College Research Associates
Dr Navid Nabijou
College Research Associate
Mathematics
Algebraic geometry
Dr Navid Nabijou is a pure mathematician, specialising in algebraic geometry. This means that he spends most of his time thinking about shapes which can be defined using polynomial equations. He is interested in studying the inherent properties of these shapes, in classifying them and understanding how they relate to one another. His research centres on Gromov-Witten invariants, which are "counts" of curves lying inside such shapes. Though intuitively appealing, these counts are extremely difficult to calculate, and have been a source of fascination for mathematicians since the 19th century. Over the past 30 years, deep connections to theoretical physics have been unearthed, leading to a revitalisation of the field and the discovery of many deep and unexpected results. The common theme in his work is the exploitation of hidden combinatorial structures inherent to parameter spaces of curves, in order to produce new computations and uncover new structures governing the Gromov-Witten invariants. This has required the development of novel combinatorial techniques for probing the geometry of these spaces. He grew up in London, obtaining his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from Imperial College. After that, he spent two years in Glasgow as a postdoctoral researcher, before moving to Cambridge in September 2020 as a Herchel Smith Fellow.
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College Research Associate
Mathematics
Algebraic geometry
Dr Navid Nabijou is a pure mathematician, specialising in algebraic geometry. This means that he spends most of his time thinking about shapes which can be defined using polynomial equations. He is interested in studying the inherent properties of these shapes, in classifying them and understanding how they relate to one another. His research centres on Gromov-Witten invariants, which are "counts" of curves lying inside such shapes. Though intuitively appealing, these counts are extremely difficult to calculate, and have been a source of fascination for mathematicians since the 19th century. Over the past 30 years, deep connections to theoretical physics have been unearthed, leading to a revitalisation of the field and the discovery of many deep and unexpected results. The common theme in his work is the exploitation of hidden combinatorial structures inherent to parameter spaces of curves, in order to produce new computations and uncover new structures governing the Gromov-Witten invariants. This has required the development of novel combinatorial techniques for probing the geometry of these spaces. He grew up in London, obtaining his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from Imperial College. After that, he spent two years in Glasgow as a postdoctoral researcher, before moving to Cambridge in September 2020 as a Herchel Smith Fellow.
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Dr Jyoti Nangalia
College Research Associate
Natural Science (Biological)
Cancer genomics
Jyoti Nangalia a CRUK funded clinician scientist and consultant haematologist with a passion for cancer genomics. During her PhD, she discovered mutations in the gene CALR in the vast majority of patients with a certain type of blood cancer, called the myeloproliferative neoplasms (Nangalia et al, NEJM, Dec 2013). Testing for CALR mutations in clinical practice to diagnose patients is now routine internationally. More recently, together with other researchers, she studied the DNA of over 2000 patients with these blood cancers to build an accurate online personalised predictor of outcome for patients by integrating clinical and genomic information (Grinfeld, Nangalia et al, NEJM 2018). This tool is being increasingly used by clinicians to assess the future outlook of their patients. She believes that using cancer genetics to support clinical decision-making is a critical application of new genetic sequencing technologies, and her future aspiration is to provide clinicians with patient personalised decision-making tools that incorporate clinical and genomic information across all blood cancers. Her research also focuses on using sequencing technologies to understand exactly when these blood cancers originate in patients during their lifetime and how this relates to normal blood cell development and ageing.
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College Research Associate
Natural Science (Biological)
Cancer genomics
Jyoti Nangalia a CRUK funded clinician scientist and consultant haematologist with a passion for cancer genomics. During her PhD, she discovered mutations in the gene CALR in the vast majority of patients with a certain type of blood cancer, called the myeloproliferative neoplasms (Nangalia et al, NEJM, Dec 2013). Testing for CALR mutations in clinical practice to diagnose patients is now routine internationally. More recently, together with other researchers, she studied the DNA of over 2000 patients with these blood cancers to build an accurate online personalised predictor of outcome for patients by integrating clinical and genomic information (Grinfeld, Nangalia et al, NEJM 2018). This tool is being increasingly used by clinicians to assess the future outlook of their patients. She believes that using cancer genetics to support clinical decision-making is a critical application of new genetic sequencing technologies, and her future aspiration is to provide clinicians with patient personalised decision-making tools that incorporate clinical and genomic information across all blood cancers. Her research also focuses on using sequencing technologies to understand exactly when these blood cancers originate in patients during their lifetime and how this relates to normal blood cell development and ageing.
