WCSJ Madgalen event scientist profiles

Professor Fran Ashcroft is the Royal Society GlaxoSmithKline Research Professor at the University Laboratory of Physiology, a Fellow of Trinity College, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. Her research focuses on the role of ATP-sensitive potassium channels in insulin secretion. The goal of her research is to understand how a rise in the blood glucose concentration stimulates the release of insulin from the pancreas, what goes wrong with this process in type 2 diabetes, and how drugs used to treat this condition work. She has written a text book, Ion Channels and Disease, and is Director of OXION, a training and research programme on the integrative physiology of ion channels, funded by the Wellcome Trust. She is also the author of the popular science book Life at the Extremes.

Research: insulin secretion, type 2 diabetes  

Professor Valerie Beral is Professor of Epidemiology, Bodmer-Billingheimer Fellow and Director of the Cancer Research UK Epidemiology Unit. A major focus of her research is the role of reproductive, hormonal and infectious agents in cancer. She was the lead researcher in a recent study into the benefits of the contraceptive pill in protecting against ovarian cancer. She has published widely on the incidence of cancer in people infected with HIV, and is principal investigator of the International Collaboration on HIV in cancer, which brings together worldwide data in order to determine whether HIV infection increases the risk of cancer.

Research: role of reproductive, hormonal and infectious agents in cancer, role of HIV infection in cancer risk

Dr Brenda Boardman is Emeritus Fellow: Energy, at the Environmental Change Institute. Prior to her recent retirement, Dr Boardman was the head of the Lower Carbon Futures team and a co-director of the UK Energy Research Centre. Her main research focus is on energy efficiency and the way in which energy is used in British homes, particularly by low-income households. She considers the economic, social and technical aspects of the subject and her work has a strong policy emphasis. She is a former member of the DTI's Energy Advisory Panel and was awarded an MBE in 1998 for her work on energy issues. Dr Boardman’s other major projects include the 40% House Project and Carbon Vision = Building Market Transformation. Both projects looked at how dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions can be achieved in the built environment by 2050.

Research: energy efficiency & fuel poverty, reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, green building market

Professor David Clary is President of Magdalen College and directs a research group in the Department of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at Oxford. He is the Editor of Chemical Physics Letters and is on the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science. His research group focuses on quantum theory of chemical reactions and molecular properties. They have predicted the vibrational states of H2 which are formed after reaction between H atoms on graphite, thought to be an important mechanism for producing much of the hydrogen molecules in the universe. They have also developed the diffusion Monte Carlo and Torsional Path Integral (TPI) methods for calculating the properties of weakly-bound clusters and biomolecules, with considerable potential as a general method to predict the conformations of biomolecules as a function of temperature.

Research: quantum theory of chemical reactions and molecular properties

Dr Constantin Coussios is Reader in Engineering Science and heads the Biomedical Ultrasonics and Biotherapy Laboratory (BUBL) in the Oxford Institute of Biomedical Engineering. His research focuses on three areas: the biomedical applications of acoustics, fluid mechanics and control; the therapeutic use of ultrasound, for example cancer therapy and targeted drug delivery; and organ preservation and repair prior to transplantation. Dr Coussios and Professor Peter Friend, a leading transplant surgeon, have developed a device for sustaining organs outside the body using blood at normal body temperatures. The technology, which has resulted in spinout company OrganOx Ltd, allows livers to be preserved for up to three days – more than three times longer than by conventional cold storage. The company expects that it will also allow livers currently deemed unsuitable for transplantation to recover to an acceptable standard for transplant.

Research: biomedical applications of acoustics, fluid mechanics and control; therapeutic ultrasound, organ preservation and repair prior to transplantation

Professor Marcus du Sautoy is both Professor of Mathematics and Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford. He is the star of recent TV programmes such as BBC Two's Horizon: Alan and Marcus Go Forth and BBC Four's The Story of Maths and he writes a regular column for The Times as well as contributing articles to other UK newspapers. His research interests include prime numbers and symmetry and he is the authors of the popular science books The Music of the Primes and Finding Moonshine. He hosts the Inside Oxford Science podcast, supports Arsenal Football Club and you can follow him on Twitter.

Research: prime numbers, symmetry 

Dr Simon Fisher is a Royal Society Research Fellow and Reader in Molecular Neuroscience at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics (WTCHG), and head of the Molecular Neuroscience group. He is also the Isobel Laing Fellow in Biomedical Sciences at Oriel College. His laboratory pioneers new ways of uncovering brain pathways that are important for speech and language development. His research strategy is based on the idea that genes implicated in language disorders can provide ‘molecular windows’ into neural mechanisms contributing to human communication. The work depends on a multidisciplinary viewpoint, which seeks to integrate findings from medical genetics, psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary anthropology and developmental biology. Recently he led a team which found the first gene associated with a common childhood language disorder, known as specific language impairment (SLI).

