Royal Society announces Dorothy Hodgkin Fellows for 2019

The Royal Society has announced the appointment of eight new Dorothy Hodgkin Fellows for 2019. The researchers will take up their new posts at institutions across the UK from the start of October.

One of last year’s research fellows, Alyssa-Jennifer Avestro, said: “My Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship has provided me with stability and peace of mind in my career to focus on riskier, speculative and unconventional paths of research that excite me and are more likely to have their greatest impact over a longer period of time.”

The newly appointed research fellows will be working on a wide range of research areas including:

Dr Anastasia Kisil (University of Manchester) - Noise Reduction: Novel Mathematical Techniques for Aeroacoustic Metasurfaces

Noise pollution from planes and wind turbines is a major concern globally, claiming more than one million healthy life years each year in Western Europe. Anastasia will investigate mathematically how blades could be changed to decrease the noise levels, modelling adaptations from nature such as those of owls, which allow them to fly near silently. The adaptations investigated will rely on new types of materials called metamaterials, which exhibit properties not usually found in natural materials.

Dr Charlotte Lloyd (University of Bristol) – Defining degradative pathways and transport processes in 'plasticulture'

Global use of plastics in agriculture is expected to reach 7.4 million tonnes by 2019, a 69% increase since 2012. But the potential impacts of plastics and their chemical additives remain largely unknown. Charlotte will be using models and field trials to investigate the passage of additives and agricultural plastic through the soil environment, exploring the rates of plastic decomposition, the release of organic compounds into soil, and the resulting effect on growing plants and soil environment.

Dr Thomas Haworth (Queen Mary University of London) – Discs and Planets in the Context of Stellar Clusters

In recent years, there has been the detection of many thousands of planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, but their formation requires investigation. There is overwhelming evidence that planets are born from flat discs of material orbiting young stars. To this end, Thomas will investigate how different environments can affect planet-forming discs and their resulting number and type of planets—and—how this might explain the diversity of planets being discovered. To address these questions, Thomas will be using pioneering computer simulations combined with observations of real planet-forming discs.

The full list of appointments is as follows: 

Dr Jack Alexander-Webber

University of Cambridge

A platform for spin-engineered optoelectronics enabled by 2D materials

Dr Aya Ben-Yakov

University of Cambridge

What is an episode in episodic memory?

Dr Thomas Haworth

Queen Mary University of London

Discs and Planets in the Context of Stellar Clusters

Dr Gordon Inglis

University of Southampton

Destabilisation of the terrestrial biosphere in past warm climates

Dr Anastasia Kisil

University of Manchester

Noise Reduction: Novel Mathematical Techniques for Aeroacoustic Metasurfaces

Dr Yaara Lefler

University College London (UCL)

Single cell computation of instinctive defence decisions

Dr Charlotte Lloyd

University of Bristol

Defining degradative pathways and transport processes in 'plasticulture' 

Dr Sabrina Simoncelli

King's College London

Lighting the way for Immunity: Fast, Sub-Diffraction, Multi-Colour Imaging of Living T-Cells

Of the eight new Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowships, two are being supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund. Three out of the eight Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellows are male and five are female. There are seven universities hosting the newly appointed Dorothy Hodgkin Fellows.

The 2020 round of the Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowships will open for applications in September 2019.