The Life Scientific

What if robots of the future weren’t just clever machines, performing tasks in isolation, but trusted teammates you could have a chat with? That could respond naturally to conversational cues and even explain their work?
Making this relationship a reality is a focus for Helen Hastie, Professor of Human-Robot Interaction and Head of the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh.
Helen’s career has taken her from developing early dialogue systems - the ancestors of today’s generative AI - to working on sophisticated bots that can serve coffee with a side of small-talk, teach struggling kids with empathy, or provide calm and confident decisions as triage nurses. She’s also driven some of the UK’s flagship robotics initiatives, including as co-lead of the National Robotarium.
Talking to Professor Jim Al-Khalili - who reveals he was once told off for rudeness by an early chatbot - Helen explains her hopes for useful, reliable and ultimately trustworthy robots; machines that aren’t just in our world but a welcome part of it.
Presented by Jim Al-Khalili
Produced by Lucy Taylor
A BBC Studios production

Dr Seth Berkley is an epidemiologist and global health leader whose career has been shaped by one central problem: vaccines save lives, but only if people can actually get them.
His 40-year career has spanned the global, from helping to build Uganda’s first HIV surveillance system and founding the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative; to leading Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance for more than a decade – overseeing the immunisation of hundreds of millions of children worldwide. And when COVID-19 struck, Seth co-founded COVAX, the global initiative designed to stop wealthy nations monopolising vaccines.
In conversation with Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Seth discusses the highs and lows of his globe-trotting career - from saving millions of young lives through vaccine distribution, to setting his own shattered leg after a climbing accident in Namibia - and addresses the huge challenge of tackling vaccine scepticism.
Presented by Jim Al-Khalili.
Produced by Lucy Taylor.
A BBC Studios production.

Hiranya Peiris is playing a starring role in a movie that promises to tell perhaps the greatest story of all time. However, it’s a movie with a difference – there’s no director and no script. The Legacy Survey of Space and Time is one of the most ambitious projects in the world of astronomy, with a mission to create a decade-long time-lapse movie of the visible universe, to answer fundamental questions about its origin, evolution and, ultimately, its fate.
Hiranya is Professor of Astrophysics 1909, the prestigious Chair at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University. Over her career she’s been one of the pioneers of a revolution in astronomy, bridging fundamental physics with the observational data coming back from space, to establish the first evidence-based standard model for the origin, evolution and fate of the universe. The endeavour has transformed the field from the ‘wild west’ of physics to the modern era of precision cosmology.
Ironically, it was another movie, of sorts, Carl Sagan’s documentary series ‘Cosmos’, that first sparked Hiranya’s interest in the universe as a young girl. Always keen to inspire women to follow in her footsteps and choose careers in science, if this interview were a live show she’d have reserved the front row for schoolgirls.
Presented by Jim Al-Khalili
Produced by Beth Eastwood
A BBC Studios production

As a child growing up on the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya, Washington Yotto Ochieng once watched a plane cross the night sky and told his mother he wished he could travel on it. But he remembers her encouraging him to dream bigger...
Today, Washington is a Professor of Engineering at Imperial College London, and President of the Royal Institute of Navigation. Over a career bridging industry and academia, he has helped shape the movement of urban transport; how satellites guide us and locate us; and how governments manage the technologies underpinning so much of modern life.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili speaks to Washington about his inspirational upbringing, how reliant we've become on technologies such as GPS, and his work encouraging the next generation of engineers in both the UK and Africa.
Presented by Jim Al-Khalili
Produced by Lucy Taylor
A BBC Studios production

Working on a remote tropical island in the Atlantic might sound like some sort of romantic idyll - but trying to conduct scientific research on a windy, isolated volanic outcrop is no picnic, as Lucy Carpenter can attest!
Lucy is an atmopsheric chemist and a Professor at the University of York, whose work has helped to transform understanding of how oceans shape the air above them. She was one of the founding scientists behind the Cape Verde Atmospheric Observatory, established on São Vicente in 2006 and now a key global monitoring site. Measurements made there helped overturn a long-standing assumption: ozone loss is not solely a human-made problem. Lucy and her colleagues showed that gases released by natural marine processes can trigger chemical reactions that destroy ozone - demonstrating that the sea is not simply a passive backdrop to climate change but an active participant; affecting aerosols, clouds and ultimately the climate itself.
More recently Lucy's expertise has taken her into the policy arena, co-chairing the scientific assessment panel for the Montreal Protocol: the international agreement designed to protect the ozone layer.
In conversation with Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Lucy dicusses her journey from sampling ocean air to turning the tide of global environmental policy - and explains why her passion for duathlons could arguably be seen as an easier pastime than scientific research.
Presented by Jim Al-Khalili
Produced by Lucy Taylor
A BBC Studios production