The world’s science community is to descend on Dundee next month for one of the country’s longest running industry festivals.
The 19th International BioDundee International Conference will take place on May 21 and 22.
This year’s event is titled “Life Sciences and Healthcare: Transforming the Future”.
Subjects discussed will include digital translation, precision life sciences and interdisciplinary research.
Other discussions will centre around “what is hot?” and a “pitch perfect” competition.
The competition will give applicants the chance put a business idea before investors, with the five finalists pocketing £500 for their efforts.
Speakers at the conference will include Dundee University principle Professor Andrew Atherton, who will present the opening welcome address, and Dr Jonathan Snape, head of James Hutton Limited.
The two-day event will also include a visit to the V&A.
A BioDundee statement described the conference as “an excellent forum to showcase excellence, bringing together the key people and organisations involved in life sciences, healthcare and associated sectors across Scotland and beyond.”
Dundee University’s Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science (LRCFS) representatives will be participating at the conference.
They will focus on ‘sole searching’ as part of a project to create a new database to study the variations shoeprints. The database will help make more accurate identification in criminal cases.
Professor Niamh Nic Daeid, director of LRCFS, said: “Footwear marks are a common evidence type found at crime scenes and can be made on many different surfaces.
“They are recovered by crime scene examiners and may be used to potentially determine the footwear type and possibly other information to try to identify a specific shoe or to link crime scenes together.
“However, we have little scientific studies to help us in understanding how certain we can be about such links.
“The critical part of the work we are undertaking is that we build in repetition into our tests so that we can understand the variation that there will be in the footwear marks obtained when multiple marks are made by the same people with the same shoes under the same conditions.”
The conference will take place in the West Park Conference Centre.
Registration can be done online on the BioDundee website.
BioDundee was established in 1997 with the aim of improving the life sciences and healthcare sectors in Tayside.
