Save the date, our popular event is back on the 29th of February for one fun afternoon filled with science and cake.
This year we are meeting at the wonderful Great Hall at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle and will be talking about cancer gene therapy, male infertility, the 100,000 genomes project, mitochondrial donations, CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing, drug repurposing and many more hot medical research topics which may have caught your eye in the news. The event is FREE but please book to secure a place by clicking here: https://forms.ncl.ac.uk/view.php?id=6972326
Please spread the news amongst your friends and colleagues, the more the merrier!
Save the date and come see us on Saturday the 29th of February for a fun afternoon filled with science and cake, as part of the International Rare Disease Day. Please email katarzyna.pirog@ncl.ac.uk if you’d like to take part and present and please spread the news amongst your friends and colleagues, the more the merrier!
From the International Rare Disease Day website:
“When the challenge of raising awareness for people affected by a rare disease still looms. On Rare Disease Day we must re-double our efforts. Re-think, re-envision, reimagine. Reframe what it means to be ‘rare’. In fact – rare isn’t scarce, rare isn’t infrequent, rare isn’t remote. Rare is not as rare as you think. The statistics speak for themselves. There are more than 300 million patients, each supported by family, friends and a team of carers, that make up the rare disease community worldwide. Over 6,000 different diseases. Collectively, they make up the third largest country in the world. Rare is many. Rare is strong. Rare is proud. The likely truth is that you know one of the 1 in 20 people affected by a rare disease. We need society to understand that millions of people living with a rare disease around the world face inequitable access to diagnosis, treatment and care. It’s time to take action for people living with a rare disease to have equal opportunities to realise their potential. [..] We need everyone to get involved and join the movement to reframe rare!”
The 5th edition of our flagship Genetics Matters event took place in our Institute on the 23rd of February. The event was very well attended, the presentations sparked lively and interesting discussions and we had a special reel showing in our Black Box.
Thank you all for coming on a sunny Saturday afternoon (and a match day!) to celebrate genetic research in Newcastle and to raise awareness of rare disease and the need for rare disease research.
Thank you very much for the wonderful afternoon, it helped me a lot with deciding academic science and researches’ role in the practice of Medicine – participant
The format was very good and the cakes very moreish!! The Pop Up cinema was an excellent idea. – participant
The 2 talks I heard [..] were both absolutely outstanding and interesting for me to hear as a researcher and clinician. – presenter
Does identity begin with the body? What role does science play in understanding who we are? It’s IDENTITY week in our BlackBox pop-up cinema, with films about relationships between mind, body and society in exploring who we are.
Limbs that grow back. Bacteria that eat plastic. Robot pills. Ceramics in our bones. It’s LIFE week (11-15th February) in our pop-up Black Box cinema and we explore how life emerges from raw materials and how artists and scientists work with life as a material
After a weekend of building and painting, our cinema is finally in at the IGM foyer. Please bear with us today as we sort out last glitches, we should be ready to start this afternoon!
We’ve been involved in an exciting collaboration with Northumbria University the past few months, and we’re building a small cinema in the IGM foyer. We’re really exicted, come see for yourselves!
Black Box is a joint project by The Cultural Negotiation of Science (CNoS) at Northumbria University and the Institute of Genetic Medicine (IGM) at Newcastle University. Opening the door on the inner workings of genetic research, Black Box is a FREE pop-up cinema located in the IGM West Wing foyer showing a programme of creative film works inspired by and expanding upon genetic themes.
What do advances in genetics mean for the future of humanity and other species? How is genetics changing medicine? What do we mean by biotechnology? What possible genetic futures can we imagine?
The Black Box pop-up cinema will feature 4 themed weeks, each screening a short (60-90min) reel of 5-10min movies. The themes have been inspired by the issues and topics in genetic research and are:
