Saturday, February 24, 2024

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Cantabs Clare Bryant - covid put her dual cambridge labs - as vet and medic in middle of everything ; Hassabis has put cambridge in the middle of biotech 250 million proteins databank alphafold2 - king charles has put ai world series in the middle of humanity - watch this space


You are invited to a special evening with Professor Clare Bryant, Professor of Innate Immunity on Thursday, February 22 at 6pm.

COVID, Ebola, HIV, Tuberculosis and influenza are all zoonosis – infectious diseases that jumped from non-human animals to humans. Join Professor Bryant as she outlines a new approach to study the origins of these pathogens that focuses on infectious and inflammatory disease, bridges biological, medical and physical sciences, and integrates the social and anthropological sciences, climate change science and biodiversity.

Following the lecture there will be a brief Q & A and time to connect with fellow Cambridge alumni over drinks and canapes.


Cambridge Centre for Zoonotic Research: a commercial approach underpinned by outstanding research

Zoonotic diseases are of critical importance to humans. All pandemics/epidemics of significant public health concern have been zoonoses, the most recent and devastating being the global Covid-19 pandemic. Other familiar pathogens, such as HIV, TB, influenza and Ebola are all zoonoses. These diseases have a major cost to human life and continue to affect populations worldwide. Climate change will have a profound effect on the opportunities for pathogen spillover to the human population. We need to understand where the pathogens come from, how they spread, how they evolve, how they hide in animals, how they jump species, the immune responses they cause in humans and animals, how to predict the most likely pathogens to cause a pandemic, how we can detect/diagnose them and how to prevent or reduce the impact of an outbreak to prevent it becoming a pandemic.  A new, sustainable approach is needed.

Vision of the Centre

We propose to establish a forward-thinking interdisciplinary Centre for Research in Zoonoses at the University of Cambridge in association with Queens’ College.

The goals of the proposed Centre are:

  • To build a sustainable centre of diverse multi-disciplinary outstanding scientist-entrepreneurs supported by world leading experts
  • To disrupt conventional research approaches to zoonotic infectious disease by providing rapidly translatable solutions underpinned by the social, economic and political reality.

The vision of the proposed Centre is:

  • To build a multi-disciplinary unit focusing on infectious and inflammatory disease that bridges biological, medical and physical sciences integrating the social and anthropological sciences, climate change science and biodiversity
  • To integrate entrepreneurship, translational science and spin out ventures to ensure investment, financial return on investment and sustainable funding, in line with the UK’s industrial strategy
  • Work in partnership with global surveillance centres and key biodiversity centres

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for wonderful event with Clare Bryant. As per my question my Keynesian-Smith inspired family www.normanmacrae.net as Von Neumann's biographer with The Economist since 1951 (and supporter of Charles relationships with Tokyo since 1962 ) believe the very best AI futures for humanity transformed in 2009 when Hassabis met Fei-Fei Li at Stanford. Hasabis at that time was sponsored by Welcome's Neuroscience network Gatsby and his doctorate being completed at University College London. It was only after Fei-Fei Li's 3rd annual global computer vision challenge 2012 imagenet became world famous that Hasabis Deep Mind start up became popular. Li had found herself welcomed by female biotech stars Jennifer Doudna CrispR Nobel Laureate & Daphne Koller also co-founder Moocs with Andrew Ng and more recently Priscilla Chan Hassabis decided he needed a lot of computing power so acquistion by google. Fortunately google let Hasabis do his own stuff out of London and Cambrdge teaching computers to be world champion at go and it was this pattern recognition analytics which resulted in aplphafold2 open sourcing 250 million proteins - the greatest leap forward in biotech since crick-watson dna modelling.

    I wanted to check did you see King Charles launch of AI World Series summit Bletchley Nov https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_jw40Ga_mA&t=1s next stops Korea April and Paris after olympics. While Bletchley correctly invites all mathematicians/engineers to unite around Turing, it hasnt made the biotech invitations to connect round Cambridge clear as a worldwide message. In Washington DC Condoleeza Rice's Hoover is the space to go connect stanford and Cambridge - their biotech professor Drew Endy fielded my question when their AI policy team visited DC earlier this month https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGv2yngbpus&t=4740s Back in the UK, while the prime minister battles his election year it seems that Michelle Donellan is leader responsible for all AI world series links going forward https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq7uDCCMZ6g&t=1528s https://twitter.com/michelledonelan/status/1640972054647406592 How can this be advanced to maximise your and Clare's interests. Would anyone like to visit Hoover DC with me? Is there more I can share with you at your first thursday meeting or any other time? Also my friends in New York connect with NYU's Donor Mrs Tandon leading advocate of women in Engineering - I am up in New York at UN event this week- is there anyone i should have a cup of tea with? Best Chris Macrae www.economistdiary.com +1 240 316 8157 UN leader Guterres has his own biotech science ai advisory group https://press.un.org/en/2023/sga2223.doc.htm but it seems that in his last 2 full years as UN leader he's being overwhelmed with wars - so does Cambridge have lead biotech ai expert in NY interested in SDGs (Sadly the chat llm wars between google and microsoft are taking lot of Hasabis time away from biotech so my guess is he and millennials everywhere desperately needs Cambridge particularly on Virus prevention AI)

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