Open Days for school & public at the Institute of Food Research

IFR Open Day

Saturday 29 September 2012

10:00 - 16:00

This is a unique opportunity to wander around the Institute of Food Research, talk to scientists about their work, follow trails, take part in competitions and find out about what goes on inside one of the world's centres of scientific excellence right on your doorstep.

Schools Open Day

Friday 28 September

09:30 - 15:30

Open to Yrs 10-13, this is an exciting opportunity to wander round one of the UKs leading research centres, the Institute of Food Research, and find out about careers in science and what goes on inside it. There will be open labs, demonstrations, talks and activities around the buildings including flow cytometry, nuclear magnetic resonance or NMR for short, microscopy, chemical imaging and a chance to go inside a Biorefinery– an opportunity to see in action equipment you can often only read about or see photos of.
There will be activities on biofilms, translating proteins into music, taking part in a fat content taste panel, doing something a bit Risky, go inside the Step Back in Time Lab, take part in a sciart activity and the BBSRC Bioenergy display. Taste & Flavour, Do you Know Your Fats, Iron Extraction from Special K and keeping up the Olympic theme in case its long forgotten, Food for Sport, games and hands on fun not to mention walking through an inflatable colon!
You must register to attend and places are limited to 30 per year group per school, unless we have unfilled spaces. The only session you have to book in for are the set of short talks which last an hour in total which will be from 09:30, 10:45, 12:00, 13:15 and 14:30.  Talks will be on Food & Appetite, Food Safety, data mining, super Broccoli, Carbohydrate-protein interactions and food allergies. You are then free to do whatever you choose, although if certain areas get congested we may ask you to move on!
There will also be the chance to talk to other scientists from across the Norwich Research Park including the Genome Analysis Centre and John Innes Centre.
A dedicated careers area will be attended by the Food and Drink Federation, Chilled Foods Association, Leeds University, Institute of Food Science and Technology and London South Bank University, not to mention our own young up and coming researchers to talk informally to anyone wanting to know what it’s like to work in science, from physics to chemistry, biology to microbiology, molecular genetics, biochemistry and maths.
There is parking available on site and if dry you are welcome to have lunch and refreshments in the grounds. However, we have limited space inside to sit and eat so would prefer it if you could plan not to do so. Exceptions may be made for those travelling some distance.
To book your place please contact dawn.barrett@nbi.ac.uk by Friday 21st September.

Networking today...

StemNet arranged a CPD event for Science teachers at the IFR today. I, along with other STEM ambassadors had an opportunity to meet & talk to them at a working lunch.
A very nice event and I got to meet other ambassadors as well as the teachers and sound out my new BBSRC School Regional Champion activity idea. They seemed to be enjoying the event which included a tour of the Institute.

Another binary day...and a day of Remembrance..

11/11/11 and blogged at 11:11! - the counter has now to be reset for year 2100 (?) - hmm probably not blogging then :-)

Last night I and other colleagues enjoyed a meal out with some visiting Scandinavian scientists (From an EU project). A very stimulating evening.

Today, of course is Remembrance day and we reflect upon lives lost in the World Wars and still being lost in 'modern' conflicts. Without such sacrifices, many of the freedoms that we take for granted would most likely be lost.
Hopefully, science can play it's part in improving international relationships for example in improvements in methods of communication (e.g. the web) and in the planning and funding of international research collaborations (like the EU Framework programmes).
If you need any further prompting about the importance of working towards a better and more peaceful world - I recommend a visit to France and Belgium to the various WW1 cemetaries (where soldiers from both sides were buried). I personally returned with very strong memories of the scale and tragedy of the losses.
I end with today's Google 'doodle'...

Another visitor & more OU

We have another visiting scientist - Zhao Xiaoyan (Cindy) is from China and working with Pradeep for a month.
I had to get her laptop MAC address so she could get access to our wireless network. I'm getting good at deciphering non-english IPCONFIG reports (Dutch, Catalan and now Chinese :-)).

Delivered the latest OU Maths TMA to my tutor (for MS221) yesterday - probably not as good as I could do but at least it is done and delivered. Need to crack on wth last unit (D) of MST121 and start next unit(B) of MS221 - no rest for the wicked!

PhD Student visiting

Xavier, a PhD student is visiting our group for a few months. My boss has a project lined up for him on variability. This will be modelled in NetLogo (http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/) so I'm helping him get up to speed with it (as we've used it for a few projects). It is a very good package for Agent Based Modelling. It is written in Java but the models are written in a flavour of Logo. Finished models can easily be deployed as Java Applets. It delivers a reasonable GUI without the modeller having to do much programming, leaving them free to concentrate on the underlying science and the modelling process.

Joost visits

Joost is visiting IFR this week. He is from RIVM in the Netherlands (One of our
partners in the EU BioTracer project).