much of Scott’s work relates to the use of large-scale radiation facilities such as the Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire to image lithium-ion batteries in 3D with X-rays during operation and understand why they break down over time.

Tuesday 21st May 2024 from 19:00 for 19:30
Abingdon United Football Club (Northcourt Rd, OX14 1PL, Abingdon)

Substantial progress in our understanding of the Universe is driven largely by new developments in our ability to study stars and galaxies. In this talk Professor Dalton will describe the motivation for a next generation facility, WEAVE, at the William Herschel Telescope, which aims to add to our understanding of a wide range of topics from the formation of the earliest galaxies to the detailed structure and dynamical history of the Milky Way. He will cover some of the details and challenges of implementing such a facility from the point of view of an instrumentalist, and close with some early data, prospects for the next few years, and a look to what might be achievable with the next generation of ground-based telescopes.

Speaker: Professor Gavin Dalton

Gavin Dalton is a professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow in Astronomical Instrumentation at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Over the last 35 years he has worked on a number of astrophysical surveys and survey instruments around the globe. He is currently principal investigator of the WEAVE project, and system architect for MOSAIC, a second-generation instrument planned for the Extremely Large Telescope.

Tuesday 16th April 2024 from 19:00 for 19:30
Abingdon United Football Club (Northcourt Rd, OX14 1PL, Abingdon)

How do magnets work? What are the largest, and the smallest magnets? How do we build super-powerful magnets – and why? In this talk Dr. Bryant will attempt to answer some of these questions via an eclectic tour of his own experience working in the world of magnets and magnetism. He will cover the basic physics of magnets, drawing insight from his work on nano-magnets – engineered assemblies of magnetic atoms, built one atom at a time! Then he will move to the other end of the scale and look at electromagnets and superconducting magnets – including some of the largest and most powerful magnets ever built – and how they are used in science and medicine.

Speaker: Dr. Ben Bryant

Dr. Bryant earned his PhD in Condensed Matter Physics at University College London, where he worked on low-temperature scanning probe microscopy of magnetic materials. As part of his postdoctoral research he moved to TU Delft in the Netherlands, where he worked on nano-magnetism. In 2015, Benjamin gained a research fellowship at the High Field Magnet Laboratory in Nijmegen, where he worked on scanning probe instrumentation, and other experiments, using their ultra-high-field magnets. In 2019, he moved into industry, and is now a senior development engineer at Oxford Instruments, where he works in research and development of superconducting magnets.

Tuesday 19th March 2024 from 19:00 for 19:30
Amey Theatre (Abingdon School, Park Rd, Abingdon OX14 1DE)

Our March event is the headline ATOM Festival Peagram Lecture – The Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine and Beyond – Professor Cath Green OBE. Society members are entitled to free entry to this exciting talk.

For more information on this particular event, please visit the Festival website.

Speaker: Professor Cath Green OBE

Catherine Green OBE is an Associate Professor in the Nuffield Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford. She heads the Clinical BioManufacturing Facility, where her mission is to translate innovative academic ideas into real world treatments.

During the COVID-19 pandemic Professor Green was part of the Oxford team who developed the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

Tuesday 20th February 2024 from 19:00 for 19:30
Abingdon United Football Club (Northcourt Rd, OX14 1PL, Abingdon)

‘Every contact leaves a trace’. This was the principle formulated by French Criminalist, Edmund Locard, in the 1910s and is still the foundation of forensic science today. When a crime is committed things change; people are hurt, household objects are touched, windows are broken, marks are deposited, paint is smeared. The opportunity to understand what has changed can come in any form.

Everyone knows about DNA and the amazing tool it has become in criminal investigation, but what else can be found and processed at a crime scene? What does finding a paint flake or an unknown liquid or a footprint on a window ledge mean and what can it offer investigators? This talk will explore the non-DNA side of forensic science and how everyday objects can provide significant evidence in a case.

Speaker: Rachel Hewetson

Rachel Hewetson is a forensic reporting scientist with Cellmark Forensic Service. She has been working as a forensic scientist since 2006, firstly with Eurofins Scientific (then LGC Forensics) and, since 2012, with Cellmark Forensic Services. She specialises in DNA, blood, marks and glass evidence and is the Science Lead for Marks Evidence at Cellmark’s Abingdon Laboratory. Rachel also has extensive experience in the photographic enhancement of marks and is an experienced expert witness, having presented evidence in Crown and Magistrates Court on numerous occasions across the UK.

Rachel earned a first class honours degree in Chemistry from University College Dublin, Ireland, and a Master’s Degree in Forensic Science from University Strathclyde, Glasgow.