October Alumni Weekend

Location: McEwan Hall

Our alumni weekend events will begin with registration and refreshments in the McEwan Hall Basement Foyers. Come along to meet other Edinburgh Medical School graduates and re-familiarise yourself with one of the most beautiful buildings on central campus.

Location: McEwan Hall

In this introductory talk, Professor David Argyle (Head of College, College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine), Professor Lorna Marson (Chair of the Edinburgh Medical School 300 Steering Group) and other key staff members will update on recent developments at Edinburgh Medical School. Find out what has changed since your student days and learn about our exciting year-round activities to mark the 300-year milestone. Talks will be followed by a networking reception.

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Note: This is a parallel session - we invite you to choose and book your preferred session

Hear from our academic community about some of the fascinating research taking place at Edinburgh Medical School today.

Values, Culture, and Convergent Technologies in the Future of Medicine

Professor Kev Dhaliwal

Professor Kev Dhaliwal will explore how values and culture underpin successful multidisciplinary science and the development of transformative healthcare technologies. Drawing on experiences leading cross-disciplinary teams across medicine, engineering, and industry, he will discuss how the University of Edinburgh’s unique environment fosters innovation—from pioneering robotic lung technologies to pandemic preparedness through the Baillie Gifford Pandemic Science Hub and LifeArc Centre. His talk will reflect on lessons learned from team science, early-phase clinical translation, and the accelerating role of AI and convergent technologies in redefining clinical medicine for the next century.

Professor Kev Dhaliwal graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1999 with MBChB (Hons) and a First Class Honours degree in Microbiology. Following postgraduate training in London, he returned to Edinburgh to complete specialist training in Respiratory Medicine and now serves as a Consultant Physician in Infection and Tuberculosis at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. Over the past 15 years, he has built a multidisciplinary research team advancing healthcare technologies in respiratory and critical care medicine. His work spans the Medical Research Council, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Innovate UK, and industry, developing first-in-human diagnostic and therapeutic tools. He co-directs the Baillie Gifford Pandemic Science Hub and leads the LifeArc Centre for Rare Respiratory  Diseases. His leadership focuses on values, collaboration, and translating technology to clinical impact.

Rethinking the causes and treatment of manic-depressive illness

Professor Daniel Smith

Manic depression - also known as bipolar disorder - has traditionally been viewed as primarily a disorder of mood, characterised by recurrent episodes of mania and depression. This presentation will argue that the focus on mood symptoms in bipolar disorder has held back discovery science and treatment innovation. The primary problem in bipolar disorder may in fact be disrupted circadian (daily) rhythms of energy, activity, sleep, and metabolism. This 'circadian neuroscience’ conceptualisation of bipolar disorder enables a research focus on fundamental mechanisms and offers patients and their families new hope for improved diagnosis and more effective long-term treatments.

Daniel Smith studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh (BSc 1994, MB ChB 1996). He then trained in psychiatry in Glasgow and Melbourne (MRCPsych 2002) and returned to Edinburgh to complete a research doctorate (MD 2006) alongside a masters in affective neuroscience (Maastricht, MSc 2006). He held a postdoctoral fellowship in bipolar disorder research at Cardiff University (2007-2011), before moving to the University of Glasgow as Reader in Psychiatry in 2012. He was promoted to a personal chair in Glasgow in 2014. In 2021, he moved back (again) to the University of Edinburgh as Chair of Psychiatry and Head of the Division of Psychiatry. His work has been recognised by several awards, including the American Psychiatric Association Young Minds in Psychiatry Award (2007), Fellowship of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (2013), the BMJ Team Innovation Award (2014), a Lister Institute Prize Fellowship (2016), and the Saltire Society Award for Science 2025.

Outside the Operating Theatre: A Surgical Approach to Bowel Cancer Research

Professor Farhat Din

Bowel cancer surgery raises questions that extend far beyond the operating theatre. This talk will explore how challenges encountered in clinical practice can drive research, from improving early diagnosis using FIT to using patient-derived models to understand bowel cancer biology and develop new approaches to prevention and treatment.

Professor Farhat Din is a Consultant Colorectal Surgeon at the Western General Hospital and Professor of Colorectal Surgery at the University of Edinburgh. She leads a translational bowel cancer research programme within the Institute of Genetics and Cancer and the Cancer Research UK Scotland Centre and is the Bowel Cancer UK–Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh Chair of Colorectal Surgery Research. 