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Dr Jonathon Nixon-Abell
College Research Associate
Natural Science (Biological)
Jonathon began his research career with a joint PhD program in the labs of Prof. Kirsten Harvey (UCL) and Dr. Craig Blackstone (NIH/Harvard). Following the completion of his PhD in 2016, Jonathon was awarded an ORISE and HHMI visiting fellowship to undertake postdoctoral work in the lab of Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz (HHMI Janelia), before moving back to the UK as a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow in the lab of Peter St George-Hyslop (Cambridge). As of 2024 Jonathon is a Group Leader and Wellcome CDA fellow at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research where his team study organelle interactions and dynamics in neurons, and how these processes are corrupted in neurological disease.
Additional information on the research conducted by the Nixon-Abell lab can be found at https://www.cimr.cam.ac.uk/staff/dr-jonathon-nixon-abell.
For enquiries, please contact Jonathon on jjn36@cam.ac.uk.
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College Research Associate
Natural Science (Biological)
Jonathon began his research career with a joint PhD program in the labs of Prof. Kirsten Harvey (UCL) and Dr. Craig Blackstone (NIH/Harvard). Following the completion of his PhD in 2016, Jonathon was awarded an ORISE and HHMI visiting fellowship to undertake postdoctoral work in the lab of Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz (HHMI Janelia), before moving back to the UK as a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow in the lab of Peter St George-Hyslop (Cambridge). As of 2024 Jonathon is a Group Leader and Wellcome CDA fellow at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research where his team study organelle interactions and dynamics in neurons, and how these processes are corrupted in neurological disease.
Additional information on the research conducted by the Nixon-Abell lab can be found at https://www.cimr.cam.ac.uk/staff/dr-jonathon-nixon-abell.
For enquiries, please contact Jonathon on jjn36@cam.ac.uk.
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Dr Brennan O'Connell
College Research Associate, (Ph.D. 2022 University of Melbourne) Leverhulme Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Earth Sciences
Natural Sciences (Physical)
If we analysed Earth remotely over the past billion years, what would we see? Earth’s surface environments have changed dramatically through geological time. My research in sedimentary geology investigates how Earth's sedimentary systems and environments, the history of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans, and life (microbes, animals, and plants) have co-evolved through time. I am particularly interested in Earth’s oldest reefs and coastal environments such as tidal flats before plants and animals evolved.
I completed my PhD in Earth Science at the University of Melbourne, a MSc in Earth Science at the University of Oregon, and a BSc at Colorado College in Geology.
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College Research Associate, (Ph.D. 2022 University of Melbourne) Leverhulme Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Earth Sciences
Natural Sciences (Physical)
If we analysed Earth remotely over the past billion years, what would we see? Earth’s surface environments have changed dramatically through geological time. My research in sedimentary geology investigates how Earth's sedimentary systems and environments, the history of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans, and life (microbes, animals, and plants) have co-evolved through time. I am particularly interested in Earth’s oldest reefs and coastal environments such as tidal flats before plants and animals evolved.
I completed my PhD in Earth Science at the University of Melbourne, a MSc in Earth Science at the University of Oregon, and a BSc at Colorado College in Geology.
