supercurricular lecture

We were delighted to welcome former student Kath Hammond back to UGS last night to deliver the first of this year's super curricular lectures: "Your Heart Might go On: the mechanisms underpinning cell death in isechaemia-reperfusion injury in the heart".

Kath is undertaking doctoral research with the Murphy Group at the University of Cambridge, and she was a fantastic orator, speaking expertly and articulately about a really challenging subject area in a way that the audience could follow. At the beginning of her lecture she addressed the challenges of studying STEM at a high level, in particular the challenges of language, expertly breaking down the jargon to help us to understand cell death, ischaemia and reperfusion injury. 

Throughout the lecture, Kath opened the floor to questions and our students really tested her knowledge. She was able to answer each question, and by doing this, all in the audience were able to understand the content more easily. Our students' questions were insightful and perceptive, and it was a real pleasure to see them so engaged with the talk. 

As Lecture series coordinator Mrs McNally observes: "The thing that stood out for me most was that there were some questions that Kath could not answer, because there isn't an answer for them.... yet! It was exciting to feel the possibility of discovery and the constantly changing landscape of research, particularly medical research like the work that Kath is doing. 

We hope to see some of the students in the room come back to Urmston in a few years' time to share with us their own contributions to the scientific world; hopefully, by then, they will be able to address some of those unanswerable questions"! 

With huge thanks to Kath for giving her time to inspire and enlighten us all and to all the students, parents, carers and staff who supported the event.

Looking forward to the next in the series!