Lana Woolford, a PhD student at the Cancer Research UK Edinburgh Centre, has become the Regional Winner of the Bristol Science Film Festival: November 2018 Image Lana and Claudia at the Bristol Science Film Festival 2018 winners screening. Lana created the video ‘Drosophila, Lord of the Flies’, to discuss the history and importance of Drosophila melanogaster as an animal model in science. Under the supervision of Professor Simon Herrington and Professor Ted Hupp, she is currently completing the OPTIMA combined masters and PhD programme, studying Raman spectroscopy for improvement of the cervical cancer screening process. Lana has a strong interest in graphic design and animation and throughout her PhD started to consider an art and science crossover as a potential career path. This became of great interest when she began her three month work placement as part of her course. Through this placement she had a chance to work with Claudia Stocker, science illustrator and founder of Vivid Biology. Together they decided to create a video for the Bristol Science Film Festival, the only one of its kind in the UK. With extensive animal model images available in Vivid Biology’s existing archive and the broad and popular use of Drosophila in research, it was the perfect topic for the film. I wanted the film to be relatable and so looked at the use of fruit flies in research for common diseases, such as ADHD, substance addiction and Alzheimer’s Lana WoolfordPhD student at the Cancer Research UK Edinburgh With just four weeks to complete the project, Lana moulded Claudia’s illustrations into a 10 minute long video, creating a script, a storyboard, and the final animations. All shortlisted films where screened in Millennium Square in Bristol, hosted by ‘We, the Curious’ science centre, with ‘Drosophila, Lord of the Flies’ gaining the title of Regional Winner. Lana is now in her final year of her PhD and is hoping to engage in further work on optical imaging techniques, whilst still producing science animations. Related Links Bristol Science Film Festival 2018 winners: https://brisscifilm.wordpress.com/2018/08/18/brisscifilm-2018-winners/ Vivid Biology Website: http://vividbiology.com Information about cervical cancer: https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/cervical-cancer General Information about Raman Spectroscopy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raman_spectroscopy Professor Herrington Group webpage: https://www.ed.ac.uk/cancer-centre/research/herrington-group Professor Hupp Group webpage: https://www.ed.ac.uk/cancer-centre/research/hupp-group This article was published on 2024-06-21
