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This evening takes on a futuristic theme. It covers everything from glowing bacteria to detect heavy metal pollution in soils, to green chemistry, to fuels made from woody plants – all possibilities with the help from research by these scientists. This venue serves a full food menu, and is fully accessible.
Why are chemicals used to treat my drinking water?
Natalie Lamb
(PhD Student)
One day, could we produce excellent quality water without using any chemicals at all? My talk will explain how and why these chemicals are currently used, what the future of drinking water treatment could possibly look like and what work I’m trying to do to get us there.
Understanding biology to do chemistry
Dr Nate Adams
(Molecular Biology & Biotechnology)
Humanity needs complex chemicals to produce drugs, plastics, and materials. Making these chemicals is a highly energy consuming process, but there might be another way to raw materials. I am interested in the molecular motors that nature uses to power an inordinate number of successful chemical reactions, and how using rational design techniques these motors can be rebuilt to be more efficient and promiscuous - so that humanity can harness them for 'green chemistry'.
A paradigm shift: ethanol from woody plants
Dr Vijay Raghavendran
(Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology)
We need a dramatic change in our approach towards the pretreatment of plant biomass to produce products of interest, at high concentration, rate and yield. By taking a road less travelled by, perhaps we might be able to become a bio-based society sooner.
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