The last Tuesday Talks of Michaelmas term was presented by Professor Dame Molly Stevens, the Academic Champion for Women and Diversity in Entrepreneurship. Professor Stevens gave a fascinating talk based on her extensive and interdisciplinary career, focused on the interface of materials science, engineering, biology and healthcare and has led to co-founding five SMEs.
Both her own personal variety of expertise and the sheer diversity of backgrounds of people working in her research group allow her to push the boundaries of biomaterials and tissue engineering, whilst also remaining clinically relevant to some of the largest medical challenges in healthcare today. Her wide range of research interests span tissue repair, vaccine technology, disease detection and diagnosis.
In her talk, she provided many compelling case studies from her research programs, including using nano-needles to re-programme cells, artificial intelligence to select protein binders, and nanoparticles as disease biosensors. Throughout her talk, Professor Stevens emphasised the importance and necessity of diversity in science, and the challenges and benefits of managing an interdisciplinary team.
Reflections
This talk was followed by a delicious dinner (the cheesecake was particularly popular) and some excellent student comments. The students discussed the need for researchers to ‘speak each other’s languages’ to facilitate interdisciplinary research, such as a doctor being able to describe their requirements to an engineer and vice-a-versa. Another idea discussed was the importance of being able to ‘see who you could be’ by having visible diversity in all fields of work, including both business and STEM.
Overall, Professor Stevens gave a talk that was technically fascinating, but also really left you thinking about how essential interdisciplinary research combined with entrepreneurship will impact on human health.
