Leeds Launch Night

Abigail Frost is a final year PhD student in the Astrophysics group at the University of Leeds whose novel research uses multi-wavelength observations to better understand the formation of massive stars. Massive stars are some of the most influential objects in the universe, but their elusive nature means that many mysteries surround their formation process. This talk will describe how different observatories throughout the world are helping us unveil the origin of these stellar giants.

Jack Caudwell is a PhD student in the School of Chemistry at the University of Leeds. Sometimes the hardest battles we fight as humans happen on a microscopic scale. Bacteria can turn nasty in an instant and can form biofilms; protective communities that make treatment troublesome and long. Staphylococcus aureus is a species of bacteria that often cause infection in indwelling medical devices. But can micrometer (1/1,000,000th metre) sized bubbles fight a battle that conventional drugs cannot? In the battle of bacteria vs. bubbles, who will prevail?

Dr Philippa Shepley is an experimental officer in the School of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Leeds. We usually think of science dealing with the stuff that the world around us is made of, and how we understand that stuff. But there are many cases where it becomes important to have nothing at all: a vacuum, a space where we’ve removed (almost) everything. I’ll talk about why having a vacuum can be important for science and technology and how we’re using vacuum systems at Leeds to understand the fundamental concepts behind future technologies for data storage and computing.