I m THE MAGAZINE FOR THE YOU ARE IMPERIAL COMMUNITY SPRING YOUR BRAIN 2017 BUT THE BRAIN REMAINS ONE OF SCIENce’s final FRONTIERS. WE EXPLORE pe THE MYSTERY OF MIND r i a l / 4 2 KENSINGTON | PADDINGTON | HAMMERSMITH I CONTENTS m THE SMART VENUE CHOICE pe REGULARS From meetings and conferences in our modern lecture theatres and classrooms, to corporate parties and private dinners in our 22 LETTERS r unique townhouses, Imperial is the smart venue choice for your 03 next event. 04 FROM THE PRESIDENT i Professor Alice Gast on the value of an Imperial education. a In-house catering 10% room hire discount 07 IMPERATIVE for Imperial Alumni. Dedicated events team Bruno Cotta on the Enterprise Lab. l / Quote ALUM-17 Spaces for 10 to 740 guests available 10 SOCIETY 4 when booking. Historic townhouses licensed for civil wedding ceremonies Take a flight with the Gliding Club. Suitable for meetings, conferences, training sessions, 41 DISRUPTOR 2 private parties, dinners and many more Professor Alan Fenwick is trying to combat one of the world’s deadliest diseases, schistosomiasis. State-of-the-art audio visual equipment 42 OUR IMPERIAL Accommodation services Four alumni reveal how Imperial’s diverse culture Publisher prepared them for a place in the world. Imperial College London 34 South Kensington Campus 45 daTASET London SW7 2AZ www.imperial.ac.uk 020 7594 9494 | [email protected] | imperialvenues.co.uk Professor Geoffrey Maitland’s work on carbon capture is crucial to meeting ambitious targets. Editorial enquiries imperialmagazine@ 46 adveNTURES IN... THE HUMBLE BEE imperial.ac.uk Dr Richard Gill is dedicated to saving one of nature’s +44 (0)20 7594 7443 most important and hard-working creatures. www.imperial.ac.uk/ imperialmagazine 48 PIED PIPER Alumni enquiries Second-year Henry Xu Jiarui reflects on his essential [email protected] Imperial experience. +44 (0)20 7594 6138 www.imperial.ac.uk/alumni Imperial is published by YBM Ltd on behalf of FEATURES Imperial College London Communications & Public Affairs Stay on campus this [email protected] BLOCKCHAIN 12 www.ybm.co.uk * Think blockchain is something to do with cryptocurrencies 42 summer from £53 and nothing to do with you? Think again. Copyright © 2017 The opinions expressed 16 HYDE PARK STUDENT RELAY Race in Imperial are those of the contributors and not It’s cold. It’s tough. It’s in costume. It must be the Student necessarily those of Imperial ➜ Save up to £38 on standard room rates at Relay Race. College London. our 4* campus accommodation as Imperial alumni. Room only or B&B available in South Kensington 22 YOU ARE YOUR BRAIN Editor: Who do you think you are? You are your brain. That’s why Mira Katbamna from 3 July until 24 September 2017. Commissioning Editor: Imperial’s researchers want to understand how it works. Steve McGrath ➜ We also offer preferential room rates at a number Art Director: STANdaRD MODEL, 3.0 of hotels in central London, available throughout 28 Finnie Finn The Large Hadron Collider at CERN has found the one Project Manager for the year. Prices start from £100 per night. Imperial College London: thing no one could have predicted: nothing new. What Joanna McGarry does this means for the future of big physics? Cover Illustration: To book, call +44 (0)20 7594 9507 quoting AL-2017 34 CRYSTALLOGRAPHY Kyle Bean Professor Naomi Chayen explains why, when it comes to medicine, crystals may indeed have magical properties. www.imperial.ac.uk/visitors-accommodation * Alumni price after discount. Discount only available when you book with the Imperial reservations team by phone and quote the code AL-2017. ISSUE 42 - SPRING 17 Write to us Email: [email protected] 03 Letters: Joanna McGarry, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ Letters may be edited for length, grammar and accuracy. @imperialcollege, #OurImperial DIGEST fb.com/alumni.imperialcollegelondon LETTERS IMPROBABLE PROBABILITY The College was the cradle of the British MORE FROM — chemical industry, where William Perkin, THE MAILBAG In 2006-07, during my MBA studies in one of its first students, discovered the dye, — Boston, I was in a grocery store when I mauveine, and many other world-leading We were thrilled to receive a full mailbag this noticed someone who looked like one of my chemists and industrialists started. We have issue. Many of you were pleased by the lecturers from the first year of my Maths tried to provide a comprehensive picture of magazine’s new look. John Swallow was happy to degree at Imperial. I approached him and the department, using archival sources, oral see “greater depth of focus on subject matter”, asked whether he was Dr Crowdy, who led and written testimony, and published and adding that, “The latest copy is on my