Today marked the final day of LIYSF. The closing address was given by Professor Jim Al-Khalili OBE, who shared his work in the exciting new field of quantum biology.
There is strong evidence that much of life behaves quantum mechanically, including enzymes using quantum tunnelling, plants using quantum coherence, and animals using quantum entanglement. Evidence also suggests that quantum mechanics governs the occurrence of mutations in DNA, which I found particularly intriguing after my work in genetics research this past year.
I knew very little about quantum biology prior to this lecture, but it seems to be the most perfect meld of two of my favourite subjects, and I know that it is an area that I would like to study in the future. I appreciated how the lecture reinforced the importance of science bridging all disciplines together in order to truly understand the world around us.
The closing ceremony and farewell party followed suite, which was a blur of memories of the past two weeks, and a lot of hard goodbyes.
Isabelle St-Martin
August 6 2019