Past Events
April 2013′s Alchemist Cafe
Cities and complexity
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The concept of emergence has been around since the time of Aristotle with examples found all across our natural world – from the swarming of birds and fish to the collective intelligence of ants and bees. While these examples are well known, it is only in very recent years that scientists have begun to explore and understand the way that such intricate and complex patterns can arise from such relative simplicity. This new area of science has since become known as the study of ‘complex systems’ and aims to exploit our new found understanding by applying it to analogous examples in our human world.
Dr Hannah Fry from University College London will be talking about how applying these ideas to the workings of a city has the potential to directly influence the way we design our society – from transport to policing and everything in between. |
 Ants at work by Olivier Bacquet |
Poster for the event, please feel free to print and stick up around your place of work/study (ask permission first).
Date: Tuesday 23rd April 2013
Location: The Mercantile, Dame St, Dublin 2
Time: 7:30pm (sharp)
Admission: Free – All Welcome!
Complimentary finger food will be provided.
This event is in association with CPL and Discover Science & Engineering
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March 2013′s Alchemist Cafe
An Optimist’s Tour Of The Future
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Mark Stevenson has been to the future a few years ahead of the rest of us and thinks it could have a lot going for it. Based on his first book, he will take us on An Optimist’s Tour of the Future.
Mark combines two careers – one as a successful writer/comedian (writing for stage, radio and print) and another as an expert in future narratives, institutional innovation, engineered serendipity and learning – working with everyone from schoolchildren to the boards of multinational corporations. He is co-founder of Lea(r)n into the Curve, a fellow of the RSA, Nibmaster General at the Ministry of Stories, special advisor to the Virgin Earth Challenge and founder of the League of Pragmatic Optimists. Date: Tuesday 12th March 2013 |
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Complimentary finger food will be provided.
This event is in association with CPL and Discover Science & Engineering
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February 2013′s 2nd Alchemist Cafe
Can we regenerate damaged bones and joints using our own stem cells?
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The fields of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine hold the promise of replacing or regenerating damaged or diseased tissues and organs in our body. Prof. Daniel Kelly will begin by providing an introduction to these exciting new areas of medicine, highlighting some of the big clinical breakthroughs in the field. Many of these therapies use stem cells found in various adult tissues. The role these cells can play in mediating repair and regeneration will be discussed.
He will introduce the ongoing work in his lab to use such adult stem cells to tissue engineer cartilage and bone grafts that could be used to replace damaged and diseased joints such as the hip or knee. The night will conclude by discussing some of the key challenges that need to be overcome before these therapies are in widespread clinical use. |
 Plasticity of Adult Stem Cells |
Date: Tuesday 26th February 2013
Location: The Mercantile, Dame St, Dublin 2
Time: 7:30pm (sharp)
Admission: Free – All Welcome!
Complimentary finger food will be provided.
This event is part of Engineers Week and as in association with CPL and Discover Science & Engineering
February 2013′s 1st Alchemist Cafe
The exponential nature of our era – Do we have the focus, talent, and entrepreneurs to keep up?
In just half a century the world’s population doubled from 3.5bn to 7bn now. Demographics, combined with economic development, are the most important drivers that determine how the future will evolve and could give rise to a doubling of resource use by 2050.
| Do we understand the exponential nature of the era we are in? Are we in denial about planetary boundaries? Can growth as we know it continue forever or do we need to change pace? Do grass roots developments point to new insights? Can new ideas be scaled up fast enough to avoid the combined financial/economic crisis, social tensions and ecological stresses unleashing a perfect storm? |
 Crowd By James Cridland |
Mr Hans van der Loo, previously vice president EU liaison for Royal Dutch Shell in Brussels, is a currently a member of the Board of Atomium Culture, as well as advisor to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Mr Van der Loo is a gifted and inspiring speaker on the importance of topics such as science, innovation, energy supply and sustainability. He caters easily for a wide variety of different audiences and is amongst others a keen promoter of engineering to younger people.
Date: Sunday 24th February 2013
Location: Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin
Time: 4:00pm (sharp, note early start)
Admission: Free – All Welcome!
This event is in association with CPL, Discover Science & Engineering and the Netherlands Embassy in Dublin.
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January 2013′s Alchemist Cafe
The Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition has been running since 1965. To celebrate we have invited one of the founders Dr Tony Scott and a selection of past winners to come talk at the cafe the evening before 2013′s massive event in the RDS.
