University academics deliver enhancement lectures to A2 Biologists

IMG_1766.JPGOver the last term, A2 Biology students at Greenhead College have had the opportunity to attend knowledge enhancement lectures and workshops ran by various academics from the Universities of Huddersfield, Leeds and Manchester.

Each week a different academic came into College to deliver a workshop on a topic that is beyond the A Level specification, including how to make proteins, the importance of exercise on cardiovascular health, ethics of animal experimentation and more.

The project has been a great opportunity for the students to learn more about different topics, study their specific interests in more depth and understand what it would be like to study a biology related degree at University. They also learnt about various different job roles available within the field of biology, particularly jobs that the students hadn’t even heard of.

It’s been a successful project that has certainly benefitted the students involved.

We would like to say a big thank you to all of the guest speakers that came in to deliver the workshops:

  • Dr. Donald Ward (Manchester) – Biology Efficiency: From Molecular Multitasking to Drug Repurposing
  • Dr. David Lewis (Leeds) – Ethics and Practice of animal experimentation
  • Ruth Norman (Leeds) – Exploring the small structures in the heart to answer the BIG questions in heart failure
  • Shamus Burns (Huddersfield) – Epigenetics
  • Dr. Brian Jackson (Leeds) – How to make proteins and influence people
  • Gemma Lyall (Leeds) – The importance of exercise in maintaining cardiovascular health during ageing
  • Ashleigh Elliot (Leeds) – Can we improve UK wheat yields using a friendly fungus?
  • Ruth Jeavons (Leeds) – Slandering seabirds – why gannets are not all that greedy
  • Dr. Natalia Riobo-Del Galdo (Leeds) – Hedgehog: from fly genetics to human cancer
  • Jarek Bryk (Huddersfield) – Genomics/bioinformatics in medical research