News from Hughes May 2009 Issue 10
Newsletter for Hughes Hall members
From Superconductors to Medieval Leprosy A thriving academic community Hughes Hall is a vibrant, active and varied academic community, as the work of our Research Fellows demonstrates. Amit Bhave, Department of Chemical Engineering,
joined the College as Research Fellow after completing his PhD at Hughes. His research interests lie in development of ultra-low emissions technologies for transportation and applications. He is a technical manager for several government-supported collaborative research projects. As CEO, Amit manages business development and technological innovation for two Cambridge spin-out companies. 1 Francesco Bonaccorso, Department of Engineering, Electrical Division, recently joined the College. His
field is nanotechnology and in particular, sorting of carbon nanotubes. These have enormous potential for applications in nanoelectronics and nanophotonics, such as ultra-high performance field effect transistors, conductive films, infrared emitters, sensors, and ultra-fast lasers for optical and telecommunication applications. 2 Elma Brenner, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow. She
completed her PhD in medieval history, and is now working on leprosy in the medieval city of Rouen, France. She is interested in the social and religious response to leprosy, and how this compares to modern-day responses to disease. 3 Sohini Chakrabortee, Institute of Biotechnology,
completed her PhD as a Cambridge Commonwealth Scholar, and is now a post-doctoral Fellow, investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying dessication tolerance, and identifying the genes whose products act as protectants against protein aggregation and DNA damage. Such products may be used to engineer stress-resistant cells or organisms leading to new methods of preservation, for example of food and biological materials. 4 John Durrell, Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy. John’s research interest is in the electrical
properties of superconducting materials. This is important for the development of commercially practical coated conductor materials which can be used to transport power long distances efficiently without loss. Potential applications include moving power from, often remote, renewable sources to the national grid, and providing cheap magnets for medical scanning. 5 May 2009 Issue 10
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Sovan Sarkar, Department of Medical Genetics, came to Hughes as a Gates
Scholar for his PhD. He has been working on signalling pathways which regulate autophagy (a protein degradation system), and identifying small molecule autophagy enhancers for accelerating the degradation of mutant proteins associated with the causes of neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington’s and Parkinson’s. 6
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Viktor Korolchuk, Department of Medical Genetics, is studying intracellular protein
transport and degradation pathways, with the aim of elucidating molecular mechanisms involved in the regulation of these cellular processes. He is hoping to identify the proteins which may potentially be used as targets in the treatment of such devastating illnesses as Huntington’s, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. 7
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Hughes Hall Centre for Biomedical Science in Society Stephen John’s research interests are in the relationship between public health policy, political philosophy and the philosophy of science. In particular, he is interested in how claims about health risks should be established and understood, and in the ethical issues involved in imposing and reducing such risks. 8 Amit Pundik joined the College following two years at
Balliol College, Oxford, writing a DPhil. He is interested in evidence, procedural law, medical law, legal theory and philosophy. His area of research is causation and the law of evidence, and he is particularly interested in the use of statistical evidence in court. 9 Adam Bostanci’s research explores the social dimensions of contemporary bioscience, in particular human genomics. Projects include the regulation of non-invasive pre-natal genetic tests and how patenting biomolecules other than DNA reflects the rapidly changing understanding of 0 molecular biology. 0
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