ATOM Christmas Social

Thursday 8th December 2022 from 19:00
King Charles Room, The Kings Head & Bell (E St Helen St, Abingdon OX14 5EA)

Back by popular demand – it’s the Society’s Christmas Get-Together!

This will be an excellent opportunity to chat to other members and some of our recent speakers. To stretch your mind, there will be some science-based quiz questions and games.

All the quizzes from the night can be downloaded below.

How Fast is the Fastest Questions
How Fast is the Fastest Answers

ATOM Christmas Crossword

Inventions and Inventors Questions
Inventions and Inventors Answers

Science and Arithmetic Questions
Science and Arithmetic Answers

How the Circadian Clock Knows What Time It Is

Thursday 17th November 2022 from 19:00 for 19:30
Abingdon United Football Club (Northcourt Rd, OX14 1PL, Abingdon)

All organisms show 24-hour rhythms in their physiology and behaviour, orchestrated by a circadian clock that coordinates internal time with the external world. Dr Jagannath’s research aims to understand the molecular mechanisms by which the circadian clock picks up cues from the external environment and is set to the right time.

Note: This talk will be preceded by a short AGM.

Speaker: Dr Aarti Jagannath

Dr Jagannath read for a DPhil on the mechanisms of RNA interference at Brasenose College, Oxford. She subsequently joined the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute, within the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience, as a Roche Post-Doctoral Fellow to work on the circadian clock. After staying in the unit, she became a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) David Phillips Fellow and group leader. Her group researches the molecular mechanisms that regulate circadian clock entrainment.

She was awarded the L’Oreal Women in Science Fellowship in 2015 and is the founder of a spin-out company, Circadian Therapeutics, that translates research into the clinical arena. She is also a mother of two and a passionate advocate for women in STEM careers.

The First Data From JWST: Providing Answers or Raising Questions?

Thursday 20th October 2022 from 19:00 for 19:30
Abingdon United Football Club (Northcourt Rd, OX14 1PL, Abingdon)

The James Webb Space Telescope, billed as the successor to Hubble, has been long anticipated. The largest telescope ever launched into space, it is designed to give us an unprecedented new view of galaxies in the early Universe.

After successfully launching on Christmas day 2021, six months of deployment and calibration culminated in the first set of stunning images released on the 12th of July.

This first release was only the beginning of Webb’s mission. Since then, more data has continued to flood in. But while JWST is performing brilliantly in delivering raw data back to Earth, the process of turning these raw data into answers to our questions about these distant galaxies is far from easy.

The real questions to answer are; What were the first galaxies in the Universe like? How did they form, and how did they evolve into the galaxies we see today?

Three months since JWST’s first images is sadly not long enough to provide answers to these questions.

Instead, in this talk Alex will discuss the challenges associated with working with a new telescope. He’ll also give a preview of what scientific results have been released so far, and what we can expect over the next year or so. In doing so, he’ll ponder the question of when we might expect to start to get some real answers.

Speaker: Dr Alex Cameron

Dr. Alex Cameron is an astronomer in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford.

He hails from the small town of Wangaratta in rural south-eastern Australia, where the night sky looks stunning, especially in early spring. He did his undergraduate and PhD studies at the University of Melbourne, before moving to Oxford as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in 2021. He is a member of the JWST/NIRSpec instrument team and had some involvement in the commissioning process after the launch of JWST. He is part of the “JADES” survey team who will analyse some of the deepest exposures that JWST will get within its first year of operation. His research interests involve trying to understand the evolutionary processes that have shaped galaxies over the last 13 billion years since they first formed in the early Universe until the present day.

The Battle Against Malaria: Is a New Superweapon in Sight?

Thursday 15th September 2022 from 19:00 for 19:30
Abingdon United Football Club (Northcourt Rd, OX14 1PL, Abingdon)

Quinine was first isolated from cinchona bark in 1820, since then we have been locked in a constant arms race with the Malaria parasite, always trying to develop a new treatment or control method before the parasite becomes resistant to our current ones. In this talk, Chris will explain some of the problems scientists have faced trying to develop a malaria vaccine (the magic bullet against the disease), what groups at the University of Oxford are doing to overcome these problems and will speculate on our future prospects in this battle with our oldest enemy.

Speaker: Dr Chris Williams

Dr Chris Williams is an immunologist at the Jenner Institute, University of Oxford, where he works on clinical trials conducted to develop novel transmission blocking malaria vaccines, against the malaria parasites Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax. Prior to joining the Jenner Institute, he obtained his MSc at the University of Glasgow, before completing his PhD at the University of St Andrews, where he investigated potential drug targets in P. falciparum parasites. After which, he joined an Oxfordshire based Immunotherapy company, developing immune therapies against cancer.

Slides

The slides from Chris’ talk are available here: The Battle Against Malaria – Is a New Superweapon in Sight?

The Psychology of Phishing: Building an effective people-led defence

Thursday 18th August 2022 from 19:00 for 19:30
Abingdon United Football Club (Northcourt Rd, OX14 1PL, Abingdon)

This presentation is about understanding the risk of human behaviour in the context of increasingly sophisticated phishing scams, and will show how to identify and manage those behaviour risks to improve organisational cyber safety.

Nine out of every ten data breaches are caused by phishing attacks. The average cost to a business of this type of email compromise is $5m.

Phishing criminals know how to use psychology to their advantage. They are clever, and they are constantly changing and upgrading their scams to take advantage of people’s tech habits and to exploit them. They trick us by pretending to be people we know, companies we use, apps on our phone, banks where our money is held, subscriptions we have and public bodies we trust. They play on our habits, instincts and day-to-day actions and reactions to persuade us to click a link, open an attachment, or send money.

A phishing attack is a psychological attack. It’s directed at people, not systems. And so we need to arm the people working in our businesses to be an effective counter-measure. This presentation will help you to understand how you’re being attacked, and show you how using recognised behavioural science can give you the tools to build an effective defence. By understanding the psychology underpinning phishing, you will be able to devise clear awareness and simulated phishing campaigns for your organisation.

Phishers use psychology against you. Why not use it to defend yourself?

Speaker: Mark Brown

Mark Brown is the founder of Psybersafe, a dedicated online cybersecurity training programme that uses psychology to change people’s habits and behaviours, making them a strong line of defence for vulnerable organisations – and every organisation is vulnerable to cybercrime. Mark is a consultant on cybersecurity awareness, behaviour and culture, and delivers presentations and training to companies of all sizes. There are currently more than 18,000 learners going through the Psybersafe programme.

Links

https://psybersafe.com
Twitter: @psybersafe