Breakthrough

A scientist’s journey from observation to discovery is anything but straightforward. It is littered with failure, unexpected diversions and joyous realisations. Science helps us to understand ourselves in a world where we often feel like strangers - but what we know about the world around us, what has already been explored and discovered is only half of science's story.

Dr Camilla Pang will look at some of the biggest mysteries facing science today and how some of the best cutting-edge scientists’ can illuminate our own approaches to observation, hypothesis, exploration, troubleshooting and discovery in our own lives.

Breakthrough will explore the frontier between what we do and don’t know about the world: where knowledge meets mystery, complexity overwhelms certainty, and the vastness of our universe unspools the logic of science's established laws.

The stability of science was originally a safety blanket for her survival with Autism; once becoming a scientist herself, Camilla quickly realises that it is the complete opposite. Scientific research, much like life - beset by new technology and ubiquitous information - is constantly changing. Part of its curse but also of its beauty.

There's a scientist hidden inside all of us. Where science's greatest gift to us is not formulae but enabling the urge to discover that makes us truly human.

Dr Camilla Pang holds a PhD in biochemistry from University College London and is a postdoctoral scientist specializing in translational bioinformatics. At the age of eight, Camilla was diagnosed with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) and ADHD at twenty-six years old. Her career and studies have been heavily influenced by her diagnosis and she is driven by her passion for understanding humans, our behaviours and how we work. Her first book, Explaining Humans,won the Royal Society Science Book Prize.