Darwin's plants from the Beagle voyage

Darwin's Beagle Plants website (http://www.darwinsbeagleplants.org) was launched on Tuesday 24 November, the 150th Anniversary of the publication of "On the Origin of Species"? It was produced by the Herbarium and contains lots of information on the plants collected by Darwin. It is a major achievement by the Herbarium, and the Department.

800th anniversary lunch for staff with Her Majesty the Queen

A formal lunch was held at King's College on Thursday 19 November to celebrate long service to the University, attended by Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh. The 100 longest-serving University employees were invited to attend with their partners.

Three members of Plant Sciences attended; Glynn Jones, who joined the Department as a Scientific Assistant in 1967; John Green, who joined as a Scientific Assistant in 1968; and Sue Green, who was appointed as a Scientific Assistant in 1971. Maggie Goddard also attended the lunch with her husband Barrie, who joined Plant Sciences in 1963 as a Junior
Technician, before moving to the Department of Chemical Engineering in 2000.

Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the occasion. The Greens were slightly shocked to discover from the seating plan that they were sitting on the top table with the Queen, as the only married couple in the University both with long service. All those attending were given a commemorative book, marking the University's 800th anniversary.

IGEM team win prize

On 2nd November the Cambridge team was awarded the Grand Prize at the iGEM2009 Synthetic Biology competition finals at MIT (http://2009.igem.org). This was against stiff competition from over 100 teams in top international institutions. The students (Vivian Mullin, Alan Walbridge, Shuna Gould, Siming Ma, Mike Davidson, Megan Stanley and Crispian Wilson), provided a superb description of their work engineering DNA devices for transcriptional tuning and pigment production in environmental biosensors. As well as winning the overall prize for best project, the Cambridge team was awarded a gold medal, and trophy for the best project in the Environment Track.

View the photo album.
Article in Varsity Newsletter.