Goddard Lectures

In Autumn 2021, we were delighted to hear from old Emanuel, Mark Miodownik, a materials scientists known widely for his broadcasting and outreach work. Professor Miodownik spoke with great enthusiasm about the way in which the human relationship has changed with materials over time.

Mark looks toward a future when buildings would behave like trees, or our skin, and have the ability to heal. He explained how his team are already trailing the use of additives containing bacteria and starch into concrete structures, like bridges and roads, that are able to regenerate calcium carbonate when exposed to the air. Overall we were taken by his great passion for science and sustainability.

Mark received his PhD in turbine jet engine alloys from Oxford University, and since has worked as a materials scientist. For over a decade, he has championed materials research that links the arts and humanities to medicine, engineering and materials science. This culminated in the establishment of the UCL Institute of Making where he is Director and runs the research programme.

Mark regularly gives talks on engineering and materials science to tv, radio, festivals, and school audiences, including  giving the 2010 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, writing a column for The Observer, and being a regular presenter of science TV programmes. Some of his achievements include, the Royal Academy of Engineering Rooke Medal, being elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and winning the Royal Society Winton Prize. In 2015 he won a US National Academies Keck Futures Prize. In 2016 he was awarded the AAAS Prize for Public Engagement with Science.

It was a pleasure to welcome Dhiraj Mukherjee to Emanuel in Autumn 2021 to deliver the third Goddard Lecture. Dhiraj is best know for being a co-founder of Shazam.

Pupils in the Middle School were hugely grateful to hear from Dhiraj Mukherjee, the co-founder of Shazam, at the first in the Goddard Lecture Series for 2021-22. He spoke to students about the decade long process by which Shazam became an overnight sensation including the many lessons he learnt along the way. Dhiraj offered helpful advice for budding entrepreneurs, notably the importance of persistence and determination when faced with challenges.

He then went on to speak about investing sustainably in the future. Students were able to ask questions ranging from what he learnt from his failures to how technology might make the world a better place in the future. The students left reflecting on how they can change the future for the better. We are hugely grateful to Dhiraj for being so generous with his time.

In January 2020, Years 11, 12, and 13 have the honour of listening to Yonca Dervisoglu. Yonca is Chief Marketing Officer of Europe, Middle East and Africa for Google.

Yonca has worked at Google for 13 years and oversees teams in over 30 countries. She co-founded Google Arts and Culture and since joining Google, has helped open offices in Poland, Turkey, Russia and Greece and cofounded the Google Cultural Institute. Her role now has involvement with teams in 35 countries and she oversees everything from hardware to consumer apps to ads platforms.

She has worked on promoting digital skills, particularly amongst women and refugees, and is behind the initiative for training three million individuals and businesses in digital skills across Europe and Africa – for which Google received an award from the European Commission. Prior to Google she spent fours year at Yahoo!, and nearly a decade at Unilever. She also is a Non-Executive Director of the Heineken Supervisory Board, a member of the Global Leadership Council for The Brookings Institution, a member of the Digital Advisory Board to the Natural History Museum, a member of the Accelerate Her Advisory Board of Founders Forum, and a fellow of the Marketing Society.

Yonca spoke about what had allowed her to achieve the success that she has. This included the capacity to work hard, but she drew particular attention to the idea that if you are working in an area you are passionate about, the hard work will always feel easier. She then answered some challenging questions with good humour on topics as varied as the necessity for positive discrimination to allow women to achieve greater parity in professional environments, the concern over large technology companies and their access to our data, and the challenges of running a truly multi-national company.

We were delighted to welcome Jimmy Wales to deliver our first Goddard Lecture in December 2019. Jimmy is best known as being the co-founder of Wikipedia and was recently named by TIME magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

‘Web celeb’ Jimmy Wales is a U.S. Internet entrepreneur, best known as the founder of Wikipedia, the international collaborative free content encyclopedia on the Internet. The origins of Wikipedia began in March 2000, when Mr. Wales started Nupedia (“the free encyclopedia”), which was characterized by an extensive peer-review process designed to make its articles of a quality comparable to that of professional encyclopedias. The project was dubbed “Wikipedia.” Mr. Wales laid down the founding principles and content, establishing an Internet-based community of contributors during that year.

Mr Wales has spent his working years developing a number of web based businesses, with some important ethical objectives. He is a Fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and also serves on the Board of Directors of Socialtext, a provider of wiki technology to businesses. He has received an honorary doctorate from Knox College of Illinois and was presented with a Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2006.

