The Royal Society has announced the appointment of 44 new University Research Fellows for 2016, including four academics from the University of Cambridge.
The University Research Fellowship scheme aims to provide outstanding early career scientists, who have the potential to become leaders in their chosen fields, with the opportunity to build an independent research career. The scheme is extremely competitive and University Research Fellows are expected to be strong candidates for permanent posts in universities at the end of their fellowships, and many have gone on to enjoy significant national or international recognition for their work.
The appointments from the University of Cambridge are:
- Dr Thomas Bennett (Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy) – new directions for hybrid materials: liquids, glasses and superstrong frameworks
- Dr Brice-Olivier Demory (Cavendish Laboratory) – fast-track characterisation of habitable worlds
- Dr Miguel Fernandes Paulos (Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics) – spectroscopy of conformal field theories and critical phenomena
- Dr Samuel Stranks (Cavendish Laboratory) – next generation perovskite optoelectronics
The newly appointed research fellows will be working on a wide range of research areas including applying mathematical models to solve biomedical problems, understanding evolution of cooperation in humans, probing the evolution of cyanobacteria and their role in oxygenation of the early earth, the modelling of atomistic processes of radiation damage in materials for nuclear power generation, characterisation of habitable worlds and addressing fundamental questions in the field of low energy nuclear physics.