News

On 14 May 2018, Dr Sarah Calvert participated in the Pint of Science events taking place in Sheffield.

Pint of Science brings scientists and the public to the local pub held to discuss their latest discoveries and get people enthused with scientific research.

Sarah was speaking to a sold out audience of around 60 people at Tamper coffee, Sellers Wheel, on how we use magnets to look inside sperm. Why would anyone want to use magnets to looks at sperm? Well one in five men have issues with poor semen quality which may affect the time it takes for their partner and them to conceive.

Also, using a Magnetic Resonance Spectrometer (with a magnet 10,000 times stronger than a fridge magnet) it is possible to look at the molecules present in live sperm and compare sperm that swim well against sperm that do not swim well. This has revealed that good swimming sperm tend to be more streamlined and efficient.

As well as Sarah’s talk, the SpermNMR team worked with Nikita Mistry, Sophie Vaughan-Williams and Katie Lock, masters students at the University of Sheffield, to run some interactive demonstrations of male and female fertility.

Overall, it was a very fun event and more people learned about sperm research and infertility.