The Athena Lecture at Imperial

This year's Athena lecture is delivered by Sinead Lynch, Chair, Shell UK

How a career investigating the inflammatory responses of organisms could hold the key to treating life threatening conditions. Professor Margaret Dallman delivers the 2011 Athena lecture. recorded at Imperial College London. For more information please visit

Athena lecture 2013 Dame Athene Donald, Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge, gives Imperial's annual Athena Lecture, celebrating the achievements of women in science, technology and medicine. In a talk entitled 'From geek to glamour via a desert island - how did I get here?', Dame Athene discusses her scientific work as well as her career path as a female physicist. For more information, please visit

Imperial College London’s Annual Athena Lecture is given by Professor Deborah Smith OBE, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research, University of York. Professor Smith discusses her academic career journey and her pioneering research into deadly tropical diseases caused by parasites. For more information please visit

Imperial College London's Annual Athena Lecture is given by Professor Dame Ann Dowling, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering. In her lecture ‘Towards a silent aircraft’ Professor Dowling will describe her career fusing engineering research with industrial practice, and share insights into aircraft noise, which has been a recurring focus of her work. Although aircraft noise has reduced considerably since the introduction of high speed jet transport, it is still a major societal concern. Professor Dowling will discuss what generates noise in modern civil aircraft and ways in which noise is being reduced in the development of next-generation aircraft. She will consider whether a radical re-think of aircraft configuration, integrating many technologies into the design, could in the long term result in substantial noise reductions combined with a reduced fuel burn. To find out more, please visit

The Athena Lecture series celebrates the achievements of women in science, technology and medicine. It is given annually by a prominent female scientist who has made outstanding contributions in any of these fields. Professor Alice Gast research interests are in surface and interfacial phenomena, in particular the physics of complex fluids, colloidal suspensions, micelles, membranes and proteins. Her areas of research include ordering, magnetic suspensions, protein lipid interactions, and enzymes at surfaces. She has applied light, x-ray and neutron scattering along with statistical mechanical methods to study colloidal, polymeric and biological systems. She was a faculty member in Chemical Engineering at Stanford University from 1985 to 2001, being promoted to full professor in 1995. At Stanford she was also a Courtesy Professor of Chemistry and affiliated with the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory. In 2001, she moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she serv