Please see the link below to register for this year’s Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw lecture on Wednesday 22nd October 2025, 5-8pm -
https://forms.office.com/e/9HAmVa619g
The event will take place in Lecture Theatre A in the Roscoe Building, The University of Manchester. Registration begins at 5pm in the foyer of the building.
(Directions to Roscoe Building: https://maps.app.goo.gl/UiAVSgttqx6xepWC7)
For those who attend, there will be free food and drinks.
About the Speaker
This year’s speaker is Professor Heather Harrington, who is the Scientific Director of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) at the Center for Systems Biology in Dresden (Germany) and also Professor of Mathematics at Oxford.
Prof. Heather Harrington leads the Algebraic Systems Biology group, which combines algebra, geometry, topology, combinatorics with dynamical systems and biological data. Her research is devoted to developing new mathematical theory and methodologies to solve real-world problems arising in the biological, life and medical sciences. She has received several prestigious awards, such as the Whitehead Prize of the London Mathematical Society in 2018 or the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2020 and is a co-winner of the 2019 Adams Prize from the University of Cambridge. See more at: www.mpi-cbg.de mpi-cbg.de
Event Lecture Title:
Seeing Shapes in Data: How Topology Helps Us Understand Biology and Medicine
Abstract:
Topology is a branch of mathematics that studies shapes up to certain kinds of equivalence—for example, treating a coffee cup and a donut as the same because they both have one hole. Instead of measuring precise distances or angles, topology focuses on the essential features of a shape that don’t change when you stretch or bend it.
In recent years, topological ideas have been used in new ways to study higher order structure in complex data. This field, called topological data analysis (TDA), helps uncover the hidden "shape" of data. In this talk, I’ll introduce a key tool and show how it can be applied to problems in biology and medicine. For instance, we’ll see how topological data analysis can help quantify features in 3D protein data, identify different cell types, and classify diseased tissues by the patterns within. Along the way, we’ll explore how abstract math can reveal new insights into the living world.
Please contact Maths-Ops@manchester.ac.uk if you have any queries about the event.
Speakers
Heather Harrington
Role: Professor and Scientific Director
Organisation: Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) and University of Oxford
Biography: Prof. Heather Harrington leads the Algebraic Systems Biology group, which combines algebra, geometry, topology, combinatorics with dynamical systems and biological data. Her research is devoted to developing new mathematical theory and methodologies to solve real-world problems arising in the biological, life and medical sciences. She has received several prestigious awards, such as the Whitehead Prize of the London Mathematical Society in 2018 or the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2020 and is a co-winner of the 2019 Adams Prize from the University of Cambridge
