2026 CMP Lunchtime Seminar Series
CMP hosts are invited to give short presentations about their proposed projects at the CMP Lunchtime Seminar Series. The seminar includes a buffet lunch and is followed by tea and coffee in the Central Core where interested students have the opportunity to talk informally with the hosts to find out more about their projects.
The 2026 CMP Lunchtime Seminar Series has now finished. Recordings have been made available where possible, please see below for links. To view the recordings, you will need to first log into the CMP Moodle with your CRSID and password. You should only need to go via the Moodle the first time; afterwards, you can just click on the direct link to the recording.
Seminars
Tuesday 3 February 2026
This first seminar in the series featured a panel discussion with some students who worked on CMP projects in 2025 as well as a short presentation from Dr Sonali Shukla (Careers Consultant) from the Careers Service with advice on making your applications. The panel discussion could not be recorded, but you can find the recording of Dr Shukla's talk below as well as her slides and links to the Careers Centre resources she mentions during the talk:
Dr Sonali Shukla, Careers Service
Getting an Internship: A look at CVs and cover letters (Recording | Slides)
- CVs and cover letters | Careers Service - including a link to the CV guide and CareerSet - the automated CV checker
- Appointments | Careers Service - 1-2-1 appointments are available M-F, online or in the Student Service Centre
Student Panel:
Ben Handley, Sainsbury Laboratory
Modelling the unknowns! How do plant cells develop, grow and communicate?
Jack Brightwell, Signaloid
Discrete Representations of Continuous Probability Distributions
Wednesday 4 February 2026
Click here to view the recording of this seminar on Panopto (If you have never done so, you will need to log into the CMP Moodle with your CRSID and password before clicking the link)
Charlotte Garcia, MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit
Denoising and optimising neural data in cochlear implant users
Marj Batchelor, Cambridge Violin Makers & Faculty of Mathematics
Correlations between shape and sound: a resource for violinmakers
Amy Zheng, VisionLab, Department of Physics
Reducing Skin-Tone Bias in Clinical Photoacoustic Imaging using Machine Learning and Computational Modelling
Learning the Gap Between Simulated and Experimental Spectral Data
Tuesday 10 February 2026
Click here to view the recording of this seminar on Panopto (If you have never done so, you will need to log into the CMP Moodle with your CRSID and password before clicking the link)
Argyris Zardilis, Sainsbury Laboratory
Learning the Physics of Growth: Automated Discovery of Mechanistic Rules in Flower Development
Amir Porat, Sainsbury Laboratory
Mechanochemical Feedback and Growth Dynamics in Rod-Like Plant Organs
Cellularization and Perturbations of Self-Similar Plant Growth
Euan Smithers, Sainsbury Laboratory
Can we use dynamical systems to predict what has happened in the past?
Wednesday 11 February 2026
Click here to view the recording of this seminar on Panopto (If you have never done so, you will need to log into the CMP Moodle with your CRSID and password before clicking the link). Only the second and third projects were recorded to Panopto, but we have a video presentation of the first project which you can find here (you'll need to log into Google with your CRSID credentials).
Josefa Stoisser, Novo Nordisk
Virtual Cells with Large Language Models
Sophia Belkhir, Department of Veterinary Medicine
Quantitative Analysis of Host–Transmissible Cancer Interactions Using Genomic Data in Tasmanian Devils
Kevin Gori, Department of Veterinary Medicine
Acquisition of foreign DNA by transmissible cancer genomes
Tuesday 17 February 2026
Click here to view the recording of this seminar on Panopto (If you have never done so, you will need to log into the CMP Moodle with your CRSID and password before clicking the link). Only the second and third presentations were recorded to Panopto, but we have a video presentation of the first projects which you can find here (you'll need to log into Google with your CRSID credentials).
Lidea Shahidi, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (video presentation)
Statistical Properties of Synthetic Speech: An Analysis of Generative Text-to-Speech Models
Using Machine Learning to Improve Speech Perception with Hearing-Assistive Devices
François Guerit, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit
Using Computational Modelling to Improve Perception with Cochlear Implants
Samuel Martin, European Bioinformatics Institute
Mathematical and computational methods to analyse genetic data
Wednesday 18 February 2026
As well as a project presentation from a host company, the seminar this week also featured a talk from Professor Dhruv Ranganathan (Summer Research Director) on what to expect if you are invited for an interview and how you can effectively prepare.
Click here to view the recording of this seminar on Panopto (If you have never done so, you will need to log into the CMP Moodle with your CRSID and password before clicking the link). Only the second and third projects were recorded to Panopto, but we have a Zoom recording of the first project which you can find here (you'll need to log into Google with your CRSID credentials).
Gerhard Kirsten & Michael Selby, Signaloid (Zoom)
Discrete Representations of Multivariate Continuous Probability Distributions
Sebastian Burgstaller-Muehlbacher & Nicola Richmond, Boehringer Ingelheim Limited
Foundation models for cancer biology
Dhruv Ranganathan, Summer Research Director
Prepping for a CMP Interview
Tuesday 24 February 2026
Click here to view the recording of this seminar on Panopto (If you have never done so, you will need to log into the CMP Moodle with your CRSID and password before clicking the link). Only the first three presentations were recorded.
Antonio Zarrillo & Silvia Stanescu, Emcore Asset Management
Implied Volatility Surface Construction, Diagnostics, and Decomposition
Nehal Patel, G-Research
Agentic AI for Formalized Math
Paul McCloud, Nomura International Plc
Option pricing with quantum information
Jan Novotny, Nomura International Plc *this presentation was not recorded*
Fragmented Order-book Content Assessment and Liquidity-weighting (FOCAL)
Wednesday 25 February 2026
Click here to view the recording of this seminar on Panopto (If you have never done so, you will need to log into the CMP Moodle with your CRSID and password before clicking the link). Only the first, second, and third presentations were recorded to Panopto, but we have a video presentation of the fourth project which you can find here (you'll need to log into Google with your CRSID credentials).
Ellanette Van Zyl, MM Flowers
Correlation Between Forecast Accuracy, Stock Dwell Time and Retailer Waste on Customer Complaints: A Study of Yellow and White 40cm & 50cm Roses at MM Flowers
Patrik Engi and Hugh Barlow, Unilever SERS
Exploring deep learning embeddings for chemical bioactivity prediction
Jerome Boulanger and Leila Muresan, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Image analysis for light microscopy data
Matthew Ireland, LA Techniques Ltd (video presentation)
Improving accuracy and speed of Inverse Discrete Fourier methods