downing text 2012_Layout 1 - Downing College - University of ...

DOWNING COLLEGE 2011–2012Ken McNamara has been very busy in his new extra job as Director of theSedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences. Major restructuring (in this case creatingmore staff positions) and new initiatives on the amazing fossil, rock and mineralcollections have been exciting, but also time consuming. If you have nevervisited the museum please drop in sometime and see the best geological displayin the country. The two books he is meant to be writing, one on the impact ofthe evolution of life on the planet and another on trilobites, have been placedon the back burner for a while. Ken gave a number of lectures during the yearon his recently published book, The Star-Crossed Stone. A forthcoming sabbaticalin Australia will hopefully enable him to catch up on a number of researchpapers that are in various stages of completion and get those books movingagain.Dick Taplin was re-elected as Chairman of the International Ski Federation’sSpeed Skiing Committee, overseeing the sport and running WorldChampionship and World Cup circuits. He retains his operational links withthe British Ski and Snowboard governing body, as leader of their internationaldelegation, and with the Combined Services Winter Sports Association forwhich he is Head of Alpine and Telemark Race Calculations.Over the past twelve months, Jamie Alcock has been busy publishing nineresearch articles and reports in addition to presenting a further nine papers atseven international conferences. Jamie continues to develop research andteaching collaborations in the Asia-Pacific region, having visited China six timesin the past twelve months and presented four invited seminars. The highlightof his year has been the progress of his Ph.D. students, who continue to dazzlethe world with their brilliance.Jimena Berni has published her investigation on the function of the internalclock of living organisms in the journal Current Biology {Adult-specific electricalsilencing of pacemaker neurons uncouples molecular clock from circadian outputs. CurrBiol. 2011}. She has been invited to the EMBO Fellows Conference held inHeidelberg, Germany, to present her work on the organization of the locomotorsystem. She has been actively involved in the development of novel teachingexercises for undergraduate students and received the prize for OutstandingArticle of 2010–11 by the Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education,USA {Using the warmth-gated ion channel TRPA1 to study the neural basis of behaviorin Drosophila. JUNE, Spring 2010}. She was invited by the Faculty forUndergraduate Neuroscience to Pomona College in Claremont, California,USA, to organize a workshop for College educators where she presented how191