Biofilm Create! 2024 Competition: Meet the Judges
Our Biofilm Create! competition was launched in 2021, as part of our #BiofilmAware campaign, which works to raise awareness of NBIC and its research, and the many societal and economic impacts of biofilms.
This Biofilm Week, we’re taking the opportunity to introduce our six judges from the 2024 competition. We are really grateful for their participation and we hope that this blog enables you to learn a little more about their work and interests.
Chris Denning
Chris is a Professor of Stem Cell Biology and Director of the University of Nottingham’s Biodiscovery Institute. Alongside Chris’s academic research, he is a keen photographer. With a childhood shaped by Sir David Attenborough’s documentaries, Chris’s love for natural history was born. After exploring multiple forms of media, Chris found photography and became passionate about capturing Earth’s natural beauty through a lens. Whilst Chris’s academic and artistic endeavours can seem like quite different disciplines, there are many crossovers. Chris believes that many emotions that we can feel when we are immersed in nature can also be felt when looking at small structures through a microscope. In 2020 Chris and his team at the Biodiscovery Institute also helped to bridge these two disciplines, launching the ‘Art in Science’ competition.
Joanna Verran
Jo is a retired (Emeritus) Professor of Microbiology. During her career at Manchester Metropolitan University, Jo worked with biofilms from a wide range of environments such as water distribution systems, hygienic food contact surfaces and dentures. Jo collaborated with colleagues from lots of different scientific disciplines, but also with artists, film archivists and members of the University’s English department….microorganisms, biofilms (and microbiologists) get everywhere! Jo encouraged her undergraduate students to think about how art and the humanities help educate audiences about sometimes difficult scientific concepts, and whether that route could support their own science communication activities. They brought this cross-disciplinary work into public engagement as well. So you can see why Jo was so thrilled to be involved with the judging of the biofilm create competition! Science and art – what could be better!
Tim Self
Tim is a Principal Experimental Officer and Head of the Imaging facility at the School of Life Sciences, University of Nottingham. His interest and passion for microscopy started in his undergraduate project using electron microscopy at the University of Sheffield and has spent the proceeding 40 years putting that passion into practice. For half of his career Tim has applied electron microscopy to many biological research questions, such as neurodegenerative disease, hereditary deafness, bacterial infection until in 2000 he saw the light and moved over full time to light microscopy. He now leads a large core facility with EM, histology, super resolution, confocal, wide field, High Content, label free, luminescence, FCS and TIRF imaging at the University of Nottingham.
Paul Maguire
Paul is a freelance filmmaker based in Edinburgh and co-director of DOCo (#thedocodocs) a documentary community group that meets on the first Wednesday of every month in Edinburgh.
His films vary from documentary to artist moving image. He collaborates with people from different fields of work, dance and science to name two. He has worked alongside many scientists to produce science-art films and performances, one such work is Beyond Discipline, a film made with his belated friend Dr Alexander Kagansky on interdisciplinary research at the University of Edinburgh. Please do take a look.
Paul is delighted to have had the chance to work with new people to share knowledge, create new work and support projects that bridges disciplnes like art and science. So, it’s his pleasure to be asked to judge the Biofilm Create competition for the last few years, and hopefully many more.
Catriona Clark
Catriona is an intermedia artist, who loves celebrating creative ideas in inspired and innovative mediums. Catriona was first invited to judge while working at the University of Edinburgh during their residency as a physics artist. However, after seeing the diversity of submissions, Catriona was excited to return each year. As a physics artist, Catriona discovered the importance of blending different disciplines. Catriona believes that we can challenge our perspectives and deepen our understanding by bringing together these seemingly distant worlds of science and art. This intersection not only allows science to learn from art and vice versa, but it also serves as a vibrant way to communicate complex ideas in an accessible manner.
Catriona was awarded as a 2024 RSA New Contemporary Artist, so their current practice is creating work for exhibitions such as the RSA and SSA annual shows. Catriona love narratives in art, and often works with archives to create engaging outreach through installations, interactivity, and customisation, allowing storytelling to evolve into story-making.
Photo credit: Jiayi Chen
Neil Parry
Neil leads Unilever’s R&D programme in biotechnology and biosourcing to help drive product differentiation through new material invention in industrial biotechnology and green chemistry. In 2023, Neil became a Chair for NBIC’s Non-Executive Board (NEB), and is additionally a member of the Biotechnology and Biomedical Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
In Neil’s earlier career at Unilever, he worked on enzymes and protein technology for both the chemical businesses and the antibody company Unipath. Alongside this work, Neil jointly established a spin-out company with Unilever Ventures for applications of biomolecules in the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industry.
Neil has successfully commercialised a range of new ingredients with suppliers in Unilever’s product portfolio and has been awarded Unilever Scientist of the Year in 2016 and 2017.
Neil has also been involved in setting up Penrhos Bio, a bioscience company spin out from Unilever developing a novel series of chemistries preventing biofilms for a wide range of potential opportunities. The technology has recently been branded “Remora – cleaner by nature” and is progressing to developing commercial applications with partners.