How a virus everyone has is helping to cure cancer | Leah Fitzsimmons | TEDxBrum

Leah Fitzsimmons tell us why research and science is one of the most creative things we can do and how more people need to be interested and involved in these fields. After all, science at its best is only ever a product of the scientists doing it - we're trying to figure out what we don’t know that we don’t know. Leah Fitzsimmons is an Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Birmingham. Her aim is to better understand how a common and usually harmless virus called Epstein-Barr virus (or EBV for short), contributes to cancer. Her particular focus is trying to work out how EBV can help cancer cells to cheat death. The overall aim of her work is to design methods to block the interactions between EBV and cellular survival machinery in order to kill cancer cells. Leah is passionate about science communication and public engagement and believes that science should be for everyone and regularly gives talks to researchers and the public about the importance of science and evidence in public life. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx