Head's Newsletter 9 July 2021

ROYAL HOLLOWAY BIOLOGY MASTERCLASS

AND SYMPOSIUM

Back in early January, the Biology department signed their Year 12 cohort up to partake in an Online Biology Masterclass run by Royal Holloway University of London. This consisted of 13 weekly lectures delivered by the Biological Sciences Faculty at the university. Lectures covered topics such as “Surgical Site Infection”, “ Tuning Chloroplast Development” & “The Ocean from a Geological Perspective” as well as a topical lecture on “Biology of Covid19: how the different new vaccines are made and work”. The broad range of lecture topics across all aspects of Biology have not only been a great source of information and interest for the Year 12s, but has also opened up new potential areas of study. Despite being many years past my own degree, I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to the lectures and learning about new aspects of biological technology. Each lecture session also started with a 15 minute Q&A from the previous talk, encouraging students to engage with the topic matter and explore any areas of significant intrigue further. At the end of the lecture series, all students involved from the 29 participating schools were invited to partake in a symposium. Students were asked to form groups of up to four, and write an abstract on a chosen topic of scientific breakthrough. The 10 best would be chosen to perform a viva on their topic area, whilst other groups would be invited to produce a poster. Both similar to that which would be presented for a dissertation. It was hoped that the symposium would take place in person but unfortunately that was not able to happen, but we are hopeful for future years. However, on the evening of 22nd June, all 4 groups that submitted an abstract were all chosen to give a talk on their area of special interest. A huge congratulations to Ahsan Asghar, Keshav Chhibba, Jasmine Gilmore, Antonia Hristova, Sam Jones, Sean Kim, Lia Leonard, Roman Nicholas, Emily Offer, Martha Old, Aleezah Rahman and Sophie Stomarivska [pictured above) he presented their talks with eloquence and ease. They were also able to discuss follow up questions intelligently and with ease. If you wish to watch their talks, as well as those presented by the other participating schools, you can do so here. Antonia, Martha and Sam were also awarded 3rd prize for their talk, and were gifted a book each by Professor Laszlo Bogre, with a note that stated those were his favourite biological books and he hoped they brought as much intrigue and enjoyment to the three of them as they did him. All the participants have represented themselves and the school wonderfully; as a department we are incredibly proud. Well done all.