As we start a new semester, we take time to reflect on those leaving the department. Fare thee well Anne and Joy. The School hosted a retirement reception for them last week. We thank them for all their hard work over many years and their contribution to making the School such a great place to work and study. They are pictured below being presented with flowers and keepsakes.
Congratulations to the Masters Class of 2014, and PhD students Dr Lakshitha De Silva and Dr Iain Parris who graduated today. The School also celebrated the installation of Professor Ian Miguel.
Students were invited to a reception in the school to celebrate their achievement with staff, friends and family.
Winter graduation coincided with a weekend of St Andrew’s Day celebrations captured in full glory by MSc student Xu Zhu.
Historic Streets, Pier, Harbour and Old Course
R&A, Christmas Lights and Cèilidh.
Our graduates have moved on to a wide variety of interesting and challenging employment and further study opportunities, and we wish them all well with their future careers.
The 2014 Distinguished Lecture Series took place on Tuesday in Lower College Hall. This year’s speaker Prof Luca Cardelli of Microsoft Research and the University of Oxford, delivered three lectures involving Morphisms of Reaction Networks that Couple Structure to Function.
Slides from the lectures are now available: http://lucacardelli.name/indexTalks.html
Luca pictured in Lower College Hall on Tuesday
Abstract
The mechanisms underlying complex biological systems are routinely represented as networks. Network kinetics is widely studied, and so is the connection between network structure and behavior. But it is the relationships between network structures that can reveal similarity of mechanism.
We define morphisms (mappings) between reaction networks that establish structural connections between them. Some morphisms imply kinetic similarity, and yet their properties can be checked statically on the structure of the networks. In particular we can determine statically that a complex network will emulate a simpler network: it will reproduce its kinetics for all corresponding choices of reaction rates and initial conditions. We use this property to relate the kinetics of many common biological networks of different sizes, also relating them to a fundamental population algorithm. Thus, structural similarity between reaction networks can be revealed by network morphisms, elucidating mechanistic and functional aspects of complex networks in terms of simpler networks.
Tuesday’s Programme:
09:15-09:30 Introduction by Prof Simon Dobson
09:39-10:30 Lecture 1 – Molecular Programming
11:00-12:00 Lecture 2 – The Cell Cycle Switch Computes Approximate Majority
13:30-14:30 Lecture 3 – Morphisms of Chemical Reaction Networks
14:30-15:30 Q & A Session
Image courtesy of Prof Saleem Bhatti
Congratulations to Dr Lei Fang, who passed his PhD viva yesterday. He is pictured below with Supervisor Professor Simon Dobson, External Examiner Dr Iain Bate from York University and Internal Examiner Dr Adam Barker.
Semester one so far has seen new arrivals in the fish tank, great minds at the think tank, a thank you from MacMillan and a cake for Ada Lovelace Day (supplied by Ishbel Duncan).
Some stunning pictures of the North Haugh and recent Guy Fawkes Night fireworks at the East Sands. Images courtesy of MSc student Xu Zhu.
Another successful Coffee Morning organised by Ishbel Duncan has raised in excess of £170. Today is the UK’s annual biggest coffee morning in aid of MacMillan Cancer care. Staff and students are pictured sampling the home baking on offer and participating in the Raffle. There are still some cakes on offer in the coffee area. Donate generously.
Highlighting the School’s penchant for the sweet and fizzy, earlier this week Long Thai returned from vacation with Vietnamese sweets including: bánh cốm (green sticky rice cake), sesame candy, peanut candy and chè lam.
Tom Kelsey introduced a Game of Thrones Cake. The StACS garden continues to offer fresh vegetables and BARR’s fizzy pop survived longer than a day.
As we start a new semester, we take time to reflect on those moving on to new ventures and wish colleague and friend, Per Ola Kristensson every success in his new post in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge.
During his time in the School he had many successes and viewed St Andrews as an “incredibly stimulating and vivid research environment.”
Describing the School and SACHI as “friendly and supportive” he underlined the school’s commitment to ensuring teaching and research is of “the highest calibre.”
Describing the students he worked with as “fantastic” and a pleasure to supervise, he explained that some of their dissertations had lead to scientific publications.
His final reflection:
Looking back, these years I have spent in St Andrews have helped me develop as a researcher and a teacher and I will remember my years here fondly.
We wish him continued success and look forward to seeing him in the very near future. You can read more about his research on the SACHI blog.
