Biophysical Society Bulletin | February 2021

Public Affairs

however, support the ingress of EU students to the UK and we have to hope that such students continue to find a way to cross the English Channel to enrich the intellectual and cultur- al life of our universities and research institutes. Thankfully, access for UK biophysics to the large European facilities on which it so depends appears to be mostly unaf- fected by Brexit since the contributions made to these facili- ties are separate from EU membership and will continue. So, once we are allowed to travel more freely, we will be looking forward to returning to facilities to acquire data and speak the international language of science with those we have been missing over the past 12 months. But UK biophysics did not stop in 2020. Along with the rest of the global biophysics community, it stepped up to the chal- lenge of COVID-19. At the Biennial Meeting of the British Bio- physical Society, the final session of the meeting was focused on SARS-CoV-2. Our national synchrotron, Diamond Light Source, remained open for remote access for most of the year since the pandemic developed, and has been key in the global effort to understand how the SARS-CoV-2 virus works and

how it can be targeted. We were delighted to hear about work including multi-scale imaging of SARS-CoV-2 and determi- nation of structures of its spike protein on intact virions from Dave Stuart , Peijun Zhang (both Diamond Light Source) and John Briggs (LMB, Cambridge). Stuart, MRC Professor of Struc- tural Biology, University of Oxford, and Head of the Division of Structural Biology at the Department of Clinical Medicine, is also Director of Life Sciences at Diamond. He was honoured in the United Kingdom with a knighthood for services to med- ical research and the scientific community. We have discovered this year how effectively we can continue to work and to collaborate remotely. And many of us have even discovered the power of theoretical and computational biophysics! The pandemic has heightened national respect for science and sharpened our focus on immediate and emerging areas of research importance, many of which overlap with the domain of biophysics. So, I am optimistic (always a glass half- full on my table!) that with the awfulness of Brexit uncertain- ty largely behind us and with vaccine production and roll-out in progress, we can look forward to 2021.

The Biophysicist , in conjunction with the BPS Education Committee, has launched a series of five webinars. The series seeks to help attendees become more effective in their teaching of biophysics, while valuing diversity and equity among students with different backgrounds. The later webinars will also discuss research-based approaches to teaching biophysics and introduce the participants to the field of educational research, with particular application to biophysics. Each event will last 90 minutes, featuring a 30-minute talk by a guest speaker followed by breakout groups and discussion involving the participants and the speaker. For more information and to register, visit www.biophysics.org/publications/the-biophysicist/webinars Webinar Series

The Biophysical Society is grateful to its Industry Partners.

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February 2021

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