X Close

Events

Home

UCL events news and reviews

Menu

Cheltenham, here we come

By James M Heather, on 6 June 2011

I’ve just checked the weather forecast for the next week; it seems that I’m in for a fair bit of rain, and a whole lot of science. My name is Jamie, and tomorrow morning I’ll be boarding a train westward-bound to attend the 2011 Cheltenham Science Festival.

Points for spotting the UFO in the backgroundEvery year, sandwiched in between its Jazz festival and its Music festival, the charming old spa-town of Cheltenham throws a week long science festival (that’s right, they actually have separate Jazz and Music festivals!). This year marks the festival’s tenth year of bringing exciting, interesting and cutting edge science to the public, and it looks like it’s going to be a good one, with some of the big names in science, media and comedy attending and putting on shows and demonstrations. Ten UCL students will be attending, and I’m lucky enough to count myself among them. Over the next week, I’ll be blogging about some of the events that I’m attending, so even if you’re not going you can still get a flavour of what’s been going on.

I’m a first year rotation PhD student at UCL, which means that I’m spending a year doing short projects in three different labs, before I choose one to complete a typical three year PhD project in (it doesn’t mean that I just spin round and round a lot). All of my rotations are immunology based, looking at investigating the interface between human immune systems, and the bugs and assorted critters that want to invade us. My current rotation is in the Institute of Child Health.

Leave a Reply