The DNA Information Age

Stefan’s talk will incorporate his expertise on biochemistry to explain the current developments within sectors like protein engineering and structural biology. Stefan Bagby went to Cockshut Hill School in Birmingham, playing a lot of football and managing to mainly avoid the “daily playground brawling”. At school, he was inspired by Fred Leeson, an outstanding teacher of maths, chemistry and physics. Respect to you, teachers! After Stefan’s school education, he did a BA in chemistry and a PhD in protein NMR at Oxford. At Oxford, he recounts that there was significantly “less brawling”. Once again, Stefan was able to find inspiration from his PhD supervisor, Allen Hill, who had developed the first non-colorimetric blood glucose sensor (this can be seen on the blue plaque at the entrance to the Inorganic Chemistry Lab, Oxford). After Stefan completed his PhD, he worked for seven years as a research fellow at the Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto. Whilst in Canada, he specifically noticed the cultural differences when referring to “football”! Stefan later moved to the University of Bath where he currently teaches biochemistry and runs a research group.