Royal Society Wolfson Fellowship and Wolfson Visiting Fellowship 2025 awardees announced

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 2025.

The awards provide funding for five-year fellowships and 12-month sabbaticals that enable UK universities and not-for-profit research institutions to attract and retain outstanding overseas senior research scientists. Both Fellowships are generously supported by the Wolfson Foundation, and Royal Society funds are provided through its grant from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).

Dame Julie Maxton, Executive Director of the Royal Society, said: “It is my pleasure to announce the first recipients of the Royal Society Wolfson Fellowship schemes for 2025, in partnership with the Wolfson Foundation.

“Science, and society at large, thrive on the exchange of new ideas and ways of thinking. Now, more than ever, it is important we continue to face outwards. By supporting these innovative research leaders, we can bring new approaches to scientific questions and global challenges facing our health and environment, for the benefit of all.”

Paul Ramsbottom, Chief Executive of the Wolfson Foundation, said: “We are delighted to welcome the latest cohort of Royal Society Wolfson Fellows and support such exciting research in the years ahead. International collaboration has always been a core strength of the UK’s research ecosystem. That’s more true – and more important – today than ever.”

The 14 second round awardees will begin their work from October 2025, with their research programmes ranging from security and privacy in smart homes to new approaches for malaria vaccination. They have been drawn from countries including Iran and the Ukraine and will take up their posts in institutions including Queens University Belfast, the University of Liverpool and the National Oceanography Centre.

The full list of awardees

Royal Society Wolfson Fellowships

The Royal Society Wolfson Fellowships offer £300,000 of funds to support the awardees’ UK research programme and team.

Round two

Professor Federico Ardila
Combinatorics and geometry of matroids and polytopes
Queen Mary University of London

Professor Ian Cockburn
New Approaches for Malaria Vaccination
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)

Round one

Dr Peter Bieling
Mechanistic Principles of Cell Morphogenesis
King’s College London

Dr Milos Filipovic
Unravelling the Role of Thiol Modifications in Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation
University of Glasgow

Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellowships

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

Round two

Dr Najmeh Etemad-Saeed
Determining the tempo of the Cambrian Explosion of animals in Iran
University of Oxford

Professor Qiaoyan Yu
Energy-Efficient Approximate Computing for Secure and Privacy-Preserving Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Queens University Belfast

Dr Mariya Shcherbina
Supersymmetric method and non-Hermitian random matrices
University of Bristol

Dr Yoshiaki Nakamura
Integration of Circulating Tumour DNA Analysis with Tumour Immune Biomarkers for Precision Therapy in Patients with Solid Tumours
University of Oxford

Professor David Kotz
Security and privacy in smart homes
Imperial College London

Dr Joaquin Martinez Martinez
Viral infection modulation of diazotrophs community dynamics and nitrogen fixation rates in the Indian Ocean Gyre
National Oceanography Centre

Dr Raju Venugopalan
Shockwave collisions in QCD and in Gravity: exploring universal strong field dynamics across 28 orders of magnitude in length scales
University of Edinburgh

Professor Steve Awodey
Homotopy Type Theory and the Formalization of Mathematics
University of Cambridge

Professor Santiago Grigera
Noise signatures in topological and quantum spin-liquids
University of Oxford

Professor Stuart Bale
Experimental Solar Plasma Astrophysics and Low Frequency Radio Astronomy in Space and on the Moon
Imperial College London

Dr Peter Jacobs
Novel approaches to study the Quark-Gluon Plasma
University of Liverpool

Professor Thalappil Pradeep
Matter in confinement: Microdroplets, clusters and clathrates
University of Manchester

Round one

Professor José Alves
Statistical Prediction and Smooth Transition in Partially Hyperbolic Dynamical Systems
Loughborough University

Professor Aled Edwards
Chemical probes to study microbial ecosystems
University College London

Professor Bingbing Fan
Gradient honeycomb structured MAB phase ceramics: controllable construction and research on electromagnetic wave absorption mechanisms
University of Exeter

Professor Hanns Lochmüller
Mitochondrial pathology in neuromuscular transmission
University of Cambridge

Dr Simon Rit
Motion-compensated CT reconstruction for cone-beam, spectral and ion imaging
University College London

Professor Eric Rowell
Anyons, Braids and Categories
University of Leeds

Professor Alexander Vladimirsky
Optimality, risk-awareness, and high-dimensional challenges in stochastic switching systems and mean field games
Imperial College London