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Roger Highfield

Roger Highfield is the Science Director at the Science Museum Group, a member of the UK's Medical Research Council and a visiting professor at the Dunn School, University of Oxford, and Department of Chemistry, UCL. He studied Chemistry at the University of Oxford and was the first person to bounce a neutron off a soap bubble. Roger was the Science Editor of The Daily Telegraph for two decades, and the Editor of New Scientist between 2008 and 2011. He has written or co-authored eight popular science books, and had thousands of articles published in newspapers and magazines.

This transmission electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, emerging from the surface of cells

The development of COVID-19 treatments, tests, drugs and vaccines will be accelerated by molecular understanding of the COVID-19 virus. Roger Highfield, Science Director, looks at what is happening in Britain’s most prestigious molecular biology laboratory.

Wooden model of turnip yellow mosaic virus.

Roger Highfield, Science Director, discusses how digital technologies can curb COVID-19 with Hannah Fry, who conducted a prescient simulation of a UK outbreak, and Dr Alice Tan of MizMedi Women’s Hospital, who explains why South Korea’s death toll is relatively low.

Adenovirus model, magnified three million times, made originally for Living Body exhibition, 1985.

The first encouraging news in the global hunt for treatments to curb the pandemic was reported last week. Roger Highfield, Science Director, describes the race to cure COVID-19.

Roger Highfield, Science Director, talks to Kari Stefansson, whose genetic sequencing project has revealed how the UK infected Iceland, that children don’t seem to infect parents, and how to control COVID-19.

Model of influenza virus built for Professor W G Laver to the structure of the influenza virus (magnified 5 million times) and its rapid mutation of the influenza virus and shown at the Royal Society in June 1994.

Roger Highfield, Science Director, talks to Ajit Lalvani, who recently recovered from a serious COVID-19 infection and is now undertaking a major pandemic study