In March, Libby, Eddie, Max, Tom, Laura, and Alice all attended the Physics of Life conference at Harrogate Convention Centre. This was the first conference of its kind, representing science at the interface between biology and physics.

During the conference there were keynote lecturers and parallel sessions covering a wide range of topics from single molecule biology to evolution, as well as two poster session and a conference dinner allowing plenty of opportunities for networking.

There were many excellent talks, but the standout talks included hearing Graeme King from UCL discuss the mechanism of supercoil relaxation by the Human Topoisomerase3α RMI1-RM2 complex and Sarah Harris from the University of Leeds discuss how her simulations can give insight into how molecular motors “walk”.

Alice speaking at the Physics of Life roadmap session

Alice presented during the Single Molecule biology session on “Tackling Topology using TopoStats” and also was part of the Physics of Life roadmap panel where she advocated for better support of early career researchers. Laura presented during the Machine Learning at the Physics/Biology interface session on “CellPhe: a toolkit for cell phenotyping using time-lapse imaging and pattern recognition” discussing the work she has conducted during her PhD at the University of York. Both talks were greatly received with lots of interest from the audience.

Laura presenting on her PhD work- CellPhe

Additionally, Libby, Max and Eddie presented posters about their work. These posters provoked lots of interesting discussion and questions during the poster session.

Eddie, Max and Libby presenting their posters.

The conference was an excellent opportunity to engage with research from across biology and physics as well as a chance to share and discuss the research we have been doing in our lab with the wider biophysics community.