son’s bed mathematical methods in 2001. His response unpublished material. with two of the articles flagged for him to read”. was positive, and I discovered he was a visiting Professor Bill Griffith, Emeritus Professor of Peter Riding (Physics 1964) agreed, emailing to professor at MIT. Chemistry at Imperial (Chemistry 1957, PhD 1960) say that he thought the “content was excellent, At the time, I was surprised at the the design superb. Roll on Issue 42!” However, coincidence. Professor Hand’s article shed IMPERIAL communitY Roy Gardiner (DIC Physics 1968) felt that the some light on this, explaining why such — new look lacked the “more modern, funky layout seemingly improbable events do occur. Having been a past and current student at of its predecessors” – we hope that this issue Christian Schmidt (Mathematics 2004) Imperial, I can attest to the fact that it is an answers some of these criticisms. Your feedback extremely open, diverse and welcoming is invaluable and will continue to inform the style My parents own a holiday cottage on the Isle community (as President Alice Gast recently and content of the magazine. of Wight. During my time at Imperial, my wrote in the Times of India). I am grateful father and I were outside the cottage when a and fortunate to have got great support and Chemists among you may be interested to man came up to us and addressed my father encouragement throughout my time here. hear of a new history of the Department, by name. They had met each other 25 years That said, the UK visa system is an absolute published this year (see Professor Griffith’s ago whilst sailing in the Hebrides, when they mess and needs serious revisiting. I have letter, left). To win one of five copies of Professors had anchored next to each other one evening first-hand experience of the difficulty faced Griffith and Gay’s book, share your memories and shared a drink. It turned out he had just by non-EU nationals whilst looking for work with us by writing to imperialmagazine@imperial. bought the house two doors down. placements, internships or full-time positions. ac.uk. Alternatively, Imperial alumni and friends The coincidence was compounded when This is something for UK universities to get are able to purchase a copy of the book at a we discovered not only that his godson together and petition the government about. 25 per cent discount by visiting: bit.ly/wspc-cdic was studying at Imperial, but that he was Parth Shah (Chemical Engineering 2015), with the code wscdic25. NARA G a member of the four I was rowing with at via LinkedIn A B Henley, and one of my best friends. Finally, in Issue 41 we published a letter from O Angus Rivers (Medicine 2004) M AERONAUTICS Professor Donald Perkins FRS (Physics 1945, PhD O THROUGH THE YEARS C 1948) on his memories of Imperial in wartime. COMPUTING IA MRI-PET SCANNER — Professor Perkins’ daughter, and his contemporary — Eddie Bittel, David Carrington and Paul at Imperial, Jack Pearson (Chemistry 1944), wrote GE: G GE: IdeasLab at Davos A Thanks for your fascinating insight into Melling (Aeronautics 1969) revisited their to point out our error in referring to Professor — E P Imperial’s new MRI-PET scanner (Imperial old lecture theatre recently. David comments: ‘David’ Perkins. We apologise to Professor Perkins The College’s Vice-Provost (Research), Professor Nick Jennings, warned an audience of OSIT 41). I would add, however, that I believe there “The most memorable thing about second and his family for this mistake. industry leaders at Davos that seeing machines as slaves will limit their potential. PP to be seven, rather than five, such scanners in year was the end of year aerodynamics exam. O . Speaking as part of the IdeasLab presentations at the 2017 World Economic Forum, R the UK, and that the value of this scanner lies It was a horror story! I scanned the first As you may know, the UK privacy laws for Professor Jennings highlighted the potential of high-performance computing to improve If we are to make informed KE in its ability to take simultaneous PET and question and decided I couldn’t do it. I turned charities and universities are changing. Please be human decision-making in a data-driven world. “Humans alone cannot hope to process AR MR images. the page and couldn’t do question two either. on the lookout for notifications from us on this the vast volumes of data our modern world creates,” he explained. “If we are to make decisions, we need Dr Charalampos Tsoumpas By the time I’d got to question five or six, matter so that we may continue to be in touch. informed decisions, we need assistance from Artificial Intelligence systems. Humans assistance from Artificial MMY P (DIC Clinical Medicine 2007) panic had well and truly set in.