Her research spans the bowel cancer pathway, from improving early diagnosis and the use of FIT, through clinical decision-making and organ preservation, to laboratory studies investigating the biology and prevention of bowel cancer. Her group uses patient samples and experimental models, including organoids, to translate questions arising from clinical practice into new approaches to cancer prevention and treatment. She is also actively involved in developing surgical research and supporting the next generation of clinical academics.

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Note: This is a parallel session - we invite you to choose and book your preferred session

In this session, we explore how Edinburgh Medical School graduates have used their expertise to create positive impact. Two inspiring graduates will share their personal journeys since graduation, with time for Q&A.

Confirmed talks

How Edinburgh Medical School prepared the path to fighting the global tobacco industry

Prof. Dr. Judith Mackay

Judith Mackay OBE, SBS, JP, FRCP (Edin), FRCP (Lon) is the Director, Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control, a Senior Policy Advisor to World Health Organization, and Special Advisor, Global Centre for Good Governance in Tobacco Control.

Prof. Dr. Judith Mackay née Longstaff graduated in medicine from the University of Edinburgh in 1966. She has lived in Hong Kong since 1967, initially working as a hospital physician, then since 1984 concentrating on tobacco control.

She has published over 300 papers and addressed 600 conferences on tobacco control. Her particular interests are tobacco and women, tobacco control in low and middle-income countries, new tobacco products, and challenging the tobacco industry.

She is author or co-author of a dozen health atlases – portraying global health statistics in a colourful, graphic format - on health, sex, tobacco, cardiovascular disease, cancer, oral health. These have been translated into many languages.

She has received honorary degrees from the University of Edinburgh and Shue Yan University in Hong Kong. She is an Honorary Professor in the School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is an Honorary Fellow of the Hong Kong College of Cardiology, and the Hong Kong College of Community Medicine.

She has been showered by many national, regional and international awards for her pioneer work, including the World Health Organization Commemorative Medal, the TIME 100 World’s Most Influential People Award and the BMJ Group’s first Lifetime Achievement Award. 

Dr Judith Mackay credits Sir John Crofton, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine from 1963-1966 and a Vice Principal of the University in 1969-1970, for embedding the stirrings of stalwart action against what are now called ‘Commercial Determinants of Health’.

This talk will follow the unexpected road map whereby she, turning her back on a secure and senior job in hospital medicine, and initially single-handedly, took on the mighty international tobacco industry in Asia. With their markets starting to decline in the west, they were attempting to penetrate Asia. Their own statements said it all. “What do we want? We want Asia.”

She withstood death threats, being offered police protection from the Hong Kong government, testifying in court, threats of lawsuits, being stalked, and intimidating attempts to denigrate her professionally by name calling and more. She has been named by the industry as one of the three most dangerous people in the world.

Since 1984, she has developed extensive experience in working with national governments and health organisations in Asia in developing comprehensive tobacco control policies, particularly in Cambodia, China, North and South Korea, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Mongolia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Viet. Nam; and in the last decade throughout the Middle East. 

She was instrumental in initiating and then nurturing WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which came into force in 2005. Senior WHO officials refer to her as the ‘Mother of the FCTC’.

She says she will be working until she is 100.

(Please note the below programme change - Dr Judith Mackay will now be joined by Dr Gavin Francis)

Medicine, travel and literature - an adventure in human being 

Dr Gavin Francis

Dr Gavin Francis is a GP between inner city Edinburgh and the isles of Mull and Iona; he is also the author of eleven books that explore medicine, culture, and travel, and that have been translated into twenty languages. In this session he'll speak about the synergies between medicine and literature and how travel and overseas medical work have informed his clinical work in Scotland.

Dr Francis is Edinburgh’s current director of MBChB admissions. He has written many award-winning books about aspects of medicine and culture, including Shapeshifters, Recovery, Free For All, Adventures in Human Being and most recently, The Unfragile Mind. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and the Royal College of General Practitioners.

Note: This is a parallel session - we invite you to choose and book your preferred session

Meet our current Edinburgh Medical School students to find out how the student experience has changed. In this ‘speed-networking’ style session, you will have the opportunity to discuss a range of topics and compare experiences across decades. 

