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At Wellington we encourage our students to be curious and develop their knowledge outside of the curriculum. As part of our ‘Academics in Residence’ Dr Chris Derrick joined us this week, to host a Fireside Talk as well as workshops with our Biologists.
Dr Chris Derrick is a developmental biologist and researcher at the Biosciences Institute at the University of Newcastle. His work, funded by the British Heart Foundation, aims to understand why babies are born with congenital heart defects.
Dr Derrick engaged in a wide variety of activities during his visit. His Fireside Talk, entitled Darwin meets the Wizard of Oz, gave students an introduction into the links between developmental biology and evolution, and how this allows scientists to understand and one day treat genetic diseases in humans.
In extension lessons with Lower Sixth A Level Biology, he discussed the differences in the structure and function of hearts across the animal kingdom, whilst in IB Biology, he discussed how the textbook is being re-written as researchers are discovering that some mutations in our DNA may actually be protecting us from getting disease.
He co-hosted a lunch with Ms Bampton in which they both discussed the Natural Sciences Tripos at Cambridge University. This gave students opportunities to ask questions about the application process, course structure and options, as well as the wider Cambridge experience.
He took a more medical angle in the academic extension session Biology Bites, where he gave students the difficult question of “What would the surgeon do?”, presenting them with examples of congenital heart malformations and asked them to think about how they would correct them if they were the surgeon.
He also packed over 30 years of scientific research into a 45-minute session with Fourth and Fifth Form scholars, where they put their heads together and successfully attempted to understand and cure the disease Spinal Muscular Atrophy.