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Dr Jacob Olley
College Research Associate
Music
Dr Jacob Olley is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of Music. His current research project, ‘Debating Music in the Ottoman Press, 1876–1928’, focuses on discussions of music in Turkish-language periodicals during the final decades of the Ottoman Empire. The project seeks to understand how debates about music became a site for historical and social critique amongst Muslim intellectuals, and how they relate to broader global entanglements between Europe and Asia during the long 19th century. Before joining Cambridge, he was a research associate (2015–2020) on the digital publication project Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae: Critical Editions of Near Eastern Music Manuscripts, based at the University of Muenster in Germany. His PhD thesis (King’s College London, 2017) is a cultural history of notation systems in Ottoman music, focusing on the invention of modern Armenian (‘Hampartsum’) notation in the early 19th century. Before this, he did a BA and Masters in Ethnomusicology at SOAS. He has taught at King’s College London and the University of Kassel, as well as giving lectures and invited talks at various institutions. He has also spent extended periods in Istanbul, where he studied the Turkish language and the ney (reed flute).
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College Research Associate
Music
Dr Jacob Olley is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of Music. His current research project, ‘Debating Music in the Ottoman Press, 1876–1928’, focuses on discussions of music in Turkish-language periodicals during the final decades of the Ottoman Empire. The project seeks to understand how debates about music became a site for historical and social critique amongst Muslim intellectuals, and how they relate to broader global entanglements between Europe and Asia during the long 19th century. Before joining Cambridge, he was a research associate (2015–2020) on the digital publication project Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae: Critical Editions of Near Eastern Music Manuscripts, based at the University of Muenster in Germany. His PhD thesis (King’s College London, 2017) is a cultural history of notation systems in Ottoman music, focusing on the invention of modern Armenian (‘Hampartsum’) notation in the early 19th century. Before this, he did a BA and Masters in Ethnomusicology at SOAS. He has taught at King’s College London and the University of Kassel, as well as giving lectures and invited talks at various institutions. He has also spent extended periods in Istanbul, where he studied the Turkish language and the ney (reed flute).
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Dr Ruby Peters
College Research Associate
Natural Science (Biological)
Super-resolution microscopy, mechanobiology, biophysics
After completing a PhD in Physics at King’s College London in 2019, Dr Ruby Peters joined the lab of Professor Ewa Paluch at the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience. Her doctoral research, whilst formally granted in the discipline of Physics, was highly interdisciplinary spanning the fields of cell biology, optics, computational biology and biophysics. She is a specialist in super-resolution microscopy: a family of closely related techniques that bypass the classical diffraction limit of light and allows for the visualisation of single molecules within cells. Specifically, during her PhD she developed a number of algorithms for the analysis of super-resolution datasets of the actin cytoskeleton during the human immune response. At the Paluch lab, she studies cell-shape control in the context of the nanoscale organisation and dynamics of the actomyosin cortex. Despite its importance, our understanding of cell-shape regulation remains limited, owing to the across-scales and across-disciplines nature of morphogenesis studies. By using state of the art microscopy and computational approaches, She aims to connect the nanoscale interactions that occur within the actomyosin cortex to the mechanical properties of the entire cell during fundamental cell-shape changes, thereby bridging the length scales gap from the nanoscopic to the microscopic.
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College Research Associate
Natural Science (Biological)
Super-resolution microscopy, mechanobiology, biophysics
After completing a PhD in Physics at King’s College London in 2019, Dr Ruby Peters joined the lab of Professor Ewa Paluch at the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience. Her doctoral research, whilst formally granted in the discipline of Physics, was highly interdisciplinary spanning the fields of cell biology, optics, computational biology and biophysics. She is a specialist in super-resolution microscopy: a family of closely related techniques that bypass the classical diffraction limit of light and allows for the visualisation of single molecules within cells. Specifically, during her PhD she developed a number of algorithms for the analysis of super-resolution datasets of the actin cytoskeleton during the human immune response. At the Paluch lab, she studies cell-shape control in the context of the nanoscale organisation and dynamics of the actomyosin cortex. Despite its importance, our understanding of cell-shape regulation remains limited, owing to the across-scales and across-disciplines nature of morphogenesis studies. By using state of the art microscopy and computational approaches, She aims to connect the nanoscale interactions that occur within the actomyosin cortex to the mechanical properties of the entire cell during fundamental cell-shape changes, thereby bridging the length scales gap from the nanoscopic to the microscopic.
