Travel dates to the UK: 23 March – 4 April 2019

The IT industry has undergone a significant transformation in recent years, and the rise of remote work has played a pivotal role. As a company increasingly look for IT solution that enable remote work capabilities, the job market is also evolving. The demand for IT professionals who can effectively navigate this new landscape is higher than ever.

Through reverse genetics the University of St. Andrews have developed a modified, attenuated, bi-segmented RVFV which replicates in cell culture and is immunogenic. Our technique has broad applications across the Bunyavirus family and provides a platform for developing novel attenuated virus vaccines to a range of viral zoonotic diseases. Attenuated vaccine virus cannot revert to virulence in the presence of wild type, as successful re-assortment cannot occur between the genetically modified bi-segmented vaccine virus and tri-segmented wild type strains. The recombinant RVFV is genetically distinct from wild type and other live and killed vaccine viruses so is distinguishable from these and promotes an immune response allowing differential diagnosis.

The University of St. Andrews found that generating fast radiofrequency pulses was difficult. Traditional pulse generators employ either diode switches in the signal path, or rely on varying the gain of an amplifier stage, i.e. traditional amplitude modulators. The pulse rise time and width are limited by the intrinsic bandwidth of the port controlling the modulating element, and switch element time constants. The new methodology employs types of multipliers as switches which may have intrinsic bandwidths of many Gigahertz and because they are designed to be high frequency components have very small internal capacitances. The non-linearity inherent in the multiplication process will “speed up” the pulse edges giving some additional pulse width compression. A rectangular pulse of <700ps duration with a peak power of +23dBm, and a non-rectangular pulse of the same amplitude and <300ps duration have been generated. Both these pulses had a 1:1 mark space ratio.

The optical element can be used not only for solar energy systems (solar PV and solar thermal), it also could be used to collect visible and infrared radiation in applications such as sensing and optical wireless communications.

The main focus is on the use of the combination of nanoparticles, biomolecules and spectroscopy to build bionanosensors to solve complex biological problems. One of the main themes of research focuses on using surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) to create new approaches to bioanalysis for use in the life and clinical sciences. SERS is a spectroscopic technique that offers significant advantages in the life sciences over other established techniques such as fluorescence. One of the key advantages of SERS, as well as increased sensitivity, is the ability to analyse multiple analytes in one sample. This allows more information to be gained per analysis as well as giving information about complex systems that are intrinsically difficult to measure.