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

The Royal Society and the Wolfson Foundation have announced the second 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 second round awardees take up their posts from October 2024, and their expertise ranges from reinforcement learning for implantable medical devices to understanding cosmology from new images of the early universe.

They have been drawn from countries including Canada and India and will take up their posts in universities including Swansea University, University of Liverpool and the University of Birmingham.

The full list of awardees:

Round Two

Royal Society Wolfson Fellowships

Professor Ayelet Landau
Attentional Sampling: from sensory processes to motor exploration
University College London

Dr Martin Helmer
Stratified Methods in Effective Real Algebraic Geometry and Applications
Swansea University

Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellowships

Professor Marco Bertola
Orthogonality, Riemann surfaces and asymptotics 
University of Bristol

Professor Joanna Dunkley
Cosmology from new images of the early universe
University of Cambridge

Professor Daniel Frisbie
Ion-Charge Carrier Interactions and the Metal-Insulator Transition in Polymer Semiconductors
University of Cambridge

Professor Srikanth Sastry
Understanding amorphous materials through the lens of topology
University of Birmingham

Professor Ashutosh Trivedi 
Correct-by-Construction Reinforcement Learning for Implantable Medical Devices 
University of Liverpool

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.