The Life Scientific

Dean Lomax on discovering ichthyosaurs and defying nay-sayers

Have you ever been told you aren't good enough to do something, then gone ahead and proved the naysayers wrong by doing it anyway - in glorious, headline-grabbing style?

Helen Hastie on the future of human-robot relations

What if robots of the future weren’t just clever machines, performing tasks in isolation, but trusted teammates you could have a chat with? That could respond naturally t

Seth Berkley on the importance of vaccinating the world

Dr Seth Berkley is an epidemiologist and global health leader whose career has been shaped by one central problem: vaccines save lives, but only if people can actually ge

Hiranya Peiris on unravelling the story of the universe

Hiranya Peiris is playing a starring role in a movie that promises to tell perhaps the greatest story of all time. However, it’s a movie with a difference – there’s no di

Washington Yotto Ochieng on the navigation tech that keeps our world moving

As a child growing up on the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya, Washington Yotto Ochieng once watched a plane cross the night sky and told his mother he wished he

Lucy Carpenter on how our oceans are destroying ozone

Working on a remote tropical island in the Atlantic might sound like some sort of romantic idyll - but trying to conduct scientific research on a windy, isolated volanic

Jens Juul Holst on the gut hormone discovery behind weight-loss drugs

As recently as a few years ago, the idea of a self-administered injection that would deliver proven weight-loss results might have sounded fantastical. Today, these medic

Jim Ashworth-Beaumont on how a near-fatal accident made him a better clinician

It's a rare thing to encounter a medical specialist who has experience of his field from the expert and the patient perspective - but not unheard of... Jim Ashworth-Beau

Jehane Ragai on the science of authenticating artworks

Ever heard of the unsuccessful Dutch painter who decided to humiliate his critics by forging Vermeers, which the artworld subsequently dubbed 'masterpieces'? Or the busin

Tony Juniper on parrots, princes and environmental protection

Tony Juniper is an environmentalist who has worn many hats, over the course of his career. After developing a passion for birds in childhood, his first job saw him worki

Pierre Friedlingstein on carbon’s pivotal role in climate change

The COP30 climate summit is taking place in the Brazilian city of Belém, a gateway to the Amazon rainforest, which continues to face widespread deforestation. We all know

Julia Simner on tasty words and hearing colours

Imagine if you were listening to an opera or a Taylor Swift concert, and as the lights in the auditorium dimmed, the music was accompanied by a rainbow of colours only yo

Caroline Smith on meteorites and potential ancient life on Mars

Caroline Smith is passionate about space rocks, whether they’re samples collected from the surface of asteroids and the Moon and hopefully Mars one day soon, or meteorite

AP De Silva on building molecular fluorescence sensors for healthcare

From humble beginnings in his native Sri Lanka, to a more than 40 year academic career at Queen’s University Belfast, Prof. AP (Amilra Prasanna) De Silva’s research into

Peter Knight on quantum technologies

There are problems and tasks so hard and complicated that it would take today’s most powerful supercomputers millions of years to crack them. But in the next decade, we m

Eleanor Schofield on conserving Tudor warship the Mary Rose

In July 1545, King Henry VIII watched from Southsea Castle on England's south coast as his fleet sailed out to face the French - only to witness his prized warship, the M

George Church on reimagining woolly mammoths and virus-proofing humans

"My ideas are often labelled as impossible, or useless, or both. Usually when people say that I'm on the right track." George Church is a geneticist, molecular engineer,

Gareth Collett on a career in bomb disposal

Movies might have us believe that bomb disposal comes down to cutting the right wire. In fact, explosive devices are complex and varied - and learning how to dispose of t

Sonia Gandhi on building model brains to tackle Parkinson’s disease

Many people will be familiar with Parkinson’s disease: the progressive brain disorder that causes symptoms including tremors and slower movement, leading on to serious co

Mark O'Shea on close encounters with venomous snakes

How do you feel about snakes? What about highly venomous ones? For Mark O’Shea, close encounters with the world’s most rare and deadly snakes are not only his profession