Research: speech and language development, human communication

Dr Sarah Gilbert is Reader in Vaccinology at the Jenner Institute. Her work focuses on T cell vaccines, DNA, MVA and fowlpox vaccines, tuberculosis and influenza vaccines. Her main research interest is the development of vaccines that work by inducing strong and protective responses from T cells, a type of white blood cell. She has been involved in the development and clinical trial of new vaccines against tuberculosis, and is currently working on the Jenner Institute’s vaccine programmes for malaria and influenza. The programme’s approach, based on T cell immunity, should enable the development of a universal flu vaccine suitable for use in all ages, providing protection against seasonal flu as well as other subtypes of influenza

Research: T cell vaccines, DNA, MVA and fowlpox vaccines, tuberculosis and influenza vaccines

Dr Morten Kringelbach is the director of the TrygFonden Research Group. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford and a Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark, and Junior Research Fellow and lecturer in Neuroscience at The Queen's College. The goal of the TrygFonden Research Group is to understand the fundamental neural mechanisms underlying human sensory and social pleasures, in order to increase our understanding and potential treatment of depression, obesity and eating disorders as well as problems of parent-child attachment. This is accomplished through the study of normal, neuropsychiatric and clinical populations using converging neuroimaging methods such as magnetoencephalography (MEG) and deep brain stimulation (DBS) combined with functional MRI, PET and DTI.

Research: hedonic processing, depression, obesity, eating disorders, parent-child attachment

Professor Mark McCarthy is Robert Turner Professor of Diabetic Medicine. The main focus of his research lies in identifying and characterising the genes that influence individual susceptibility to type 2 diabetes and related conditions. Identification of the specific genes involved will provide insights into the molecular mechanisms for disease development and offer new opportunities in individualised patient management and disease prevention. As part of a large European consortium (MolPAGE), Professor McCarthy’s group is contributing to novel studies in ‘genomic epidemiology’ – the use of powerful new tools in large population samples to identify ‘biomarkers’ predictive of future disease.

Research: individual susceptibility to type 2 diabetes and related conditions, genomic epidemiology for prediction of future disease

Professor Sir Richard Peto is Professor of Medical Statistics & Epidemiology and Co-Director of the Clinical Trial Service Unit. He was knighted for services to epidemiology and to cancer prevention in 1999. His work has included studies of the causes of cancer in general, and of the effects of smoking in particular, and the establishment of large-scale randomised trials of the treatment of heart disease, stroke, cancer and a variety of other diseases. He has been instrumental in introducing combined 'meta-analyses' of results from related trials that achieve uniquely reliable assessment of treatment effects. He is joint statistician for the Heart Protection Study, the world's largest ever trial of cholesterol-lowering drugs and antioxidant vitamins in people at increased risk of heart disease. In recent work his group found that half of all premature deaths in Russia are caused by alcohol.

Research: causes of cancer, treatment of heart disease, stroke, cancer

Dr Ann McPherson is Medical Director of DIPEx, Department of Primary Care. A general practitioner for 30 years, she joined Oxford University in 2001 and with Andrew Herxheimer set up the ‘Patient Experiences’ website and research group - DIPEx. DiPEx researches people’s experience of diseases and health issues, and publishes the results on their award-winning website: www.healthtalkonline.org. A parallel site, www.youthhealthtalk.org,  features the experiences of young people. Dr McPherson also co-hosts a  teenage ‘virtual doctor’s surgery’  for 10 -15 year olds at www.teenagehealthfreak.org. She devised and co-edited the ’10 minute consultation’ series for the BMJ and recently stepped down as chair of the RCGP Adolescent Task Group. She has served on several National Committees including the Independent Advisory Committee on Teenage Pregnancy and is a founding Trustee of the Association of Young People’s Health. She is currently working on developing an Institute of Patient Experiences at Oxford University.

Research: experiences of health and illness, adolescent health, women's health issues, provision of information for patients

Professor David Pyle is Professor of Earth Sciences and a Fellow of St Anne’s College. He is a volcanologist, with interests in the rates and impacts of volcanism and volcanic degassing. Highlights of recent work include the first modern measurements of mercury in volcanic emissions, the discovery that hot volcanic vents act as high temperature reaction sites for atmospheric gases, and the recognition of glacially-modulated volcanism in Europe. Professor Pyle was also involved in creating a database of all known volcanic eruptions of more than about 400 cubic kilometres of magma. His current research projects include the Afar Rift Consortium, looking at how the Earth's crust forms at divergent plate margins, and work on the impact and extent of the 2008 eruption of the Chaiten volcano in Chile.

