Thankfully, today was a calmer day. Opening with Professor Dame Molly Stevens’ principal lecture on her work developing biomatter for various medical applications. From the plethora of examples, some of my favourites included growing bones for transplant surgeries and a vaccine that provided both the initial dose and its booster after a pre-set time delay. Her work was fascinating; I had question after question that I wanted to ask her, but I drew the short stick today and didn’t get to ask her anything.
Photo 1: Professor Dame Molly Stevens’ lecture on biological material science
Afterwards, some friends I made during breakfast decided to explore a bit of South Kensington and sat down for a lengthy conversation about academic interests, religious beliefs, cultural differences between Canadians and Aboriginal Australians, and life back at home. We probably now hold the record for slowest smoothie drinkers at a Joe & The Juice.
Photo 2: Can’t stop (drinking) the Juice
Following a quick return to our rooms at midday, it was time to check out the student-made posters at The Science Bazaar. Though I only listened to a few presenters, I was blown away by the fact that more than a quarter of the students made posters. My personal favourite was Muthoni Mwaura’s on how issues encountered with using fractal geometry required for special relativity is an example of Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem and leads her to believe that superstring theory will become a better representation of the physical universe. Though unconvinced, I am still running through the presentation in my mind given my soft spot for mixing physics with philosophy.
Photo 3: Muthoni Mwaura and her posters
I spent the rest of the day intermittently working on blog posts, reading some Tales from the Arabian Nights, and resting as tomorrow is a big day.
Hopefully, the Sultan will keep me around to blog another day.
– Connor