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

The Measure of All Things

Thursday 21st July 2022 from 19:00 for 19:30
Abingdon United Football Club (Northcourt Rd, OX14 1PL, Abingdon)

Every day, every citizen and every business relies on a (usually invisible) infrastructure that enables confidence in the accuracy and consistency of the measurements that we make and the measurements made on our behalf.  The International Measurement System was born in the French revolution, whose egalitarian philosophy envisioned a system of units “for all times, for all people”. It now has a good claim to be the largest collaborative science and technology activity on the planet; on which our economy, our quality of life, and often our very lives depend.

This talk will provide an insight into how reliant our society is on confidence in measurements; how that confidence is assured and why laboratories around the world continue to develop leading edge (including Nobel Prize winning) science to improve our ability to measure with increasing  accuracy and confidence ….. for example how (and why would we want) to measure time with an accuracy equivalent to 1 second in the lifetime of the universe.

Speaker: Dr Martyn R Sené

Martyn Sené works at the National Physical Laboratory (the UKs National Measurement Institute). He is a member of the CIPM (Comité International des Poids et Mesures), which is responsible for oversight of the International Measurement System (the SI) and its headquarters (BIPM) in Paris.  Following a PhD in nuclear physics, Martyn worked as an academic nuclear physicist before moving to Harwell to work on applied nuclear technology with UKAEA and AEA Technology; including as Managing Director of a subsidiary company specialising in radiation processing.  Martyn joined NPL in 1999 as Head of Ionising Radiation and has held a number of roles including Operations Director (responsible for all NPL’s science & engineering capability) and Deputy CEO.

Links

Twitter: @NPL
www.npl.co.uk

We won’t be hosting a talk during June as we make way for the ATOM Festival of Science and Technology after a two year hiatus!

The headline speaker for the festival is Dr Helen Czerski (@helenczerski), who will be giving The Peagram Lecture entitled `A Physicist’s Guide to Living on Planet Earth`.

For more information on events and talks at the festival you can visit their website or follow them on Twitter @ATOMSciFest

Space junk – developing the technology to avoid and remove debris from low Earth orbit (LEO)

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

Space is getting congested – tens of thousands more satellites are expected to launch into low Earth orbit within the next decade. With this exponential growth in telecommunications comes a concern for potentially devastating collisions between operational and defunct satellites. Zoé Tenacci, Systems Engineer at Astroscale will present a background on the only company dedicated to in-orbit servicing across all orbits. Zoé will present some of Astroscale’s major programmes, including their ELSA-d mission to demonstrate debris removal, their ELSA-M mission designed to remove multiple pieces of debris from a single mission, and their CREAM programme – a study into collision avoidance capability, funded by the European Space Agency. Zoe will delve into theCREAM programme which is designed to generate technologies for automated systems that can determine the likelihood of orbital collisions with greater accuracy, reduce the number of false alerts by allowing reduced time between manoeuvre decisions and close approaches, and finally to optimise manoeuvre plans that are uploaded to satellites. Zoé will share some of the technology behind the missions and highlight some of Astroscale’s latest innovations, including capture technology and collision avoidance systems.

Founded in 2013 in Singapore, then Japan, the U.K, U.S.A and Israel, Astroscale is developing pioneering and scalable solutions across the spectrum of in-orbit servicing in low Earth and Geostationary (GEO) orbits. The company is developing life extension services to refuel or manoeuvre larger satellites in GEO; end of life services to remove defunct satellites in LEO, active debris removal of larger items such as upper stage rockets, and in situ space situational awareness research, designed to characterise activities in space and the space environment. Each Astroscale programme is designed to create sustainable systems and mitigate the growing and hazardous build-up of debris in space. Astroscale is also defining business cases and working with government and commercial stakeholders to develop norms, regulations, and incentives for the responsible use of space.

Speaker: Zoé Tenacci, Systems Engineer at Astroscale

Zoé Tenacci is Systems Engineer at Astroscale Ltd in the UK, based at Harwell Campus. Zoé studied Aerospace Engineering at IPSA in France and Astronautics and Space Engineering at Cranfield University in the UK. At Astroscale Zoé is leading a late collision avoidance concept ESA study and involved in Astroscale’s ELSA-M commercial debris removal service development – a programme designed to further our sustainable space efforts in LEO. Her range of experience spans from concept of operations, systems budgets to end-of-life, spacecraft re-entry analyses and space debris mitigation policies. Before joining Astroscale Ltd., Zoé previously worked at Airbus Defence & Space in the UK where she worked on Earth Observation ESA programmes in the Future Programmes & Bids team.

LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoetenacci