Last week we held our synthetic biology event as part of the Manchester Science Festival. Over 130 people turned up for Artificial Life: Perils and Pitfalls, and we heard from Ron Weiss of MIT, Maureen O'Malley from Exeter, and Steve Yearley from Edinburgh. Gerry Kelleher, our Deputy Vice-Chancellor, also said a few words at the start. The overall feedback from the audience was excellent, and I think we can class it a success, although I might have hoped for a little more intellectual "argy bargy" (the audience members who asked questions were generally already quite sympathetic to the synbio "cause"). All in all, a great evening, and we thank the panelists, audience members (and, of course, our sponsors at the EPSRC) for making it so.I was also booked in to talk at another event over the weekend, but found myself double-booked (my own silly fault). A fifth birthday party regretfully trumped a fourth Teawitter Party, although my Ph.D. student, Pete, came to the rescue, for which I am eternally grateful. His talk on crowds was, by all accounts, very well-received, so maybe he's one to watch in the public engagement stakes...
It was also, of course, Halloween this weekend, so no post would be complete without a picture of our very own little witch. She's been super-cute in the last few days; we're big fans of The Cube, and she solemnly informed us, while we were watching it yesterday, that if she won £25K she would give it straight to daddy, because she's "not big enough to have pounds." Awwww. Like I'm any better with money!
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