How do you know which vaccine research to back when a pandemic starts? Roger Highfield, Science Director, talks to Kate Bingham, former chair of the UK Government’s Vaccine Taskforce.
Roger Highfield is the Science Director at the Science Museum Group, a member of the UK's Medical Research Council and a visiting professor at the Dunn School, University of Oxford, and Department of Chemistry, UCL. He studied Chemistry at the University of Oxford and was the first person to bounce a neutron off a soap bubble. Roger was the Science Editor of The Daily Telegraph for two decades, and the Editor of New Scientist between 2008 and 2011. He has written or co-authored ten popular science books, most recently Stephen Hawking: Genius at Work, and has had thousands of articles published in newspapers and magazines.
A traditional kind of vaccine is being readied for the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Roger Highfield, Science Director, finds out about Europe’s first ‘inactivated virus’ vaccine.
Roger Highfield, Science Director, talks to the scientist behind the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine that requires only a single dose.
For the first time, scientists can see a pandemic evolve in real time at the genetic level, revealing ‘variants of concern’ while guarding for large-scale genetic changes in COVID-19 that might occur by a process called recombination.
Mutant versions of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have set off alarms worldwide. Science Director Roger Highfield talks to one of the laboratories racing to find out what these variants mean for COVID-19 transmissibility and virulence, along with the development of drugs and vaccines.
The pandemic has led to the steepest slowdown in human activity since the Second World War. Science Director, Roger Highfield, asks what this means for climate change.
The UK is the first country in the world to give temporary authorisation to the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for emergency pandemic use.
This is a new kind of vaccine, based on RNA, and the first approved for use in humans. Roger Highfield, Science Director, talks to Dr Berkeley Phillips, UK Medical Director of Pfizer.
Artificial intelligence, AI, has solved one of the ‘grand challenges’ of biology. Roger Highfield, Science Director, talks to John Jumper, head of the DeepMind’s landmark ‘AlphaFold’ project, about what this means for the race to combat COVID-19.
Details of the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine are published today, showing encouraging efficacy and some puzzling features. Science Director, Roger Highfield, talks to the trial’s Chief Investigator about the vaccine, trial regulation and a surprising bonus result.
Many COVID-19 drugs, vaccines and tests depend on ‘the spike’. Roger Highfield, Science Director, describes why it is now the most important protein on the planet.
Britain is planning the first human ‘challenge studies’, where people are deliberately infected with SARS-CoV-2. Roger Highfield, Science Director, explores the risks and benefits.
Lockdowns and other stringent measures have been introduced in the wake of computer predictions about the pandemic. Roger Highfield, Science Director, looks at one of most advanced COVID-19 models, and results released today from the most sophisticated analysis of how it works.