Professor Robert Nicholls of Southampton University in the Department of Engineering and the Environment will be joining us in October.

He will speak on “Engineering to ameliorate the problems of coastal flooding”.

Come and hear him talk and take part in the Q&A on Monday 9th October from 7pm.

The speaker will be Professor Neville Stanton in the Department of Engineering and the Environment at Southampton University you will be speaking about Highly Automative Vehicles (Driverless Cars).

He conducts research into the effects of automation on human tasks which has mainly focused on the development of vehicle automation in road transport.

Much of the initial research has been conducted in a driving simulator, which has subsequently led to test track and on-road trials.

Come along and hear him talk on Monday 25th September 2017 from 7pm.

Dr Tracy Melvin is an Associate Professor in the Optoelectronics Research Centre at Southampton University.

The focus of her research is to create technologies to provide the potential to answer bioscience questions, such as how to repair damaged DNA, that are difficult or cannot be answered in any other way.

Her research crosses the medical science – micro-optical device interface and includes bionano-technology methods.

Hope you can come along and make it a stimulating evening.

Come along and hear her talk on Monday 12th June 2017 from 7pm.

Professor Claudia Maraston is an Astrophysicist in the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at Portsmouth University.

She studies galaxy formation and the evolution of galaxies.

Come along and hear her talk on Monday 10th April 2017 from 7pm.

Monday 13th March starting at 7.0 pm.

Dr Pamela Gill, Research Associate in the School of Earth Sciences at Bristol University will be talking about the Technology that has transformed the study of palaeontology.

“Using new technology to shine light on the lives of the first mammals.”

The earliest mammals lived 200 million years ago, and co-existed with the dinosaurs through the Mesozoic. Although their fossil bones and teeth have been known since the 19th century, exciting new technologies such as synchrotron CT scanning now offer the chance to find out much more about their lives.

Come along to see how we can work out such things as what they ate, how long they lived and if they were warm blooded.

Monday 13th February starting at 7.0 pm.

Professor Vladimiro Sassone from the Electronics and Computer Science Department at Southampton University will be talking about Cyber Security.

His research interests span over trust, anonymity, privacy, cyber controls, and the security of clouds, industrial control systems and the internet of things.

Monday 16th January 2017 starting at 7.0 pm.

Dr. Frank Ratcliff and Dr. Catherine Mercer of Genomics England, a company wholly owned and funded by the Department of Health, will be talking about the 100,000 Genome Project.

The 100,000 Genomes Project will sequence 100,000 genomes from around 70,000 people.

Participants are NHS patients with a rare disease, plus their families, and patients with cancer. Significantly, this is currently the largest national sequencing project of its kind in the world.

The aim is to create a new Genomic Medicine service for the NHS, transforming the way people are cared for. As a result of the project, genetic diagnoses will be made for some patients where this hadn’t previously been possible. In time, there is also the potential for new and more effective treatments for diseases with a genetic basis.

The project will also enable new medical research. Combining genomic sequence data with medical records is a ground-breaking resource. Researchers will study how best to use genomics in healthcare and how best to interpret the data to help patients. Using the 100,000 Genomes Project as a foundation, the aim is also to realise the potential of the UK genomics industry. This talk will explore the project, and ask the question; “Would you have your genome sequenced?”

Monday 14th November starting at 7.0 pm.

Dr. Jon Whitehurst will be talking about ‘Bats, Maths and Maps’.

He will explain how ecology today is a cross discipline subject using his work on bat monitoring as an example.

Here is some information that Jon has supplied about himself and the talk:

What do bats, maths and maps have in common with systems engineering you ask yourself? The answer in this case lies in developing repeatable methodologies for the accurate prediction of bat habitat suitability using non-invasive survey methods.

The intent of this lecture is to show the extent to which cross discipline working is exploited within modern day ecology and to demonstrate that the ecology research in the 21st century is not just about fieldwork, recording and subjective assessment.

The specific example presented is bat habitat suitability modelling and the lecture will cover the end-to-end process of mapping predictive bat habitat use and describe the contributions to this process from across a wide range of scientific disciplines that enable field observations and digitised habitat features into fully quantifiable predictions of bat habitat use.

Lecturer Background
Dr Jon Whitehurst is a chartered engineer by profession and fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, working in the area of complex system architecting and implementation onto naval ships by day.

He is the Operations Officer for the Isle of Wight Bat Group and architect of “The Parkhurst Forest Bat Project” and the currently running “Isle of Wight Bat Project”, and has lectured at national level on the topics of bat habitat suitability modelling and acoustic woodland bat survey methods, and also worked with Leeds University on computer recognition of bat echolocation calls in support of the DEFRA woodland bat survey protocols programme.

Monday 10th October starting at 7.0 pm.

Professor Mary Edwards from the Geography Department at Southampton University will be talking about The Big Thaw: a warming, changing Arctic

Mary Edwards considers the fragility of Arctic systems, drawing upon examples from Alaska, where she lived for several years, and Siberia, the largest northern land area affected by warming.

The Big Thaw: a warming, changing Arctic
We are rapidly becoming aware of the fragility of the Polar Regions in the face of climate warming. While global average temperatures have increased by half a degree or so over recent decades, the change in the Arctic has been much greater. I will draw upon examples from Alaska and Siberia to illustrate arctic warming and its consequences. Currently, much of the far north is affected by permafrost—permanently frozen ground—and landscapes and vegetation reflect the condition of the ice that underlies the surface. Responses to changes in permafrost are often dramatic. Warming-induced loss of ice from both land and sea has a range of consequences that not only affect the Arctic region but can be world-wide in their impact. The lifeways of indigenous people are being changed, there are new technological challenges, and the cycling of carbon between arctic lands and the atmosphere is being altered. Learning from the past, especially past warm periods, can help understand current changes. They are not necessarily novel, but they are taking place extremely fast, and whether arctic nations can adapt to them effectively is a critical question for the coming decades.

Professor Mary Edwards
Mary Edwards is Professor in Physical Geography at the University of Southampton and Visiting Professor at the University of Tromso, Norway. Her interests are centred on global environmental change: understanding climate-driven changes in landscape, vegetation, and ecosystem processes over a range of timescales. Her main geographic area of interest is the boreal-arctic region, and recent work relates to boreal forest dynamics, including fire disturbance, thermokarst, and hydrological change.

Monday 26th September starting at 7:00 pm

A members’ discussion evening.

Two topics:

1. Hinkley Point – Is it a viable solution for base load electricity?

2. Human evolution – New evidence on a theory of human origin that suggested that our ancestors began their existence alongside water. These were two programmes given by David Attenborough on Radio 4 last week in the morning. If you were unable to hear them they are now on the BBC website under the title ‘The Waterside Ape’. Worth listening to.

Hope you can come along and make it a stimulating evening. (Hopefully a donation of £1 towards room hire will be sufficient instead of the usual £3).