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Dr Shannon Philip
College Research Associate
Human, Social and Political Sciences (HSPS)
Social anthropology, sociology
Shannon is a sociologist and social anthropologist currently researching gender and urban transformations in post-apartheid South Africa. He is interested in the intersections of race, gender, sexualities, masculinities, class and development in the urban context of Johannesburg. Before coming to Cambridge, Shannon completed his PhD at the University of Oxford where he used a combination of longitudinal ethnographic methods and visual analysis to study urban youth, masculinities, gender, development and the policing of public bodies in neoliberal India. His post-doctoral research on South Africa builds and expands several themes of his doctoral research and looks at India and South Africa comparatively.
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College Research Associate
Human, Social and Political Sciences (HSPS)
Social anthropology, sociology
Shannon is a sociologist and social anthropologist currently researching gender and urban transformations in post-apartheid South Africa. He is interested in the intersections of race, gender, sexualities, masculinities, class and development in the urban context of Johannesburg. Before coming to Cambridge, Shannon completed his PhD at the University of Oxford where he used a combination of longitudinal ethnographic methods and visual analysis to study urban youth, masculinities, gender, development and the policing of public bodies in neoliberal India. His post-doctoral research on South Africa builds and expands several themes of his doctoral research and looks at India and South Africa comparatively.
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Dr Alice Politi
College Research Associate
Human, Social and Political Sciences (HSPS)
Dr Alice Politi is a Research Associate at the Centre for Geopolitics and at St John’s College at the University of Cambridge. She is also a non-resident Research Associate Fellow at the NATO Defense College. During her PhD in International Relations at King's College London, she was also a Policy Advisor at the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and the 2024 Eisenhower Defense Fellow at the NATO Defense College. Her doctoral research focused on EU-China relations during the presidency of Xi Jinping, with a focus on China’s Belt and Road Initiative. More broadly, her research concentrates on China’s geopolitical behaviour and foreign policy under Xi Jinping. Alice has previously collaborated as a Policy Consultant with the UK FCDO and participated in projects with the European Commission and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
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College Research Associate
Human, Social and Political Sciences (HSPS)
Dr Alice Politi is a Research Associate at the Centre for Geopolitics and at St John’s College at the University of Cambridge. She is also a non-resident Research Associate Fellow at the NATO Defense College. During her PhD in International Relations at King's College London, she was also a Policy Advisor at the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and the 2024 Eisenhower Defense Fellow at the NATO Defense College. Her doctoral research focused on EU-China relations during the presidency of Xi Jinping, with a focus on China’s Belt and Road Initiative. More broadly, her research concentrates on China’s geopolitical behaviour and foreign policy under Xi Jinping. Alice has previously collaborated as a Policy Consultant with the UK FCDO and participated in projects with the European Commission and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
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Dr Motiar Rahaman
College Research Associate
Natural Sciences (Physical)
Chemistry
Dr Motiar Rahaman obtained his B.Sc. (Bachelor of Science) with honours in Chemistry from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, and his M.Sc. (Master of Science) in Chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India. He received a Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship (ESKAS) and moved to Switzerland for his Ph.D. in 2013. He obtained his PhD from University of Bern (Supervisor: Prof Peter Broekmann) in 2018 with Summa Cum Laude (final assessment: 6/6). The title of his PhD thesis was ‘Power to Value: Electrochemical Conversion of CO2 into Value-added Products’. He was then awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation Early Postdoc Mobility Fellowship (SNSF-EPM) and moved to the United Kingdom in 2019 to start his postdoctoral research at the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge (Supervisor: Prof Erwin Reisner). He also received a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual European Fellowship and currently, he is pursuing research in the Reisner Lab as a Marie-Curie fellow. His current research interests focus on photoelectrochemical (PEC) conversion of CO2 into multicarbon fuels using sunlight as well as combining some interesting substrate oxidation processes with solar-driven CO2 reduction which would direct us towards a sustainable and circular economy.
