Public lecture series 2017/18

View the full programme of the 2017/18 Public lecture series. Join us to hear about new research in our University that is increasing our understanding of diseases and providing new advances in treatment.

“Let's Talk About Health” is a series of public lectures which run annually from November through to March.  It is aimed at senior school pupils interested in studying medicine, veterinary medicine or the life sciences at University as well as interested members of the general public and health professionals. The series allows scientists pioneering new research at the University of Edinburgh to share their latest ideas and discoveries with the public and provides attendees with the opportunity to advance their knowledge of health and what happens in disease.

Let's Talk About Health: Vitamin D: hope or hype?

Join us to hear from a veterinarian about how studies on dogs were pivotal in the discovery of vitamin D and how research on man’s best friend continues to illuminate the ongoing debate of the importance of vitamin D on health beyond the skeleton.

Let's Talk About Health: Preterm birth: Can we do better?

Join us to hear about current research in Edinburgh that is focussed on preventing preterm birth, and on improving our understanding of the benefits and risks of antenatal corticosteroid treatment.

Let's Talk About Health: A fat lot of good! Appendicitis and the benefits of specialised fat tissue

Join us to “chew the fat” and hear about recent research on inflammation and the omentum, how the omentum can be used by surgeons during surgery, what we are doing to understand its function, and how we are planning to use this in the future, to help patients with peritonitis.

Let's Talk About Health: the effect of being born early on children and young people

Join us to hear about how brain scans have deepened our understanding of the effects of early birth on the developing brain, about innovative ways of measuring learning in infants and about how we combine these measures to understand what makes the brains of some babies do really well, and what the challenges are for others.

Let's Talk About Health: Liver cancer: the impending epidemic

Join us to hear about the efforts going on in Edinburgh to try and tackle this pariah cancer. We are using lessons learned from how stem cells behave and regenerate the damaged liver to better understand how these tumours grow and how we can develop new drugs to tackle this often untreatable and fatal disease.