Rob Britton from the Department of Chemistry, Edgar Young from the Department of Molecular Biology & Biochemistry, and Kirsten Zickfeld from the Department of Geography.

Wednesday February 16, 2022

5:00-7:00pm via livestream

About the Presenters:

Dr. Robert Britton completed his PhD at UBC with Professors Edward Piers and Raymond Anderson in 2002 studying natural product isolation and synthesis, and was then an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow in Cambridge working with Professor Ian Paterson on the synthesis of structurally complex marine natural products. He is currently a Professor at SFU and his research program focuses on reaction discovery, natural product synthesis, medicinal chemistry and radiopharmaceutical chemistry.

Topic: The catalysis of chemical reactions has historically relied on expensive and often low-abundance metals such as gold, palladium and platinum. The discovery that inexpensive and naturally occurring organic molecules can catalyze the same reactions has caused a paradigm shift that has led to more environmentally friendly and economic processes, and served as an enabling tool for scientific discoveries.

Dr. Edgar Young is an Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology & Biochemistry at SFU. His research lab investigates ion channel proteins that switch their structure in response to electrical and chemical signals, producing complex behaviour in the cardiac and nervous systems.

Topic: The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine was awarded to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian, for their discovery of key molecules in our nervous system that enable our sense of touch. In this talk, we’ll see how these molecules called ion channels work as electrical switches to convey sensations of pressure, pain, heat and cold — and we’ll explore the prospects for medical benefit.

Dr. Kirsten Zickfeld is a Distinguished Professor of Climate Science in the Geography Department at Simon Fraser University. Her primary research interests are in the long-term effects of human activities on climate. She is internationally recognized for her research on the irreversibility of human-induced climate change and carbon budgets consistent with climate targets.

Topic: This talk will highlight the contributions of 2021 Physics Nobel Price winners Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann to the field of climate modelling, and discuss the role climate models have played in understanding an addressing the climate crisis.

From Nobel Prize Lectures 2021:

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021 was awarded “for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex systems” with one half jointly to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann “for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming” and the other half to Giorgio Parisi “for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.”

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2021/summary/

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021 was awarded jointly to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian “for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.”

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2021/summary/

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 was awarded jointly to Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan “for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis.”

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2021/summary/