Making Waves: The Lecture Series
Alumni, supporters and friends are invited to join us for a series of inspiring talks given by some of our leading academics. During this series we will explore everything from computing to climate change, from healthcare to defence. We hope you can join us.
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Dr Paul Webb – School of Chemistry
This event is now over.
Venue: Royal Overseas League, 6 Park Place, St James’s, London, SW1A 1LR
Time: 6.30pm
Title: Transitioning to a sustainable future
At the University of St Andrews, we are committed to creating a more sustainable future for society.
Decarbonisation of the UK economy—and beyond—requires the development of innovative low-carbon technologies at an unprecedented pace and scale. With our expertise in energy storage, electrolyser technology, and the development of sustainable chemical processes, we are at the forefront of this transformation. Dr Paul Webb is currently leading an ambitious project around the future energy system at our Eden Campus, where in September we will open our Green Hydrogen Accelerator. This first-of-its-kind facility will serve as a hub for open innovation, exploring concepts like Power-to-X and BECCUS (Bioenergy with Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage). The facility will provide the infrastructure needed to accelerate the development of processes for the sustainable manufacture of products ranging from polymers, fertilisers and detergents to fully synthetic aviation fuels - all from just water and components of air.
Join us to hear the major challenges we must overcome to reach national net-zero targets – and how St Andrews is addressing these and accelerating the transition to a more sustainable and low-carbon energy future.
Be part of the conversation—and the solution. Let’s shape the future together.
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Professor Simon Dobson – School of Computer Science
This event is now over.
Venue: Royal Overseas League, 6 Park Place, St James’s, London, SW1A 1LR
Time: 6.30pm
Title: Can we afford AI (and the rest of computing)?
Computing is amazing! It has transformed how we live and interact, and has been utterly transformational for most sciences. Migrating a lot of computing tasks to the cloud has reduced the costs of entry and ownership for businesses and laboratories, and the recent interest in AI is rapidly changing the capabilities of many systems.
But computing in the cloud is still computing, and computing consumes enormous amounts of power and water -- to the extent that it can affect local power grids and aquifers. It also emits significant amounts of carbon.
So we face a trade-off: economic growth and improving scientific performance on one side, and significant local and climate-level damage on the other. How should we evaluate this trade-off? How can we ensure that the benefits of widespread computing are widely and fairly shared? This talk explores these issues, and what we're doing at St Andrews Computer Science to achieve sustainable, lower-power, computing futures.
Simon Dobson is Professor of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy. He is interested in complex adaptive systems and sensing, and especially in building approaches, algorithms, and tools for data analysis.
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Professor Phillips O’Brien – Head of School of International Relations
Venue: Royal Overseas League, 6 Park Place, St James’s, London, SW1A 1LR
Time: 6.30pm
Title: Can Europe Defend Itself Without the USA?
Professor Phillips O’Brien is the Chair of Strategic Studies and Head of the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews. He has published widely on issues of conflict, politics, war and strategy in the 20th and 21st centuries. Amongst his books are: How the War was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and The Second Most Powerful Man in the World: The Life of Admiral William D. Leahy, FDR’s Chief of Staff, (Penguin/Random House 2015). He has also published multiple articles in major journals including Foreign Affairs, Diplomatic History, the Journal of Strategic Studies, and, Past and Present. In 2024 he will publish a new multi-archival study of grand-strategy making in World War II with Penguin/Random House, entitled: The Strategists: How Churchill, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and Roosevelt were Made by and Made War. He is now working on a book examining the War and Power in the modern world—which is scheduled for publication in 2025. He has also recently been appointed as a Senior Adviser (non-residential) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC.
Professor O’Brien has been particularly active as an analyst and commentator during this most recent phase of the Russo-Ukraine War. He has worked with scholars and analysts in Ukraine and much of the rest of Europe and across the Atlantic to try and digest some of the lessons of the war. His commentary has been published regularly in The Atlantic, The Times, The Spectator, The Telegraph and other major newspapers and journals, while he has made media appearances for outlets in more than 15 countries, including MSNBC, CNN, NPR, BBC, DW and L’Express. In research terms, he has been leading a project, part funded by the Office of Net Assessment (US DOD) trying to understand why the pre-war analysis of power and war was so fundamentally flawed, so that we do not make the same mistakes going forward when judging power and war in the Asia-Pacific region.
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Dr Margaret McCartney – School of Medicine - and Dr Chris van Tulleken
Venue: Royal Overseas League, 6 Park Place, St James’s, London, SW1A 1LR
Time: 6pm (note early start time)
Dr Margaret McCartney, Senior Clinical Lecturer in General Practice and award winning writer and broadcaster, from the University of St Andrews School of Medicine will spend the evening with BAFTA Award winning broadcaster and physician, Dr Chris van Tulleken. They will discuss Dr McCartney's research into conflicts of interest in healthcare.
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Dr Mateja Peter - Senior Lecturer in International Relations
Venue: Rathbones, 10 George Street, Edinburgh, EH2 2PF
Time: 6.00pm to 8.00pm
Dr Mateja Peter is the Executive Director of the Scottish Council on Global Affairs and Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of St Andrews. Her research focuses on the role of third-party interveners (states and international organisations) in contemporary peace processes and post-conflict reconstruction. Dr Peter acts as a Research Lead on the PeaceRep Global Fragmentation project, funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
In this talk, Dr Peter will explore recent changes in approaches to managing violent conflicts and the increasing importance of transactionalism in contemporary peace processes. As the world becomes more fragmented, how is the peace field changing? Who are the new actors mediating conflicts? How are global powers – the US, Russia, and China – approaching peace agreements and negotiations? What does this mean for some of the most pressing conflicts and their transitions to peace? Where does this leave traditional liberal peacemakers, such as the United Nations? And is there still space for progressive realism advanced by the UK government?
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PhD Student Showcase
Venue: Royal Overseas League, 6 Park Place, St James’s, London, SW1A 1LR
Time: 6.30pm
Hear from some of the up-and-coming PhD students at St Andrews and find out about cutting edge research taking place as they take the time to showcase their work with you.
Full details to be confirmed in due course.