Dr Tony Scott was born in Dublin. He attended Terenure College and then entered UCD, where he received a B.Sc. in Physics. He subsequently conducted research in Atmospheric Physics, which earned him a M.Sc. and a PhD.
He founded the Young Scientist Exhibition in 1963 in partnership with Fr. Tom Burke. In 1965, the first Young Scientist event took place in the RDS. The Young Scientist Exhibition is in its 49th year and the 2013 BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition will be take place from the 9th – 12th of January at the RDS.
Emer Jones is currently studying Physics and Maths in Cambridge University, having been interested in a scientific career for years. In 2008 she won the BT Young Scientist competition at age 13 and received second place at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists in Copenhagen that year. Since then she has spoken at events and schools, mentored science projects and continued her interest in science. Though interested in all scientific fields, she hopes to have a career in physics research.
Luke Drury attended Wesley College, Dublin and won the Young Scientists Exhibition in 1969. He studied experimental physics and maths at Trinity before undertaking a PhD in Astrophysics at Cambridge. He subsequently worked at the Max-Planck-Institut, Germany before returning to Dublin in 1986 to head up the Astrophysics section of the School of Cosmic Physics in the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. He was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1995 and President in March 2011. His current research interests include Particle Acceleration Theory, Interstellar Gas Dynamics and Plasma Astrophysics.
Date: Tuesday 8th January 2013
Location: Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin
Time: 6:30pm (sharp, note early start)
Admission: Free – All Welcome!
This event is in association with CPL and Discover Science & Engineering.
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November 2012′s 2nd Alchemist Cafe
Balancing the scales in the global land-use marketplace
Our planet supports over 7 billion people and this is increasing by at least 135 additional people a minute – every minute of every day. This has dramatic consequences for the Earth, especially our land. The land is where most of us live most of the time. It feeds and waters us, clothes and houses us, meets much of our energy demands and plays a critical role in shaping Earth’s climate system – and we don’t make any more of it. Land is pretty much a finite non-renewable resource.
According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (among others) 60% of the world’s major ecosystem goods and services have already been degraded or are used unsustainably. If we want to avoid a mismatch between resource use and regenerative capacity and avoid tipping points beyond which return and recovery become impossible then there are hard decisions to be made in the land-use marketplace. Do we use land to produce food? Or fibre? Or fuel? Do we use the land as a carbon sink, a hydrologic reservoir or protect it to preserve biological diversity?
International (and national) environmental policies are attempting to balance the scales between use and abuse of the land. These stand more chance of success if they are informed by accurate, accountable and timely evidence. Earth imaging satellites have been gathering such evidence for over 40 years. This talk introduces some of the policies that impact land-use on the global scale and highlights the role of Earth-imaging satellites in responding to these.
Alan Belward works at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Italy where he is Head of the Land Resource Management Unit – a research team providing information for European policies dealing with terrestrial environment and development-aid issues. His research interests focus on monitoring terrestrial ecosystem dynamics from the analysis of satellite remote sensing data for natural resource management, for assessing climate change impacts and for the conservation and use of biological diversity.
He has served on numerous international science teams, including work for the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites, the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme and the Global Climate Observing System. He is currently a member of the NASA and USGS Landsat Data Continuity Mission Science Team and the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 Mission Advisory Group. He is also a visiting lecturer at the Technical University of Vienna where he teaches Environmental Technologies and International Affairs.
Date: Wednesday 21st November 2012
Location: The Mercantile, Dame St, Dublin 2
Time: 7:30pm (sharp)
Admission: Free – All Welcome!
Complimentary finger food will be provided.
This event is in association with CPL and Discover Science & Engineering
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November 2012′s 1st Alchemist Cafe
The Brain: Do we know it?
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Developments in the neurosciences have made the brain a central concern of much biomedical inquiry. Figuring out the neural processes that govern consciousness is, for some, one of the last frontiers of scientific research. But for an increasingly aging population there are more mundane concerns about slowing or halting the brain’s decline.
For Science Week We have assembled an amazing panel of experts offering differing perspectives on our current understanding of the brain and how it functions they are:
Our chair for the evening will be Brian Trench from the Irish Science & Technology Journalists’ Association. The panel will explore:
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 A Brain – I Has It by everyone’s idle |
These and related questions will be explored in conversations between the panellists and with the audience. Questions and contributions are always welcome, and no question is invalid.
Date: Tuesday 13th November 2012
Location: The Mercantile, Dame St, Dublin 2
Time: 7:30pm (sharp)
Admission: Free – All Welcome!
Poster for the event.
