Wednesday 17th May
It’s Day 3 of the Pint of Science festival with one more evening of neuroscience research in the pub.
The topic of the last event was:
The ‘Fight-for-Sight’ . An evening where you find out how we can use research to tackle eye diseases in children or elderly – sponsored by Fight for Sight and Gift for Sight, two UK charities for eye diseases, and of course our main sponsor Hindawi
Today we had a special host, Dave Christensen from Bright Club, a public engagement group in Southampton that uses stand-up comedy to educate and entertain. Dave introduced the evening making everyone laugh with his science jokes and chat up lines, mostly about his own work on stem cells in retinal diseases (when I look in your eyes….).
We continued with the first speaker, Jessica Teeling, Professor of Experimental Neuroimmunology, Biological Sciences who introduced the retina to the audience and explained how age and external factors contributes to age-related macular degeneration. She used antibodies made of felt to explain how the immune system may contribute to tissue damage in the eye, resulting in inflammation and vision loss.
The interval was used to break retinal barriers using a fluorescent highlighter pen and alkazelters- looked very sciency in UV light!
The second speaker, Helena Lee, NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer in Ophthalmology, Faculty of Medicine told us about targeting abnormal retinal development in albinism in early childhood and whether we can treat visual impairment before it is a problem. Helena’s work is focussed on albinism, a condition that results in poor eyesight due to bad development of the eye, resulting in problems at school, at work and in their social life. She showed how innovative technology helps to understand the disease better helping her to find new treatments here in Southampton.
The final speaker of the #pint17 festival was Jay Self, Associate Professor and Consultant Opthalmologist, Faculty of Medicine. Jay took us on a journey into Genetics and Eye Disease providing a glimpse into the future of medical care. He explained that many of eye conditions are caused by changes in our genes. Thanks to next generation sequencing, we are starting to understand how this happens, and this paves the way to novel treatments.
All speakers received lots of questions from the audience: why are photoreceptors at the back of the eye? why are the eyes of albino’s red? and can we find out the health of our eyes before we are born? Excellent discussion and some audience members even answered some of the questions- this is what the Pint of Science festival is all about– interaction between scientists and the general public to educate and entertain!
Thanks to all the speakers, the audience, our hosts and the Stein Garten, our venue for this year. The feedback has been fabulous, we cant wait for #pint18
Thank you to all of the speakers! much appreciated and very interesting
very interesting and understandable for a non-expert- I like the format
Bigger screen is better 🙂 and MORE jokes from the blond guy!
WATCH A SHORT VIDEO HERE ON ALL THREE #pint17 #soton #BeautifulMind : SNZB3666