Advancing Healthcare Through Research

Blood cancer is the 5th most common type of cancer in the UK and is the most common type in young people. In the UK, there are currently over 250,000 people living with blood cancer. Unfortunately, current therapies rely on highly toxic treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy. If we can fully understand what goes wrong in cancer, we can discover novel, kinder therapeutics to help battle blood cancers and provide a new hope for these patients.

What if AI could read your scans and diagnose your cancer 10% more accurately than your doctor? Or imagine your phone could diagnose your heart condition before your doctor does? This is not the stuff of science fiction movies! AI is rapidly entering healthcare, promising faster diagnoses, smarter treatments, and even predicting disease! Right now, AI can read some medical scans better than humans – but humans still make the final call. This talk will explore the latest research, impressive breakthroughs and unpack the pitfalls of AI in healthcare, asking the question, would trust an algorithm with your life?

Drug-resistant infections are rising, and traditional medicines are struggling to keep up. Metal-containing molecules offer entirely new chemical possibilities, but the number of potential compounds is enormous. By combining chemistry and machine learning, we teach computers to explore this chemical universe and predict which new metal-based medicines might actually work.

Some parasites survive inside us by playing the ultimate game of hide-and-seek with our immune system. By constantly changing their molecular “faces,” they avoid detection and cause devastating diseases. This talk explores how these microscopic escape artists outsmart our defences.