Royal Society announces new round of esteemed Wolfson Research Merit Awards

The Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science, has announced the appointment of 24 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 science talent from overseas and retain respected UK scientists of outstanding achievement and potential.

The newly appointed award holders are working on a wide range of projects including the characterisation of exoplanets, modelling for more realistic computer graphics, medical device development and investigations into the evolution of culture.

The full list of appointments is as follows:

Professor Luis Fernando Alday – University of Oxford

Dualities in high energy theoretical physics

Professor Fraser Armstrong – University of Oxford

Fundamental discoveries and applications of protein film electrochemistry

Professor Steven Balbus – University of Oxford

The coupling of rotation and heat transport in stars and disks

Professor Darren Crowdy – Imperial College London

Multiply connected conformal geometry in microstructured optical fibre (MOF) fabrication

Professor Philip Donoghue – University of Bristol

Molecular palaeobiology

Professor Andrew Ellis – Aston University

Terabit enabling system technology

 Professor Jonathan Essex – University of Southampton

Multiscale computational modelling of chemical and biological systems

Dr Abhijeet Ghosh – Imperial College London

Measurement based appearance modelling for realistic computer graphics

Professor Mark Green – University of Kent

Functional materials

 Professor Yang Hao – Queen Mary, University of London

Tailoring antennas and microwave metamaterials using graphene

Professor Jane Hutton – University of Warwick

Statistical models for medical research, patient care and decision-making

Professor Kevin Laland – University of St Andrews

Animal social learning and the evolution of culture

Professor Furong Li – University of Bath

Accelerating the UK’s decarbonisation through stimulating micro-generation

 Professor James Moore – Imperial College London

Vascular biomechanics and medical device development

Dr Detlef Mueller –University of Hertfordshire

Raman spectroscopy for inferring chemical signatures in particle pollution

Professor Paul Palmer – University of Edinburgh

An improved understanding of the Earth system using space-borne data

Professor Carole Perry – Nottingham Trent University

Studies of the biomolecule-mineral interface – towards new materials

Professor Jeffrey Pollard – University of Edinburgh

The Metastatic cascade: macrophages lead the way

Professor Didier Queloz – University of Cambridge

Towards the detection and characterisation of exoplanets

Professor Kevin Shakesheff – University of Nottingham

Combining materials and human stem cells to create developmental niches

Professor Stefan Soldner-Rembold – University of Manchester

Studying the origin of mass

Professor Andrew Stuart – University of Warwick

The Bayesian approach to inverse problems in differential equations

Professor Brian Wyvill – University of Bath

Content creation with implicit modelling – rapid prototyping of 3D models

Professor Xunyu Zhou – University of Oxford

Continuous-time behavioural portfolio choice and time inconsistency

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