Inaugural lectures at Imperial College London 2015-2016

What links gas molecules, charged particles, bacteria and fish? Hear how partial differential equations help us understand their collective behaviour. Professor José Antonio Carrillo de la Plata's inaugural lecture For more information please visit

Professor Natalie Stingelin (Functional Materials, Department of Materials - Imperial College London) inaugural lecture Natalie Stingelin, Professor of Functional Organic Materials at Imperial College London With seabirds trapped in multipack drink rings, and mid-ocean islands of indestructible rubbish, the idea that plastics could play a big part in a more sustainable future world might seem far-fetched. However, new smart plastics may yet rescue the reputation of this all-consuming 20th century material. Research into so-called ‘cool plastics’ for cars and buildings could reduce the need for air conditioning and improve energy efficiency. It’s not just environmentalists who will be pleased. New plastic bioelectronics devices that interface with your body could underpin future prosthetics or even grow artificial hearts. Whilst there is significant potential in environmental and health applications of these new materials, efforts are still required to design plastics of desired functio

For more information, visit the event page on the Imperial College London website: Debates, dilemmas and conflicts are key to human reasoning. They help us make sense of everyday life when decisions need to be taken with inconsistent or incomplete information. This is why we expect our doctors to weigh up different courses of treatment, and why we check various online opinions before we buy anything from books to cars. If we are ever to value the advice of machines we need to empower them to argue. This requires in particular to give them a way to reason with general rules that admit exceptions so that they know how to reconcile conflicts in general statements such as 'bird fly' (except when they don't) or it is safer to walk rather than run during a fire alarm (except when it isn't). Francesca Toni is working on models of logic-based argumentation to underpin reasoning in intelligent machines. In her inaugural lecture she will explore challenges of arguing logically and the impact get

Interact on social media via the hashtag #unstablesnakes Meet our new professors Ahmer Wadee, Professor of Nonlinear Mechanics at Imperial College London Various structures fail because of multiple complex, inter-related instabilities. In a world of increasingly sophisticated computing power, numerical modelling of these structures to optimise their design has grown hugely in prominence. But where does this leave the more traditional engineering skills of calculating the forces and strengths in the system themselves? The fact is that software is only as good as the user and, if used carelessly, engineers may end up with designs that behave far more dangerously when in use than initially predicted. Ahmer Wadee is Professor of Nonlinear Mechanics who likes things unstable, or at least likes to discover why you obtain instabilities of differing severities in optimised engineering structures. In particular he is interested in struts and beams made from thin metal or sandwich construction a

Interact on social media via the hashtag #mobmaths Meet our new professors Pierre Degond, Professor of Applied Mathematics at Imperial College London How do flocks of birds or schools of fish appear to act as one self-aware organism? How do political or social movements spread across populations? And why do many of us continue to spend our commutes stationary in traffic jams? Mathematics is guiding us towards answers. The behaviour displayed by each of these phenomenon is underpinned by similar mathematical structures describing self-organisation and collective behaviour. It’s a set of rules that brings together individuals unaware of the broader process they are partaking in, but as a group show collective determined, smart behaviour. Professor Pierre Degond is a Professor of Applied Mathematics at Imperial who is interested in how to understand these ‘emergence phenomena’ from a mathematical perspective. In his lecture he will talk through his application of classical mathematical ph

Interact on social media via the hashtag #digitalengineering Meet our new professors Jennifer Whyte, Laing O’Rourke/Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Systems Engineering at Imperial College London Whatever you picture when thinking about construction will soon be wrong, if it’s not already. A radical change is taking place. The use of digital asset information by infrastructure owners is transforming the sector, bringing different professions into contact, and altering how these owners manage infrastructure portfolios, maintain inter-dependent infrastructure systems and deliver new projects. With terra-bytes of data, and millions of documents the major infrastructure projects such as the Heathrow Terminal 5, London 2012 Olympics and Crossrail have pioneered new approaches to project delivery. In her inaugural lecture Professor Jennifer Whyte will explore how digital information is changing the delivery of these complex engineering projects, whilst itself becoming a deliverable to o

Interact on social media via the hashtag #mysilicon Meet our new professors Paul Lickiss, Professor of Organometallic Chemistry at Imperial College London As the second most common element in the Earth's crust, silicon is in everything from sand to windows, and from deodorants to the device you are reading this on. Ours is a silicon world, and yet our understanding of its properties and potential uses is far from complete. As a periodic table neighbour to carbon with some similar properties, there has been speculation on the possibility of silicon-based life. Even if silicon-based “life as we know it” proves impossible, this close relationship to carbon has led to many studies investigating the possibilities of replacing carbon with silicon in drugs, polymers, and solvents. Current studies are investigating the potential for inserting silicon into organic molecules to make tailored, porous 3D frameworks to store hydrogen as a green fuel or to capture carbon dioxide. Professor Paul Lick

Interact online via the hashtag #fluidphysics Particles, droplets and bubbles play a significant role in our daily lives; ranging from the living cells in our body, the properties of rain or snow, the effectiveness of new liquid or solid drugs, or the many processes in energy and manufacturing industries. The importance of understanding their behaviour is increasing as we demand new generations of drugs, higher quality products, and more environmentally friendly processes. In this inaugural lecture, Berend van Wachem will discuss his career unpicking the complex behaviour of particles, droplets and bubbles and their role in daily life through a better understanding of physics at various scales. Join him as he journeys into the micro-world, where the behaviour of individual particles, droplets and bubbles can improve the design of everything from asthma inhalers to biomass incinerators, and learn how a better understanding of physics leads to better engineering. About the speaker Berend

Professor Julian Jones (Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering, Department of Materials - Imperial College London) inaugural lecture Julian Jones is a Professor of Biomaterials in the Department of Materials. Prior to this he held a Royal Academy of Engineering/ EPSRC Research Fellowship (awarded 2004), having completed his PhD in 2002. He joined the Department of Materials at Imperial having obtained an MEng in Metallurgy and the Science of Materials from the University of Oxford in 1999. His research interests are in biomaterials for regenerative medicine. His work on process development of foamed gel-derived bioactive glass (the first 3D porous scaffold made from bioactive glass) and inorganic/ organic hybrids has produced tough and flexible bioactive scaffolds suitable for tissue engineering applications. In 2014 he was awarded the Vittorio Gottardi Award from the International Congress on Glass (ICG) and in 2010 he was presented with the Robert L. Coble Award by the American Ceramics