Complimentary finger food will be provided.
This event is part of Science Week and is in association with CPL, Discover Science & Engineering and the Irish Science & Technology Journalists’ Association.
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October 2012′s Alchemist Cafe
Mathsweek 2012: Alan Turing & Maths Jam
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Now in its 7th year Maths Week is going from strength to strength. The cafe has hosted events during the event since 2007 (almost from the start) and 2012 is no different. This year we will have Dr Colin Wright and the wonderful guys and gals from MathsJam on the night so you can scratch your maths itch.
Alan Turing is known to some for his work during the war on breaking the Enigma cipher and helping to read enemy messages. In this talk Colin will look at the work involved, the challenges, some of the history, and some of his other, often neglected contributions. |
 Alan Turing sculpture at Bletchley Park by Chris Brown |
Colin Wright graduated in 1982 from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, with a B.Sc.(Hons) in Pure Mathematics, and went on to receive his doctorate in 1990 from Cambridge University, England. While at Cambridge he also learned how to fire-breathe, unicycle, juggle and ballroom dance. Since then he has worked as a research mathematician, a computer programmer, and an electronics hardware designer, taking time to give presentations all over the world on “Juggling – Theory and Practice” and other topics on mathematics and science. Colin also enjoys sailing small boats and playing bridge, although not (so far) at the same time.
Before and after Colin you can talk to MathsJam. MathsJam is a chance for anyone to join the fun and get together in a relaxed social atmosphere. It is for people of all ages, backgrounds, education and ability, all that’s required is an interest in and enthusiasm for maths. The Dublin branch is one of over 25 cities that host these events and they all link up on Twitter to share puzzles. They have their meetings from 7pm on the second last Tuesday of every month. To sign up for information, just send an email to dublin@mathsjam.com to receive updates.
Date: Tuesday 16th October 2012
Location: The Mercantile, Dame St, Dublin 2
Time: 7:30pm (sharp)
Admission: Free – All Welcome!
Complimentary finger food will be provided.
This event is part of Maths Week in association with CPL and Discover Science & Engineering
The making of the videos was supported by Dublin City of Science 2012
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September 2012′s Alchemist Cafe
The Future of Antarctica
What does the future (or perhaps futures) hold for Antarctica? Can we be confident that science and international co-operation will continue to prevail under the terms of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty?
Or do we need to face up to some pressing issues regarding unresolved territorial claims, resource potential and exploitation, ongoing environmental change, and growing anxieties about Asian countries such as China and India which may well unsettle hopes for a peaceful future for Antarctica.
| Klaus Dodds is Professor of Geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London and editor of The Geographical Journal. He is author of The Antarctic: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press 2012) and Pink Ice: Britain and the South Atlantic Empire (I B Tauris 2002). His next book, co-authored with Mark Nuttall, will be published by Polity in 2013 and entitled Scramble for the Poles? Contemporary Geopolitics of the Arctic and Antarctic. |
 Sea Ice and Icebergs off East Antarctica courtesy of NASA |
Date: Tuesday 18th September 2012
Location: The Mercantile, Dame St, Dublin 2
Time: 7:30pm (sharp)
Admission: Free – All Welcome!
Complimentary finger food will be provided.
This event is in association with CPL and Discover Science & Engineering
The making of this video was supported by Dublin City of Science 2012
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The 3rd Alchemist Aperitif
The Alchemist Cafe and the Irish Science & Technology Journalists’ Association (ISTJA) are hosting the Alchemist Aperitifs, three evenings of open conversation and debates with speakers who are taking part in the Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF). They will be held on the 11th, 12th and 13th of July in the Kudos Bar of The Clarion Hotel in the IFSC.
This second evening will be chaired by Sabine Louet, and features:
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Frank Close from the University of Oxford on the search for the Higgs boson.
Sara Tegami of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics discussing the use of physics in the battle against cancer. Jean-Patrick Connerade, Imperial College London, talking about poetry and science. |
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Date: Friday 13th July 2012
Location: Kudos Bar, The Clarion Hotel, IFSC, Dublin 1, near the Mayor Square Luas stop.
Time: 6:45pm (sharp)
Admission: Free – All Welcome!
Complimentary finger food will be provided.
This event is in association with CPL, Discover Science & Engineering and the Irish Science & Technology Journalists’ Association (ISTJA).
The flyer for the Alchemist Aperitifs can be downloaded from here.
For details on all of the Alchemist Aperitifs see here.
This video was created in association with Dublin City of Science 2012
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