Royal Society announces prestigious University Research Fellowships for 2015

The Royal Society has announced the appointment of 38 new University Research Fellows (URFs) for 2015. The scientists will take up their new posts at institutions across the UK and the Republic of Ireland at the start of October.

The University Research Fellowship scheme aims to provide outstanding 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 URFs are expected to be strong candidates for permanent posts in universities at the end of their fellowships.

This year the announcement includes the appointment of three Royal Society-Science Foundation Ireland University Research Fellows. The fellowships are funded by Science Foundation Ireland and available for outstanding researchers in the Republic of Ireland.

Eight out of the 38 new appointments (21%) were made to female researchers.

The newly appointed research fellows are working on a wide variety of projects including studying the atmospheres of alien worlds, understanding polarized light as an alternative to colour in animal vision and developing enhanced surgical vision for robot-assisted operations.

The full list of appointments is as follows:

Royal Society University Research Fellowships:

Dr Christos Anastopoulos

Understanding the nature of Electroweak Symmetry Breaking     

University of Sheffield

Dr Matthew Buican

New Constraints and Phenomena in Quantum Field Theory         

Queen Mary, University of London

Dr James Bull 

Single-operation C-H functionalisation: Next generation directing group strategy 

Imperial College London

Dr Jorge Casalderrey Solana   

Holography, Jets and Heavy Ion Collisions at the LHC   

University of Oxford

Dr Evgeny Chekhovich

Electrically controlled qubits in self-assembled semiconductor quantum dots     

University of Sheffield

Dr Alis  Deason

Rethinking Galactic Architecture: Clues from Satellites and Destroyed Dwarfs     

University of Durham

Dr Timothy Easun

Photogating Nanofluidics: Ultrafine Spatially-Controlled Diffusion & Reactivity    

Cardiff University

Dr Oliver Fenwick

Organic thermoelectrics in multiple structural and transport regimes        

University College London

Dr Pau  Figueras

New frontiers in numerical general relativity        

Queen Mary, University of London

Dr Stamatia Giannarou

NEURO: Navigation with Enhanced Surgical vision for Robot-assisted Operation

Imperial College London

Dr Neale Gibson

Atmospheres of alien worlds: spectroscopy of transiting exoplanets      

Queen's University of Belfast

Dr Nicholas Graham

The changing ecology and functioning of coral reefs     

University of Lancaster

Dr Ceri Hammond

Advances in zeolite science for emerging challenges in catalysis and beyond     

Cardiff University

Dr Tom Hasell 

Functional porous materials from inorganic waste          

University of Liverpool

Dr Martin How 

Polarized light as an alternative to colour in animal vision           

University of Bristol

Dr Roger Johnson

Domain Switching in Multifunctional Materials: Towards a Multiferroic Memory    

University of Oxford

Dr Katherine Joy

The Moon’s archive of Solar System bombardment

University of Manchester

Dr Steven Kelly

Characterising the Gene Regulatory Networks Governing Photosynthesis

University of Oxford

Dr Grant Kennedy

Emergence and evolution of planetary systems 

University of Cambridge

Dr Jason King

Defining molecular mechanisms of macropinosome processing and remodelling

University of Sheffield

Dr Tung Le

Epigenetic regulation of antibiotic production in Streptomyces   

John Innes Centre

Dr Arthur Lipstein

Amplitudes, Strings, and Branes           

University of Durham

Dr Lai Bun Lok

Advanced instrumentation radars for geophysics and environmental sciences     

University College London

Dr Carlos Mafra

Superstring scattering amplitudes with the pure spinor formalism

University of Southampton

Dr Sarah Malik

Where Particle Physics meets Cosmology: Searching for Dark Matter at the LHC

Imperial College London

Dr Naomi Nakayama    

Self-calibration of structural engineering in plant shoots 

University of Edinburgh

Dr Thomas Oliver

Dazzled by the Sun: Photoprotection and Artificial Light Harvesting        

University of Bristol

Dr Kasper Rasmussen

Adversarial Electromagnetic Interference

University of Oxford

Dr John Russo

The microscopic pathway of heterogeneous ice nucleation         

University of Bristol

Dr Alexander Stewart

The population genetics of social dilemmas      

University College London

Dr Andrzej Szelc

Searching for Sterile Neutrinos with Liquid Argon           

University of Manchester

Dr Peter Pal Varju

Random walks on groups         

University of Cambridge

Dr Hendrik Weber

Properties of renormalised stochastic PDEs      

University of Warwick

Dr Natalie Wheeler

Low Loss Hollow Core-Photonic Crystal Fibres for Mid-IR (2.5-12 µm) Applications

University of Southampton

Dr Tom Williams

The prokaryotic prehistory of the eukaryotic cell

University of Bristol

Royal Society-Science Foundation Ireland University Research Fellows:

Dr Lynette Keeney

Memories are made of this: Multiferroics Research for Future Generation Memories

Tyndall National Institute

Dr Jonathan Mackey

Massive Stars in the Interstellar Medium

Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies

Dr Pauline Scanlan

Bacteria-bacteriophage antagonistic coevolution in the gut         

National University of Ireland, Cork