Caroline was runner-up, winning a prize of £1000, in the Library's inaugural competition this year.
The Library says its aim in establishing the prize was to discover the nation's next generation of writers, thinkers and opinion formers. Final year undergraduate students at all UK higher education institutions were encouraged to enter, and entries from a huge range of disciplines were received from universities across the country.
Entrants were asked to submit an 800-word piece responding to the Prize theme, “The future of Britain lies with the right-hand side of the brain.”
Caroline's piece was considered one of the most creative and original by a panel of judges including a former editor of The Economist , The Times Books Editor and Deputy Editor, and actress and author Sheila Hancock. Caroline will also receive a year’s membership of The London Library and a year’s subscription to The Times, as well as the opportunity to take part in a mini-internship at The Times.
.
]]>Further information on the work of the Advanced Studies Centre may be found here.
]]>SIAM is an international community of over 13,000 individual members, and very few are selected to become fellows. They include both academics and practitioners in industry. The Society's citation says new fellows are "recognized for their exemplary research in the field as well as outstanding contributions to the community, both of which help advance this broad discipline... Gui-Qiang Chen is being conferred the fellowship for his contributions to the mathematical analysis of partial differential equations, fluid mechanics, hyperbolic systems of conservation laws, and shock waves. His main research focus is in nonlinear partial differential equations and analysis, including their applications/connections to mechanics, geometry, and other areas of mathematics and the sciences."
Professor Chen is a leader of Keble College's important new Complexity research cluster.
]]>http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-17691536
]]>Those who would like to attend are asked to be seated by 3.15pm. It will be broadcast again on Sunday 22 April at 4.00pm, and will also be available on the BBC iPlayer.
More details about the programme may be found on the BBC Radio 3 website.
]]>Paul Neiser‘s project is “Design and Control of a Quadrotor Helicopter”. The aim of the project is to achieve autonomous flight of a quadrotor helicopter within a 2x2x1.6 metre test bed using onboard inertial and infrared position sensors. Such a system could have numerous applications, including inspection of damaged or contaminated buildings. Equipped with additional sensors such as ultrasound, GPS or radar it could be used for firefighting and avalanche response.
Victoria Lawson's project is on earthquake testing of Roman concrete vaults. She is testing the behaviour of plaster models of arches and cross vaults under the action of simulated earthquake pulses using a hydraulic actuator, then comparing the experimental results for arches to an analytical model in order to learn more about the mechanisms which typically form and to evaluate the existing theory.
]]>The BLCS Young Scientist Award is presented annually to young researchers in recognition of significant contributions in the field of liquid crystal science.
Apala Majumdar completed her Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Bristol, in collaboration with Hewlett Packard Laboratories. Her thesis was motivated by the modelling of the Post Aligned Bistable Nematic Device and demonstrated the existence of a novel topological mechanism for bistability. Since her move to Oxford in 2006, she has worked on a variety of diverse problems in the mathematics of liquid crystals, ranging from variational tools in the theory of liquid crystals, characterisation of singularities and their symmetry properties to multiscale approaches to liquid crystal modelling. Central to the College's Complexity Cluster, Apala Majumdar has a wide network of national and international collaborators, facilitates regular exchanges between academia and industry and now leads an impressive team on liquid crystal research.
]]>Sørensen’s research is focused on producing new chemical compounds. New dyes that can absorb light and emit fluorescence. Dyes that can bind to biologically relevant substances, allowing these to be tracked and monitored. The chemical compounds can, for instance be used as contrast agents when imaging human lungs and brains.
“There is still a vast untapped potential for the application of fluorescence in biology, nanotechnology and materials science. By designing and making new fluorescent compounds and using novel technologies, such as plasmonics, it is possible to create fast electronics and ultra-sensitive molecular sensors” he says. Some of Sørensen’s dyes have been successfully used to visualise cells directly, and, when conjugated to biomolecules, to track the latter in cells and tissue.
Sørensen is a key member of the Imaging Cluster at Keble. The Cluster is a collaboration between chemists, engineers, philosophers and medical scientists, built around Keble Fellows with an interest in exploring how the body and mind work. The aim is to produce improved and more readily interpretable real-time imaging of processes that occur in humans and animals at macro, cellular and molecular levels than those currently available. This will provide new windows into the way the body works in illness and in health. Sørensen’s work is crucial to the Cluster. His new dyes offer significant improvements, allowing the team to obtain images with a better contrast, and which allow tracking and monitoring of larger biomolecules. “The creation of new dyes with different properties gives us a ‘toolbox’ to study diverse biological processes and diseases”, Dr Sørensen says.
The 2011 Lundbeck Foundation Talent Prize is recognition of a significant emerging scientific talent.
]]>Having graduated in Music from Keble in 1964, Roger spent the first part of his career as a teacher/director of music in independent and state schools. For the next twelve years he was on the staff of Hertfordshire County Music School with responsibility for the northern division of the County. In 1985 he was appointed to Trinity College of Music in London, initially as Assistant Director of Studies where, to his delight, he found himself serving under two former Keble organ scholars, David Pettit (1956) (Vice-Principal) and the conductor Meredith Davies (1940)(Principal). Subsequently he was Head of Academic Studies and finally Warden and Head of Student Services.
