Annual Lecture

KCLEA inaugurated the concept of an Annual Lecture on Engineering topics after the faculty of Engineering was closed in 2013. This proved so popular that even though Engineering is coming back to King's College, we decided to continue these Lectures.

Our last Annual Lecture was on 24th March 2021 via Zoom from 18.00 - 19.00 GMT. 

The topic was the "Discovery and scale-up of vaccines and novel therapeutics in the age of AI and robotic automation."

The global pandemic has shaken the western world to its core. It has become clear that the recovery strategy depends totally on rapid deployment of novel anti-viral vaccination campaigns to permit living with on-going mutant virus strains.

Technology promises a new era for the rapid response against new and emerging threats and diseases. Automation in science is increasingly extending the scope of investigation and exploration of ever richer parameter spaces. Robot chemists controlled by model-based methodologies or evolutionary and AI computing increasingly become part of the toolkit in scientific discovery.

In this lecture, King’s Professor of Sustainable Manufacturing Systems, Harris Makatsoris explored a cross section of research with examples ranging from small organic molecule discovery through to the rapid development and scale-up manufacture of vaccines.

You can watch it on the King's Alumni YouTube channel.

Details of previous KCLEA Annual Lectures can be found here.