Royal Society announces Royal Society Wolfson Fellowships and Wolfson Visiting Fellowships 2024 awardees

The Royal Society and the Wolfson Foundation have announced the first round of outstanding scientists receiving Royal Society Wolfson Fellowships and Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellowships in 2024. 

The fellowships provide funding that enables UK universities and research institutions to attract and retain outstanding overseas senior research scientists. 

Dame Julie Maxton, Executive Director of the Royal Society, said: “We are delighted to announce the recipients of the Royal Society Wolfson Fellowships and Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellowships for this year in partnership with the Wolfson Foundation.

"Fostering international collaboration in science has never been more important. By supporting the careers of outstanding research leaders in the UK, we can strengthen and build a critical mass of excellence, maximising innovation and creativity in science for the benefit of humanity.”

Paul Ramsbottom, Chief Executive of the Wolfson Foundation, said: “The Royal Society Wolfson Fellowship scheme could not be more important or timely in its support of talented researchers coming to the UK. Attracting international talent and fostering global collaboration is crucial for a vibrant research environment. We are delighted to join the Royal Society in welcoming this latest cohort of Fellows and are excited to see how their research continues to develop.”

The seven first round awardees took up their posts from July 2024, and their expertise ranges from developing ultrasound systems able to image the brain activity of neonates to pioneering new microscopy techniques to enable new materials to be imaged for the first time.

They have been drawn from countries including Japan and India and will take up their posts in universities including University of Dundee, University of Edinburgh and Imperial College London.

The full list of awardees are:

Round One

Royal Society Wolfson Fellowships

Professor Yimon Aye
INVENT: Innovating a new class of small-molecule-assisted biotechnology for massively-augmented functional target-ID & pathway discovery in living systems.
University of Oxford

Dr Hajk-Georg Drost
Harnessing protein search at tree-of-life scale to explore the molecular principles of heterochrony.
University of Dundee  

Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellowships

Professor Paul Dastoor
Neutral Atom Microscopy at the Frontiers: New Applications and Science.  
University of Cambridge

Dr Charlie Demené
fUS-DOT: first-of-its-kind functional connectivity neuroimager for early diagnosis of neonatal abnormal cerebral development.
University of Cambridge

Professor Justin Hsu
From discrete to continuous-time verification for probabilistic hybrid systems.
Imperial College London

Dr Sumesh P Thampi 
Continuum modelling of cellular layers and tissues.  
University of Oxford

There are three rounds per year for applications for the Fellowships.

The Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellowships offer £125,000 to enable international researchers a flexible sabbatical period at a UK university or research institution to build and develop international collaborations and networks. 

The Royal Society Wolfson Fellowships offer £300,000 of funds to support the awardees’ UK research programme and team. Both Fellowships are generously supported by the Wolfson Foundation.