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Between the morning and afternoon sessions, there will be time to take part in optional activities at your leisure. Take this time to enjoy tours and displays, learn about student projects, share your memories and explore the future role of technology in teaching at our Edinburgh Medical School 300 ‘Digital Hub’.

Anthea Bond Exhibition Room opening

From 13:00 - 14:00 on Saturday, we will also be hosting the official opening of the Anthea Bond Exhibition Room. This event will include drinks and a light lunch. Anthea, along with Leadership from Edinburgh Medical School and EFI, will be in attendance to welcome guests to the space. Please note that capacity for this activity is limited and advance booking via our extra activities Eventbrite page is required.

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In 2026, the graduating class of 1976 will be asked what aspects of modern medicine and medical education they could have foreseen when they graduated themselves, fifty years ago. This presentation will indulge in some forecasting, and blue-sky thinking, as to what medicine and medical education will look like for Edinburgh Medical School in 2076.  Our current students will then be at the end of their careers – they will be the recently-retired and professors emeritus of the 2070s. 

In this chapter of the 'Learning From Our History' public lecture series, we ask Dr Jeni Harden, lecturer at the Usher Institute, to imagine the ways in which medical education will evolve over the next fifty years, and we also ask two of our current students to present their own vision of how the profession they are just entering might change by the end of their careers.

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The first professor of general practice in the world was appointed in Edinburgh, and this session will offer a history of academic general practice and primary care in the city.  Before the Royal Infirmary was built all physicians were generalists, and attended patients in their own homes; this session will take the audience through these earliest efforts at community medicine, through the story of the 19th century dispensaries for the poor, into the twentieth century, the establishment of the academic discipline of general practice, and showcase some of the exciting research being conducted today.

Speakers:

• Dr Agata Dunsmore, Deputy Head of Year 4, MBChB
• Prof Karen Fairhurst, Programme Director, MBChB
• Prof David Weller, James Mackenzie Professor of General Practice

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During the day on Saturday, you will have the option to visit the Anatomy Lecture Theatre and Anatomical Museum. Due to limited capacity in the venue, we are offering hour-long slots throughout the day and ask that attendees come at their allocated ticket time. 

If you are interested in joining, please indicate your preferred time slot on the Eventbrite booking form. We will be in touch closer to the time to confirm your space:

• 9:00 – 10:00
• 10:00 – 11:00
• 12:15 – 13:15
• 13:15 – 14:15
• 16:00 – 17:00

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Are you interested in sharing your memories and perspectives on single-use medical plastics? Take part in one of two focus group sessions led by student researcher Danielle Farrow to contribute your views and learn about the work of her interdisciplinary team, After the Single Use.

After the Single Use is a bold global cooperative across four continents that promises to develop a new field of critical humanities, and social science research on medical plastics and circular healthcare economies. Through combining ethnographic and archival research with experimental methods from art, design informatics, environmental advocacy, and participatory research, the team aims to expand and transform methodologies to tackle the interdisciplinary challenges of environmental change and contribute to understandings of healthcare waste as a historical and social issue.

Danielle Farrow is a PhD student taking an ethnographic perspective on the transition away from single use plastics in the Scottish NHS and seeking to further our understanding on how concepts of value, disposability, use and reuse shift over time.

Find out more about After the Single Use

• 12:30 – 13:15
• 13:30 – 14:15

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Please join us for the formal opening of the Anthea Bond Exhibition Room. This exhibition space, enabled through a generous donation by University of Edinburgh alumna Anthea Bond, has allowed Edinburgh Futures Institute to create a flexible exhibition space within the building which now hosts an annual programme of exhibitions showcasing creative and innovative research and art.

This event will include drinks and a light lunch. Anthea, along with Leadership from Edinburgh Medical School and EFI, will be in attendance to welcome guests to the space.

We will also be celebrating Edinburgh Medicine 300 and their current exhibition in the space, Healing Histories. This interactive exhibition shines a light on “unsung heroes” (individuals, communities, and cultures) from Africa and other parts of the Global South whose work has influenced medical and scientific breakthroughs. Through multimedia displays, it will also showcase ongoing decoloniality initiatives across Scottish universities and institutions, including efforts to diversify curricula, knowledge production, and research practices.

Please note that capacity for this activity is limited and advance booking via our 'extra activities' Eventbrite page is required.

Book extra activities