Blog
The Babraham Institute works to deliver impact by translating our science and understanding of fundamental biology to promote lifelong health and wellbeing. Our blogs offer scientists, staff and guests the chance to share their individual views and experiences on the Institute's efforts to deliver research impacts and to build a welcoming and diverse community.
29/03/2018
Genome Editing – How far should we go? A Cambridge Science Festival event
On the 13th of March the Babraham Institute organised the discussion event “Genome Editing – How far should we go?”. Carolyn Rogers, a 1st year PhD student in Anne Corcoran's group, was one of the Institute’s researchers facilitating the table discussions.
26/03/2018
Climate Reality Leadership Training
In our latest KEC blog post, post-doctoral researcher Jo Durgan, part of the Florey group, steps out of the lab to discuss climate change and her work across the Institute as a Climate Reality Leader.
16/03/2018
Passion, enthusiasm and a thirst for knowledge at Schools’ Day
Jo Montgomery, a member of the Babraham Bioinformatics group, describes how Schools’ Day projects bring out the best in scientists and students
01/02/2018
Cambridge Academy for Science & Technology students find inspiration for their investigations
The ‘Protein Challenge’ project at the Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology combines an introduction to key molecular biology techniques and practical lab-based sessions to assay protein activity. Here the students tell us more about what they got up to on their recent visit to the Institute to learn more about our research and facilities
31/01/2018
The excitement of science communication
In November, as part of 360 Science, we invited science author and broadcaster Kat Arney to visit the Institute to talk about her career and offer tips on getting started in communications. Here PhD student Christina Courreges reflects on Kat’s presentation and what she took away from it.
17/01/2018
St Faith’s trip to the Babraham Institute
A class of year 6 children from St. Faith's School recently visited the Imaging Facility on campus to learn more about cells. They were thrilled to see the microscopes and detailed images that we can take on them. They also used the microscopes we have as resource for our public engagement programme to look at a range of slides and the nematode worm C.elegans. We received a wonderful thank you letter from each child which highlighted how much they had enjoyed the afternoon.
10/01/2018
Let’s create an exhibition
In November the Institute heard it was successful in the competitive selection to showcase its upcoming exhibition, the “Race Against the Ageing Clock”, at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition in London this summer. Esther van Vliet, Public Engagement Officer, is part of the exhibit development team and shares here how work has begun on the creation of the exhibit.
03/01/2018
Learning to talk about my research
Chiara Pantarelli, a 3rd year PhD student in Heidi Welch's group at the Babraham Institute took part in a recent Media Training day to help her to build her skills in talking to a wide audience about her research.
25/12/2017
Engagement Highlights 2017!
At this special festive time, Tacita Croucher, the Institute's Public Engagement Manager reflects on the public engagement work our staff and students have been organising and participating in this year.
20/12/2017
ORION @ENGAGE - Esther's baptism of fire!
About a month ago Esther van Vliet joined the Public Engagement team at the Babraham Institute as a maternity cover to work on the ORION project, a Horizon2020 European Commission funded project that aims to explore new ways to open up the way the Institute does research. Her baptism of fire happened last week at the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement’s annual conference ENGAGE.
20/12/2017
ENGAGE 2017 – collaboration and inspiration
Michael Hinton muses on the ENGAGE Conference, run by the National Coordinating Council for Public Engagement
13/12/2017
A match made on campus
The Babraham Institute’s basic science benefits in a very real sense from the Institute's proximity to a number of industry-leading biotechnology companies on the Babraham Research Campus. In this blog Rahul Roychoudhuri tells us about a developing partnership between our Immunology Programme and Cancer Research UK Therapeutic Discovery Laboratories.
08/12/2017
Launching Challenge Projects in the Netherlands
Alex Harvey, an Animal Technician in the Institute’s animal unit (BSU) describes how she joined Boo Virk (a postdoc in the Casanueva Group) and Dori Horkai (a PhD student in the Houseley Group) and the Public Engagement team's Michael Hinton in the third year of a collaboration with Sophianum School in the Netherlands.
29/11/2017
The stars of SymBLS
The Babraham Institute’s Symposium for Biological Life Sciences (SymBLS) for early career researchers is a well established forum for Life Science graduates across Cambridge. This year’s organising committee share their thoughts on the 2017 event and give us a ‘behind the scenes’ look at what it takes to run this excellent event.
21/11/2017
Campus collaboration leads to further investment
Becky Gilley, a post doc in the Cook lab is the latest KEC blog contributor. Becky has been involved in a Babraham Research Campus Collaboration Fund (BRCCF) project which has gone from strength to strength. Her blog tells us why the BRCCF has been critical in securing further funding and what this collaborative research project has meant to her.
21/11/2017
Pipetting Workshop at Newmarket Academy Science Club
John Pascall, who is a regular contributor to the Babraham Institute's Public Engagement activities, describes the challenges of going back to school at Newmarket Academy.
15/11/2017
The importance of knowledge exchange in political engagement
James Tooze, Policy Officer at the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE), takes up the reigns in this latest KEC post. In his guest blog, James tells us about the partnership between CaSE and the Babraham Institute and explains why scientists’ engagement in policy is so important.
09/11/2017
From Barcelona to Babraham
In our third and final Innovative Training Network (ITN) KEC Blog series, we hear from visiting PhD student Piotr Kobiałka on his recent knowledge exchange visit to the Babraham Institute. Piotr is a PhD student in Dr Mariona Graupera’s lab in IDIBELL (Institut d’Investigació Biomèdica de Bellvitge) in Barcelona. He tells us why this visit helped his research and why researcher mobility is so important to advance scientific programmes:
31/10/2017
Making our Mark at Big Biology Day
Prof. Wolf Reik, Associate Director of the Babraham Institute and Head of the Epigenetics Research Programme was part of a team of scientists who took a new exhibit on Epigenetics to Big Biology Day at Hills Road Sixth Form College in October.
26/10/2017
Retreating is crucial to advance
We are very proud to share this latest KEC blog by Babaraham Institute post docs, Clara Novo, Danika Hill and Claire Senner. In a drive to bring the International postdoc community together, our BI pioneers tell us exactly how they established the first EU-LIFE joint postdoc retreat.
20/10/2017
A PhD life for me!
In the second of our ITN (Innovative Training Network) blog series, PhD student in Babraham’s Signalling Programme, Piotr Jung, lab tells us why this program is so important for advancing knowledge of key biological concepts.
19/10/2017
Chromos VR at Science Museum Lates
Zahra Fahmi, a researcher in the Lipkow laboratory, describes her involvement in the Chromos project showcase at the ‘CelluLates’ event at the Science Museum, London
17/10/2017
Schools' Day - igniting a passion for science
As he starts to plan Schools' Day for 2018, Michael Hinton, part of the Public Engagement team, looks back at the event in previous years and reports views from students, teachers and from both junior and senior researchers who run projects on the day.
16/10/2017
Success for The Royal Society Worm Project at Cambridge Young Scientist Journal Conference
Guest blogger Ella Willsmore, a student at Colchester County High School for Girls, describes her experiences at the Young Scientist Journal conference in Cambridge, during which she won a prize for her poster, which outlined her work with Olivia Casanueva's group on a Royal Society Partnership project.