After a successful day on the Duke University campus (see previous post), I headed over to the Smithies & Maeda’s Laboratories in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Here I gave a presentation to Nobel Prize Laureate (For his work in introducing gene modifications into mice through embryonic stem cells, 2007) Oliver Smithies, and the members of his lab. After finishing, it was back to work for Smithies and his colleagues, but not before I had managed to get a quick photo. 
Later that day I headed to the Medical Biomolecular Research Building to give a talk to researchers, animal care technicians, and even a couple of animal activists who turned up. The presentation went well (despite finding myself continually blinded by the projector light while walking across the stage), and afterwards the two animal rights activists dominated the questions – who appeared disappointed to find that as a student of philosophy I could deconstruct their Benthamite (“Not can they reason, but can they suffer”) philosophy on rights (see AR beliefs section of website)
If you would like to see Speaking of Research talk at your institution, go to Request a Speaker.
On a final, and entirely separate note, the Pro-Test Facebook Group recently passed 3,000 members – Let’s hope the Speaking of Research Facebook Group can do the same.
Regards
Tom