Research: volcanology, impact of volcanic eruptions, Earth crust formation

Professor Fred Taylor is Halley Professor of Physics, Director of Graduate Studies in Physics, a Fellow of Jesus College, and Distinguished Visiting Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His research in Atmospheric Physics has resulted in the development of ‘infrared remote sensing’, which enables monitoring of the heat radiated by the earth’s atmosphere, a critical tool in analysing climate change. He was part of the team that built the Mars Climate Sounder, which enables detailed study of the Martian atmosphere in unprecedented detail, and has been involved in similar research projects into the atmosphere of Venus and Mercury. In the long term, it is hoped that understanding the mechanisms which led to changes in the atmosphere of planets once similar to Earth can help draw lessons for climate change on Earth.

Research: atmospheric physics, climate of other planets: eg Venus & Mars

Dr Claire Vallance is a Lecturer and Royal Society University Research Fellow based in the Physical & Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory. She is involved in research projects in a number of areas of chemical physics, including chemical reaction dynamics and the development of new spectroscopic and chemical sensing techniques. Her current projects include work on whispering gallery modes as chemical sensors, supercontinuum light sources for spectroscopy, and chemical reaction dynamics and velocity map imaging.

Research: chemical physics, spectroscopic and chemical sensing techniques

Fritz Vollrath received his PhD from the Zoology Department at the University of Freiburg in Germany. After time at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institution in Panama and the Zoology Departments at the Universities of Oxford UK, Basel CH and Aarhus DK he is now back at the Zoology Department in Oxford where he works primarily on spiders’ webs and silks. He is also currently involved in research into Elephant behaviour at the Mpala Reseach Centre in Kenya as head of the Oxford Tracking Group and chairman of Save the Elephants, a UK charity concerned about elephant conservation.

Research: Silk, Elephant & Spider behaviour

Professor Sir David Weatherall is Regius Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of Oxford and Chancellor of Keele University. He established the Institute of Molecular Medicine in 1989 within Oxford’s Clinical School to foster research in molecular and cell biology with direct application to the study of human disease. The Institute was renamed the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in 2000. His major research contributions have been in the elucidation of the clinical, biochemical and molecular characteristics of the thalassaemias and their related disorders, the population genetics of these conditions, and the application of this information to the development of programmes for the prevention and management of these diseases in the developing countries.

Research: thalassaemias and related disorders

Professor Rory Collins is British Heart Foundation Professor of Medicine & Epidemiology and Co-Director of the Clinical Trial Service Unit at Oxford. Professor Collins’s research has focused on the establishment of large-scale epidemiological studies of the causes, prevention and treatment of heart attacks, vascular disease and cancer, and the development of approaches to the combination of results from related studies ("meta-analyses"). He is also the Principal Investigator and Chief Executive of UK Biobank, a prospective study of 500,000 British men and women aged 40-69 which looks at how health is affected by lifestyle, environment and genes. The aim of the study is to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of illnesses and to promote health throughout society.

Research: epidemiological studies of the causes, prevention and treatment of heart attacks, other vascular disease, and cancer

Professor Steve Davies is Waynflete Professor of Chemistry, Chairman of Organic Chemistry and a Fellow of Magdalen College. His research group is currently working on the development of novel asymmetric transformations and concepts, the total synthesis of natural products of biological significance, the design of unique supramolecular architectures, medicinal chemistry, chemical genomics and enantioselective recognition processes. Professor Davies was behind the creation of spinout companies Oxford Asymmetry International (now Evotec OAI) and VASTox (now Summit PLC). Summit PLC, of which he remains a non-executive director, offers drug discovery and toxicology services to the pharmaceutical industry.

Research: asymmetric transformations, total synthesis of natural products of biological significance, supramolecular architectures, medicinal chemistry, chemical genomics

Professor George Ebers is Action Research Professor of Neurology at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in the Department of Clinical Neurology. The main focus of the Ebers Research Group is the investigation of complex neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis. It is hoped that the investigation of the epidemiology, genetics and environmental factors involved in these diseases may help understand their specific processes and eventually develop better treatments and quality of life for individuals. The group uses studies of large cohorts in order to understand complex diseases which are thought to be caused by changes in many genes, with each individual gene having a small effect. Recently his group found a link between vitamin D and multiple sclerosis.

