Royal Society announces first round of prestigious Wolfson Research Merit Awards for 2012

The Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science, has announced the appointment of nineteen new Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holders.

Jointly funded by the Wolfson Foundation and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the scheme aims to provide universities with additional support to enable them to attract to this country or to retain respected scientists of outstanding achievement and potential.

The newly appointed award holders are working on a wide variety of projects including the development of new materials to reduce device infections caused by devices in medicine; regional aspects on climate change; and a new study looking at the mechanism of insulin secretion in health and disease.

The full list of appointments is as follows:

Professor Morgan Alexander        

University of Nottingham       

New materials for the reduction of device centred infection in medicine

Professor Frances Ashcroft

University of Oxford

Mechanism of insulin secretion in health and disease

Professor John Attfield      

University of Edinburgh         

Electronic materials and extreme conditions

Professor David Barford    

Institute of Cancer Research 

Structural studies of the anaphase promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C)

Professor Martin Bridson   

University of Oxford

Geometric group theory

Professor Ian Dryden          

University of Nottingham       

Object data analysis, with applications to medical images and molecular shapes

Professor Mark Girolami    

University College London     

The geometry of computational statistics: theory, methodology, and applications

Professor Rich Kerswell     

University of Bristol    

A dynamical systems approach to fluid turbulence

Professor Valentin V Khoze

University of Durham 

Particle physics: beyond the standard model and the LHC

Professor Robert MacKay  

University of Warwick

Mathematical theory for complex systems

Professor Anne Magurran 

University of St Andrews       

Biological diversity and evolution in a changing world

Professor Pascal Meier       

Institute of Cancer Research 

Ubiquitin mediated regulation of cell survival and cancer

Professor Angelos Michaelides     

University College London     

A paradigm shift in the accuracy of simulations at water-solid interfaces

Dr Yuri Pashkin       

Lancaster University

Fundamentals and device applications of nanoelectronics and nanoelectromechanics

Professor Fabrice Pierron   

University of Southampton    

Imaging the mechanical properties of materials

Professor Theodore Shepherd       

University of Reading 

Dynamical controls on regional aspects of climate change

Dr Maxim Sviridenko          

University of Warwick

Randomized rounding algorithms in discrete optimization

Professor Tetsuo Tomiyama          

Cranfield University   

High fidelity life cycle simulation for design for sustainability

Professor Andrew Turberfield      

University of Oxford

Synthetic molecular structures and systems by self-assembly

The Wolfson Foundation is a grant-making charity established in 1955. Funding is given to support excellence. More information is available from www.wolfson.org.uk