Pete Etchells is a lecturer in psychology at the Bath Spa University. His PhD focuses on fast eye movement (saccadic) motor behaviour and how the human visual systems process velocity information. Pete’s current research is focusing on perceptions of motion and human gait. He is also a science blogger for the Guardian. A lot of people will try and use eye movements to...
Professor Richard Dawkins is an ethologist, evolutionary biologist, author and documentary presenter. An Oxford University graduate, he has been responsible for some of the biggest ideas in biology including his work in popularising the theory that the gene is the principal unit of selection in evolution and proposing the concept of memetic evolution. His books have been some of the highest-selling popular science...
Richard Wiseman is Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. Wiseman’s career began as a magician, before graduating in Psychology from University College London (UCL) and obtaining a PhD in Psychology from the University of Edinburgh. Wiseman is best known for his critical examination and debunking of ‘paranormal phenomena’. He has written a number of bestselling books on...
Bruce Hood is an experimental psychologist who specialises in developmental cognitive neuroscience. He is the director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre at the University of Bristol. As well as publishing a number of successful popular science books on this subject, he also gave the 2011 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. When you understand that there are minds, then you draw the distinction between the...
Dr Brenna Hassett is a dental anthropologist and bioarchaeologist. After working on dig sites across the world, she is now working on post doc research at the Natural History Museum in London determining childhood experiences from the examination of teeth. Her focuses include searching for archaeological evidence during the transition from agriculture to sedentism in SE Asia and the transition to urban life in...
Dr Pip Garner is a bone biologist and post doctoral research fellow at the University of Leeds who works on the variability in the human spine. As well as research and lecturing, in 2012 she was recognised by The Society of Biology for her science public communication work which has included demonstrations at the Cheltenham Science Festival and the organisation of a forensics summer...
The founder of science communication company ‘Ready, Steady, Science’, Simon Watt is an evolutionary biologist, science communicator and writer. He is also the president of the Ugly Animals Preservation Society and a writer for a number of newspapers and sites, but is perhaps best known as the evolutionary biologist on the BAFTA-winning TV series ‘Inside Nature’s Giants’. You look at these beautiful scenes of...
Victoria Herridge obtained her PhD in paleontology at University College London. Her current research at the Natural History Museum focuses on the evolution of island mammals, particularly dwarf elephants, during the last Ice Age. During this research she co-discovered the smallest mammoth ever known to have lived. Her work has led to a greater understanding in evolutionary responses to extreme climate change. Elephants are...
Dr Daniel Glaser is Head of Special Projects in public engagement at the Wellcome Trust. He comes from a neuroscience background, was the first ‘scientist in residence’ at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) and is behind ‘Science Gallery’, which will soon open in London. What intelligence really is about, is about the relationships between the brain and the world. On becoming...
Thomas Woolley is a mathematical biologist at Oxford University working in stochastic pattern formations in nature, specifically stingrays. Thomas also works extensively in communicating mathematics to the public including appearing regularly as a mathematical consultant on the television show ‘Dara O’Briain: School of Hard Sums’. I would say that this really is the golden time for mathematical biology On becoming interested in maths...
Clare Elwell is a professor of medical physics at UCL. Her research involves the development and application of novel optical methods for investigating the human brain, particularly in infants. One of the challenges for medical physics is to measure something without changing it and nowhere I think is that more true than when you’re looking at the brain. On becoming interested in science...
Dr Yan Wong is probably best known as one of the presenters on popular BBC science show ‘Bang Goes the Theory’. Yan is also an evolutionary biologist specialising in mathematical modelling of evolutionary genetics. Yan was a contributor to Richard Dawkins’ bestselling book ‘The Ancestor’s Tale’. When you talk about and demonstrate science you’re trying to activate curiosity in people’s minds. On getting...
Dr Susie Maidment is a palaeontologist and a researcher at the Imperial College London. She is a leading expert in Stegosaurus and its relatives. Her key research work involves using geology to solve paleobiological problems. T. Rex is actually closer to us in time than it was to Stegosaurus. On getting interested in science Well, when I was about, I...
Mun Keat Looi is the online editor at the Wellcome Trust and a popular science writer with a background in biology. He is also the co-author of the new book ‘The Big Questions in Science’. He spoke with Cosmic Genome with one of his co-authors of that book, Colin Stuart. What we thought once was just science fiction 20 or 30 years ago...
Until recently, Ginny Smith was a researcher at Cambridge University where she gained a degree in psychology. Now Ginny is a science communicator across many fields, working with The Naked Scientists, The Cambridge Science Centre and Things We Don’t Know. There’s just so much we don’t know about the brain. On becoming interested in science I’ve always loved science, ever since I was...
Steve Jones is a geneticist, world-renowned snail biologist and prize-winning author on the subject of evolution. He is the Professor of Genetics at the Galton Laboratory of University College London. His popular science books are some of the most highly regarded in his field and include ‘Almost Like a Whale: The Origin of Species Updated’ and ‘Y: The Descent of Man’. His latest...
Sophie Scott is a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow and Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. Her research is on the neural basis of human communication, with a particular emphasis on how our brains decode the range of information in the voices we hear, and how that can be affected by hearing loss or stroke. What science has always benefitted from is...
Lucy Thorne is a virologist and biochemist focusing her research on the norovirus. A FameLab finalist, Lucy is also a communicator of science giving talks at festivals and events across Britain. It’s infectious disease that I think is really exciting. On getting involved in virology So all throughout, I’ve always loved the sciences; in particular I’ve loved studying in detail how our bodies...
Giovanna Tinettu is an Italian astrobiologist and astrophysicist interested in the spectral retrieval and observations of exoplanetary atmospheres. Gio works in the physics department at University College London but is also a regular collaborator with the ESA and NASA. What I think is amazing today is to be able to probe so far away in time On getting interested in science I started...
Elspeth Kenny is a behavioural ecology PhD student at the University of Sheffield studying coastal birds. During her undergraduate years she was a country finalist in FameLab and spent a year in Canada studying stickleback populations. There is that danger that people think, ‘Oh I’m not a scientist. I’m not sciencey. I’m not gonna get it.’ On getting into science I don’t really have...
Aoife McLysaght is an Associate Professor of Genetics at Trinity College Dublin, where she has taught since 2003. She was a member of the international consortium that published the first draft of the human genome sequence in 2001, was the first to discover novel human-specific genes in 2009, and has made many significant contributions to our understanding of the human genome as well as...