Years 6, 9 and 10 were fortunate enough to hear his lecture and many  pupils were surprised that a man who has achieved so much began his talk by detailing his failures, but he explained how each of them had helped him to grow as a person and contributed to his later success. Pupils were warned not to tie their ego to a business. He also discredited the myth that an entrepreneur has a single successful idea from which all their success follows, rather that each successful idea was as a result of gradual improvements made to a series of unsuccessful ideas.

He then warned students that they must be careful when reading information online and discussed what made superior sources of news and information reliable and trustworthy. This was in particular in comparison with inferior news sources and he warned of the pernicious influence of advertising and clickbait on the information we are bombarded with in the modern world. As the internet becomes even more central to all of our lives, this will no doubt serve all who attended as a useful reminder about the benefits as well as the potential drawbacks of the information and telecommunications revolution.

On Thursday 23th March we will have a visit from one of our former students, Professor Denis Noble (OE 1947-1955) CBE FRS FMedSci MAE to give the next Goddard Lecure.

This visit is for us to celebrate his achievement in recently winning the Lomonosov Prize from the Russian Academy of Sciences (you can find further information here). His prize is awarded for his modelling on how the heart contracts. This is a very prestigious prize, as only one is awarded to a foreign scientist each year.

His visit will take on several aspects and is very student centred. He will be joining some of our Sixth form Biologists for lunch followed by a tour of the school. This will give Prof. Noble the opportunity to reminisce about his time here, and to see how the school has evolved since his time here. He will then participate in our student led journal club in the Marquand Room in the library where he will see a presentation by one of our L6th biologists on their research into a recent biology paper.

The final part of his visit will include a lecture to the entire Sixth form and some visitors from Ernest Bevin Academy. The format of the lecture will include a talk from Professor Noble on his journey and winning the Lomonosov Prize. This will be followed by a panel discussion led by 4 of our 6^th form biology students, where they will have the opportunity to question him on his life, his journey and his science.

You can see his recent debate with Richard Dawkins here from last year’s How the Light Gets In festival.

Professor Noble is also the author of several acclaimed books that are influenced by his love of music and the performing arts. He was central in forming the Oxford Trobadors and his best selling book is titled The Music of Life.

As part of the Goddard Lecture series, we were delighted to welcome Dr. Gabriel Weston to Emanuel on Wednesday this week to answer a series of questions submitted by Year 9 and 10 pupils.

Dr. Gabriel Weston is a renowned surgeon, author and television presenter so her insights into time management were particularly helpful!

Questions included “What is the most unusual surgery you have ever completed?” and “What advice would you give your 16 year old self?”. Covering the worlds of medicine, literature and media the discussion was engaging for a broad audience.

We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to Dr. Gabriel Weston for taking the time to talk to our Year 9 and 10 pupils. We look forward to hosting more inspiring guests as part of the Goddard Lecture series.

During an inspiring Goddard Lecture, Sixth Form pupils, along with pupils from our partner schools, had the privilege of engaging with Alan Dangour, the Director of Climate and Health at the Wellcome Trust. The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation headquartered in London, it is renowned for its commitment to funding groundbreaking health research globally.

Alan commenced the session by delving into his own unconventional journey into the world of science. He shared how his passion for music, study of Italian at university, and even a brief ambition for a career in accountancy shaped his path.

The heart of Alan’s talk revolved around the remarkable progress humanity has made in terms of reducing poverty and increasing life expectancy. However, he starkly contrasted these achievements with the alarming toll they have taken on our planet. The cost, in terms of biodiversity loss, soaring water consumption, and substantial global temperature increases, was highlighted.

The session concluded with a thought-provoking discussion on the crucial topics of mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Alan emphasised the pivotal role that the Sixth Form pupils play as the future change makers.

Anna Hemmings, Britian’s most successful female kayaker, who has won 9 World and European championship gold medals spoke to Year 7 & 8 on the topic of resilience and achieving success in the face of adversity.

Anna talked through her path to victory, and the commitment and motivation required, especially when faced with significant health challenges.

She described how the strategies for sporting success can be applied to any dream and encouraged pupils to set themselves big goals, focusing on hard work and the aspects within their own control. She described the power of teamwork and how no athlete could reach their potential alone.

The opportunity for pupils to handle her coveted gold medals was met with excitement, and the impact of Anna’s speech was evident in the insightful questions posed by the audience.

Today we were honoured to welcome Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell from Oxford University to give a talk to our Sixth form as the finale to Science Week.

During her visit, she met with our inspired Year 7 and 8 students to look at their recent projects on the theme of time and our Sixth form students on some of the extended projects they have completed this year in physics (in the very Physics lab we named after her!)

It was capped off with a lecture on ‘We are made of star stuff’ to the Sixth form and our partner school, Elms Academy followed by a panel interview with Annie, Verity and Tom from the Lower sixth.