Following the visit to University College London’s Haematology and Blood Transfusion Department, we had an amazing lecture by Professor Kevin Shakesheff. He is doing cutting-edge work in his lab on the topic of regenerative medicine. In fact, Shakesheff pointed out that regenerative medicine research is currently being done on almost every tissue type. He showed us videos of early embryos, bringing me back to lectures with Dr. Tony Stea in Developmental Biology. Professor Shakesheff stressed that understanding the first 8-weeks of development would being the key to unlocking the full capabilities of regeneration. I wish he dived into more details, but I appreciated that he showed plenty of videos and gave examples to tie things together. In the picture above, Shakesheff is showing different body parts that have been printed with a 3D printer, such as bones, ears, and capillaries.
Fun fact: The very first MRI machine was created at his university (Nottingham University) in the 1970’s!
After the lecture, all attendees giving poster presentations had an exceptionally early dinner at 4:30pm, followed by a time to set up our posters for an interactive evening of scientific sharing from around the globe. I’m amazed that there are high school students performing western blots, designing PCR primers, and diving into the Baltic Sea to collect plant samples! Others have built robots, studied rare diseases, and investigated cellular stress responses.
I was so happy to share my research project with many LIYSF participants and judges. One student from Ireland is determined to bring the Genomics Education Partnership to his university! I hope he does and that the GEP research spreads even more.
Tomorrow is another full day bustling with activity, so until then, thank you for reading and for following along my exploration through science in London!
– Vivienne
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Simply awesome
Awesome