Charles Institute Seminar Series 2024-25: ''Defining Epithelial Innate Immune Sensors'' by Guest Speaker Dr Kim Samirah Robinson
Thursday, 10 April, 2025
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Date of Talk: Wednesday, April 16th, 2025 @12PM
Location: In Person and Online Via Zoom
Talk Title: Defining Epithelial Innate Immune Sensors
Speaker Details: Dr Kim Samirah Robinson
University of York & Hull York Medical School
Short Biography:
Dr Robinson obtained a MSc in photo-dermatology and PhD in cutaneous oncology and molecular medicine from the University of Dundee in the UK. She then moved to A*STAR in Singapore to manage the Asian skin biobank, leading a team of scientific staff through industry, clinical and academic portfolios before joining the laboratory of Prof Franklin Zhong to study inflammasome biology in normal human skin. In Sept 2023 she joined the University of York and Hull York Medical School as lecturer and run a lab focused on Skin Innate Immunity and Inflammatory Skin Disease.
Abstract for talk:
The inflammasome is a multiprotein complex within immune cells that plays a crucial role in orchestrating the innate immune response.
It detects pathogenic microorganisms, danger signals or cellular stress, and activates a potent inflammatory response to signal for reinforcements to clear the damage. For two decades the function of the skin and airway epithelium-specific inflammasome sensor, NLRP1, eluded the field. Dr Robinson will present work illustrating how NLRP1 uses different molecular features to detect mechanistically distinct signals from harmful viruses (Robinson et al Science 2020), UVB (Robinson et al., 2022) and bacteria (Robinson et al., JEM 2023). Understanding these biochemical mechanisms has the potential to pharmacologically modulate the immune response.
Charles Institute Seminar Series 2024-25: ''Mechanisms of brain aging and healthspan determination'' by Guest Speaker Prof. David Walker
Wednesday, 18 June, 2025
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Date of Talk: Wednesday, June 18th, 2025 @12PM
Location: In Person and Online Via Zoom
Talk Title: Mechanisms of brain aging and healthspan determination
Speaker Details: Prof. David Walker, PhD, University of California, Los Angeles
Short Biography:
I completed my undergraduate degree in Genetics at Queen’s University Belfast. I then went on to complete both Master’s and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Manchester. I carried out postdoctoral work at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where I received training in Drosophila genetics in the laboratory of Seymour Benzer and training in mitochondrial biology in the laboratory of Giuseppe Attardi. I established my independent research group at UCLA in 2007.
Abstract for talk:
The effects of aging on the brain are widespread and can have dramatic implications on the overall health of an organism. Chronic sterile inflammation is an important hallmark of brain aging that is intimately linked with senescence and frailty. However, fundamental questions remain regarding the molecular, cellular and inter-organ signaling mechanisms that drive neuroinflammation and brain aging. Indeed, little is known regarding the causal relationships between pro-inflammatory signaling from distal organ systems, the cellular hallmarks of brain aging and healthspan.
In this seminar, I will discuss the interplay between actin dynamics, brain aging and healthspan. In addition, I will discuss recent work examining the role of intestinal barrier dysfunction as a driver of brain aging phenotypes.