He has continued to pursue his particular musical interests in retirement and adjudicates and examines internationally for Trinity Guildhall. He is also working on a history of Trinity College of Music.
]]>The first was an event sponsored by the Hursley Theological Society and the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life. This dialogue, focused on the question, 'Can the West Live with Islam?', was an engaging discussion between Professor Nigel Biggar of Oxford and Dr Timothy Winter of Cambridge. The conversation was moderated by Sir Jonathan Phillips as Biggar and Winter discussed the tensions between certain kinds of Islam and certain kinds of West, as well as ways in which Western societies might benefit from Muslim communities in their midst. A video podcast of the event is available.
The second dialogue event was sponsored by the Chapel and included a live feed to Keble College (with a standing-room-only crowd) of the dialogue between The Archbishop of Canterbury, Professor Richard Dawkins, and Sir Anthony Kenny on 'The nature of human beings and the question of their ultimate origin.' A video podcast is also available of this event.
]]>Arts Week at Keble started in style with a launch event in the College Bar which featured some relaxed jazz tunes from Keble College Music Society. This first night coincided with Halfway Hall for students reaching the mid-way point in their time at Keble, so there was also an awards ceremony – including nominations for ‘Most Likely to Become Prime Minister’… you never know! – and many pledges to make the second half of the degree as memorable as the first. ‘Global Hall’ was also set up to run throughout the week, with each day dedicated to sampling international cuisine: bratwurst from Germany, chana dal and rice from India, French coq au vin, Japanese teriyaki salmon and Greek moussaka were just a few of the dishes on offer.
Valentine’s Day fell conveniently on Poetry Tuesday of Arts Week, which saw Café Keble transformed into an intimate space for the performance of live poetry by three veteran poets – George Chopping, Paul Askew and Ross Sutherland – as well as an exclusive preview of what is to come from Keble’s very own budding poet, JCR Arts & Publications representative and organiser of the Arts Week activities, Jake Lancaster. With wine and chocolates for the romantics and the conveniently-single alike, the evening proved to be an inspiring and indulgent foray into the potential of language. Chopping began the event with a hilarious poetic rendering of the common annoyances of train journeys, complete with the ubiquitous mobile-phone monologues and the not-so-surreptitious battles for leg room. His creative writing struck a chord of truth, and the way in which all the poets articulated their astute observations of everything from swans to Askew’s mishaps with wine-gums signalled pure literary talent. The audience really were an ‘audience’ throughout the night, listening to the pitch-perfect rolling of sounds and rhythm in the refreshingly new oral compositions of the wordsmiths. Deadpan or infused with subtle humour, a range of topics were transformed into poetry at the mike – including cats, too-hot tea and even a loving ode to wood, recited from a poetry-book chunkily carved out of its subject matter!
Wednesday marked Comedy Night, a perfect mid-week break providing the opportunity to chill out and chuckle! A variety of stand-up comedians performed to a bar bursting at the seams, and catered to all tastes and dispositions. Ivo Graham kicked off the set after a warm-up by the compère, amusing his audience by his insights into coming back to Oxford as a fourth-year linguist, after having taught abroad. Combining effortless charm with truly funny anecdotes, it was easy to understand his string of acclaim in the comic world – having won the ‘So You Think You’re Funny?’ national competition at the Edinburgh Fringe before hitting 20. Definitely one to watch – and he’s still at Oxford for one more year, so catch him while you can!
Other acts included Matt Richardson, the comedy sketch duo Rory and Tim, and Chris Turner, another award-winning artist after recently reaching the finals in the BBC’s ‘New Comedy’ talent show.
Matt Fletcher also entertained, with a notebook full of deftly-drawn ‘characters,’ epitaphs and laugh-out-loud suggestions for music playlists matched to the identities of the listener… a genre of joke-writing which is a gold-mine for new material.
Keble’s own in-house comedian also starred: Alex Kealy showcased College-grown talent as he had the audience in stitches with a comic game of charades. Needless to say, he had no need to resort to the pack of Penguin biscuits he’d brought along!
Simon Elmes, Keble alumnus and Creative Director for the BBC’s Radio Documentary Unit, returned to his alma mater this evening to give a talk to students interested in pursuing careers in broadcasting journalism or radio. Beginning by recounting his own experiences here at ‘the friendly College,’ he went on to dispense invaluable tips collected throughout his personal career path from an Oxford undergraduate degree in French and Italian to a job he loves at the BBC.
His enjoyment of his radio work was clear as he played back formative clips marking stages in his development as a ‘factual storyteller,’ a role which has seen him travelling the world to coax out the perfect narrative. He emphasised the value of the tutorial system at Oxford in enabling him to excel in the construction of radio programmes, praising the unique ‘intellectual rigor’ applied by Keble students in meeting the challenges of their tutors and other specialists in the field. He also highlighted the ‘currency of ideas’ operating in the BBC, where originality and fecundity of imagination can thrive – a rich fertility abundantly apparent in his own stories, ranging from undercover interviews in post-Cultural Revolution China to the lucky recording of atmospheric sound-bytes in the midst of Mississippi. A very informative talk that certainly inspired students in planning their own stories for the future!
]]>