Oxford puts on a show
Science Oxford hosted the NESTA FameLab Oxford Regional Heat on Tuesday the 28th April. It was a very entertaining and educational day of mass and gravity, helicopters, the brain and nervous system, and sperm. The judges, Mark Lythgoe, neurophysiologist and Director of the Experimental MRI Unit at UCL; Vivienne Parry, science writer and BBC broadcaster; and lecturer, television presenter and explorer; were captivated by the various and sometimes hilarious presentations.
Judges emphasised the need for a good story to be told. A story with a strong and clear beginning, middle and end.
The winner of the day was Tom Whyntie, from Imperial College, who not only won a victory for his university but explained where the rest of the universe is. There were three Oxford wildcard places awarded Melanie Windridge, who explained how oyster cards work, Andrew Pontzen who was the Oxford video winner explained how satellite navigation works in his final presentation and Matthew Baker who kept everyone in fits of laughter with and explanation on how sperm move and how sea urchins sperm is the most superior in the world...
Tom Whyntie (pictured above) is studying for a PhD at Imperial College London, having completed an undergraduate degree in Experimental and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge (Sidney Sussex College). He is currently based at CERN working on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, a 12,500 tonne, cathedral-sized "digital camera" one hundred metres under the ground near the border of Switzerland and France, at what he likes to call the "coal face of blue sky science . When the machine starts up (again) in Autumn " 2009, he'll be part of a team of around 3000 CMS physicists who will be trying to take pictures of what our universe might have looked like a few billionths of a second after the Big Bang, in an effort to understand exactly how the fundamental Lego bricks of existence fit together. In particular, Tom is involved in the laboratory-based searches for hypothetical "supersymmetric" particles, which provide a number of promising candidates for "dark matter" - the estimated missing fifth of the Universe.
Tom has received awards from the Institute of Physics for his lecturing, performing in locations as varied as Cambridge, London, Portsmouth, Dublin, Enfield and Romania. He has also featured at the Cheltenham Science Festival as a NOISEmaker, a EPSRC-funded campaign aimed at promoting careers in science to 14-19 year olds. He also received numerous plaudits for his moving, complex portrayal of Oberon, King of Fairies in Shakespeare's classic "Midsummer Night's Dream" in Henry Cort Community School's ground-breaking 1999 production.
Matthew Baker grew up in Dunedin, NZ, went to high school in Sydney, Australia, and studied maths and chemistry at the Australian National University in Canberra. He won a General Sir John Monash Award in Australia to study a PhD wherever he wanted, and after a brief stint at the Vrije Universiteit in Holland, working on kinesins, he ended up at Oxford University where he studies the bacterial flagellar motor - the outboard motor for the salmonella speedboat. Matt enjoys discussing and working on molecular motors, in that order, because they are remarkable machines honed by evolution, but more fun to talk about than to do laborious experiments on. Matt also has the rare honour of representing Australia in the two goofiest sports he could find as a child: hacky sack and fencing, but is more known in both sports for his chat than his skills.
Andrew Pontzen (pictured above), born near Oxford, is about to complete his doctorate and has just been appointed to a Junior Research Fellowship at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. During his PhD he has worked on the cosmic microwave background (remnant light from the very early Universe) and the formation of galaxies (collections of hundreds of billions of stars, like our own Milky Way). He's also been extensively involved with outreach work, indulging a passion for discussing cutting edge physics with anyone, anywhere. Andrew hopes to combine a research and communication career, sharing new steps in scientist's understanding with the wider world.
Melanie Windridge (pictured above) is just finishing a PhD in Plasma Physics with Imperial College London. She conducts research into Fusion energy at Culham Science Centre, Oxfordshire, where she started helping out the PR team and realised she loves talking about science! Melanie studies vertical stability in tokamak plasmas, and the currents that flow in the walls of the machine if the plasma that they're trying to keep central hits the wall. As well as presentations and machine tours, she now presents Culham's Fusion Podcasts on YouTube. She has also appeared on the National Geographic channel, demonstrating simple scientific experiments for the ``Madlabs'' series. In the future, she would like to present documentaries.
From parents raised in Africa, Melanie has inherited an adventurous spirit. She spent three years after her undergraduate degree travelling, diving, sailing, skiing and trekking, with a little bit of work thrown in! Throughout her PhD she has continued to pursue these interests, notably climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in 2007 for the benefit of their family-run charity Edirisa UK. She also speaks French and enjoys running, tennis, dance, yoga, cooking and music, but at the moment her thesis is taking up all her time!