Submitted by Emily Rigby on Mon, 04/08/2025 - 12:06
This year's summer meeting of the Anatomical Society ("Human Cerebral Cortex Development III") was held at St John's College, Oxford, from 14-16 July 2025. Clare Baker, Cecilia Brassett, Ceri Davies, & Sarah Fawcett from PDN were among the 200 participants. One of PDN's Year 4 clinical students, Ryan Smith, gave an oral presentation on a novel simplified classification of the variations of the Circle of Willis - this was especially relevant as there was an exhibition at St John's College Library of the publications and letters of Thomas Willis, and Prof Zoltán Molnar, co-organiser of the conference, also gave a History of Neuroscience lecture on Willis. A former Anatomical Society-funded summer undergraduate project student in the Baker lab, Daiki Sugita, presented a poster on his summer project. The Cave Young Investigator best poster prize was awarded to anatomy demonstrator Thomas Van Parys, for his poster on "Basicranial sexual dimorphism in modern Homo sapiens", based on his MPhil project supervised by Prof Marta Mirazón Lahr.
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On Tuesday 22 July, the Cambridge Anatomy Demonstrators Society, which was established by PDN junior anatomy demonstrators several years ago, organised a poster evening with a keynote talk and dinner at Christ's College. Surgical trainees from Cambridge and other UK hospitals submitted 14 posters which were displayed digitally on the Touchscreens in the Dissection Room Annexe. Dr Andrew Granger, Consultant Musculoskeletal Radiologist at Addenbrooke's Hospital, gave an excellent talk on the importance of anatomy in hand and finger injuries. The evening was sponsored by the British Association of Clinical Anatomists.
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On Thursday 24 July, four members of the Human Anatomy Centre team (Cecilia Brassett, Sarrah Fawcett, Malcolm Neil & Chris Smith) were invited to the opening ceremony of the 66th London International Youth Science Forum (LIYSF), which was held in the Royal Geographical Society in South Kensington. Students aged 16-21 from 92 nations/territories came into the auditorium holding their national flags, many resplendent in national costumes. Since its Inception in 1959, over 22,000 students have participated in this 2-week programme, which comprises lectures and visits to different institutions in the UK, including Bristol, Cardiff, Cambridge & Oxford. The keynote speeches were given by Prof Clare Elwell, Professor of Medical Physics at University College London, who had participated as a student in the forum in 1984. In her talk, HRH The Princess Royal, their patron, reminded everyone that "Science at its best aims to serve". Professor Sir David MacMillan, who shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Benjamin List in 2021, gave a fascinating talk on his life journey and his work on asymmetric organocatalysis. Cecilia Brassett said "It was an amazing and inspiring day - it was very moving to see students from politically divided nations together at the forum, and we were thrilled to have our photo taken with Prof MacMillan, who even let us handle his Nobel Prize medal".
The PDN Human Anatomy Centre then hosted 47 LIYSF students from 18 countries on the following Thursday (31 July). They had an interactive 1.5 hour lecture in the Anatomy Lecture Theatre, and then spent 1.5 hours in the DR Annexe looking at models, osteology, and museum pots. They were very enthusiastic and engaged, and we look forward to welcoming them again next year.