Research: epidemiology, genetics and environmental factors in neurological diseases e.g. multiple sclerosis

Professor Russell Foster is Professor of Circadian Neuroscience and Head of the Department of Ophthalmology, and a Nicholas Kurti Senior Fellow at Brasenose College. He is the co-author of Rhythms of Life, a popular science book on circadian rhythms – our internal ‘body clock’. His research group works across the neurosciences but with specific interests in circadian, visual and behavioural neuroscience. This covers such topics as how circadian rhythms are generated, the functions they serve, how this system is regulated by light, the role of photoreceptors in light perception, and genetic disorders of these systems. This work includes a range of molecular, cellular, anatomical and behavioural aspects, as well as addressing the implications for human performance, productivity and health.

Research: circadian and photoreceptor biology

Dr Ian Goldin is Director of the 21st Century School and a Fellow of Balliol College. He is a former Vice President of the World Bank, where he led on collaboration with the United Nations and other partners, and was previously Chief Executive and Managing Director of the Development Bank of Southern Africa, serving as an adviser to President Nelson Mandela. He has published 12 books, the two best-known being Globalisation for Development: Trade, Finance, Aid, Migration and Ideas and The Economics of Sustainable Development. The James Martin 21st Century School, founded in 2005, is a unique collaborative research effort focusing on the problems and the opportunities that the future will bring

Research: globalisation, development, sustainable development

Professor Adrian Hill is Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow, Chairman of the Centre for Clinical Vaccinology and Tropical Medicine and Director of the Jenner Institute. He is a Fellow of Magdalen College, of the Royal College of Physicians and of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences. His principal areas of research are malaria vaccines, vectored vaccine development, and the immunogenetics of susceptibility to infectious disease. His immunogenetics programme currently focuses on genome-wide association studies of bacterial diseases, particularly tuberculosis and pneumococcal disease. He is also a participant in the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium, which aims to identify new genes for susceptibility to disease.

Research: malaria vaccines, vectored vaccine development, immunogenetics of infectious disease susceptibility

Professor Lord May of Oxford holds a Professorship jointly at Oxford University and Imperial College, London and is a Fellow of Merton College. He was President of The Royal Society from 2000 to 2005, and Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government and Head of the UK Office of Science and Technology from 1995 to 2000. He is a member of the UK Government’s Climate Change Committee and a Non-Executive Director of the UK Defence Science & Technology Laboratories. In 2007 he received the Royal Society’s Copley Medal, its oldest and most prestigious award. Particular research interests include the way in which populations are structured and respond to change, particularly with respect to infectious diseases and biodiversity; and the structure and dynamics of ecosystems (and – more recently – other networks, such as banking systems), with particular emphasis on their response to disturbance, natural or human-created.

Research: population response to infectious diseases and biodiversity, structure and dynamics of ecosystems and other networks, e.g. banking systems

Dr Paul Newman heads up the Mobile Robotics Research Group within the Department of Engineering Science. His principal research interests lie in the domain of navigation and mapping by autonomous vehicles and robots. At present many autonomous robots rely on pre-produced maps or GPS to find their way around, but GPS isn't available indoors, near tall buildings, under foliage, underwater, underground, or on other planets such as Mars – all places we might want a robot to operate. The FABMAP algorithm created by the group is able to compare a current view of a scene with impressions of all the places it has been before through a combination of machine learning and probabilistic inference, fast enough for a robot to realise it is retracing its steps and adjust its route.

Research: navigation and mapping by autonomous robots

Professor Lionel Tarassenko is Professor of Electrical Engineering, Director of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and a Fellow of St John’s College. His research focuses on the development of signal processing techniques and their application to diagnostic systems. His research group works on the real-time monitoring of patients in hospital to provide early warning of deterioration and on the use of mobile-phone based telehealth to improve the management of long-term conditions such as diabetes, asthma, COPD or hypertension. Mobile technology and new methods of communicating information are playing an important role in the self-management of long-term conditions. Supported by a clinical team which has access to all the patient data automatically prioritised for review, patients gradually learn how to adjust their lifestyle using an every-day tool for monitoring and real-time feedback: the mobile phone.

Research: signal processing techniques for diagnostic systems, real-time patient monitoring, mobile-phone based telehealth

Professor Irene Tracey is Director of the Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (FMRIB), Nuffield Professor of Anaesthetic Science, and a Fellow of Medicine at Pembroke College. Her research focuses on the neural mechanisms of pain perception and its modulation in health and disease, and on advanced functional imaging of the human brain. Her multidisciplinary research team has contributed significantly to a better understanding of pain perception and its relief within the injured and non-injured human nervous system. They have expertise in the understanding of the neural basis for pain relief and have pioneered the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging for drug discovery. Professor Tracey has a particular interest in mechanisms related to plasticity and inflammation within chronic pain states.

Research: pain perception in health and disease, advanced functional imaging of the brain