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College Research Associate
Natural Sciences (Physical)
Chemistry
Dr Motiar Rahaman obtained his B.Sc. (Bachelor of Science) with honours in Chemistry from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, and his M.Sc. (Master of Science) in Chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India. He received a Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship (ESKAS) and moved to Switzerland for his Ph.D. in 2013. He obtained his PhD from University of Bern (Supervisor: Prof Peter Broekmann) in 2018 with Summa Cum Laude (final assessment: 6/6). The title of his PhD thesis was ‘Power to Value: Electrochemical Conversion of CO2 into Value-added Products’. He was then awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation Early Postdoc Mobility Fellowship (SNSF-EPM) and moved to the United Kingdom in 2019 to start his postdoctoral research at the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge (Supervisor: Prof Erwin Reisner). He also received a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual European Fellowship and currently, he is pursuing research in the Reisner Lab as a Marie-Curie fellow. His current research interests focus on photoelectrochemical (PEC) conversion of CO2 into multicarbon fuels using sunlight as well as combining some interesting substrate oxidation processes with solar-driven CO2 reduction which would direct us towards a sustainable and circular economy.
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Dr Preethi Rajendram Soundararajan
College Research Associate, (Ph.D. 2022 Université Paris-Saclay) Research Associate, Department of Engineering (Hopkinson Laboratory)
Engineering
Dr Preethi Rajendram Soundararajan is currently working in the Engineering Department, focussing on decarbonising combustion in the aviation and energy sector. Prior to this, Preethi completed her PhD at CentraleSupélec, France (formerly Ecole Centrale Paris), with a focus on understanding and mitigating thermoacoustic instabilities encountered in high-performance engines. Preethi is a recipient of the Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellowship and Amelia Earhart Fellowship during her PhD.
Hydrogen is one of the key fuels for carbon-neutral air travel and has been the recent focus of both academic as well as industrial research. Being a highly flammable fuel, hydrogen is easy to burn but poses other challenges in terms of flame flashback and the formation of other pollutants, such as oxides of nitrogen. To tackle these problems, in her current research, Preethi is working closely with industrial partners in developing future low-carbon engines by performing experiments on lab-scale burners to determine the optimal injector configuration that can produce good mixing and flame stabilisation. She is also focussing on improving combustion efficiency by studying the mechanism of plasma-assisted combustion through lab-scale experiments.
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College Research Associate, (Ph.D. 2022 Université Paris-Saclay) Research Associate, Department of Engineering (Hopkinson Laboratory)
Engineering
Dr Preethi Rajendram Soundararajan is currently working in the Engineering Department, focussing on decarbonising combustion in the aviation and energy sector. Prior to this, Preethi completed her PhD at CentraleSupélec, France (formerly Ecole Centrale Paris), with a focus on understanding and mitigating thermoacoustic instabilities encountered in high-performance engines. Preethi is a recipient of the Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellowship and Amelia Earhart Fellowship during her PhD.
Hydrogen is one of the key fuels for carbon-neutral air travel and has been the recent focus of both academic as well as industrial research. Being a highly flammable fuel, hydrogen is easy to burn but poses other challenges in terms of flame flashback and the formation of other pollutants, such as oxides of nitrogen. To tackle these problems, in her current research, Preethi is working closely with industrial partners in developing future low-carbon engines by performing experiments on lab-scale burners to determine the optimal injector configuration that can produce good mixing and flame stabilisation. She is also focussing on improving combustion efficiency by studying the mechanism of plasma-assisted combustion through lab-scale experiments.
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Ms Danaja Rutar
College Research Associate
Psychological and Behavioural Sciences (PBS)
Artificial Intelligence.
I am working as a research associate at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. There, I am part of the Kinds of Intelligence Programme where I am working on the research project RECOG-AI (i.e., Robust Evaluation of Cognitive Capabilities and Generality in Artificial Intelligence).
Alan Turing had a vision. To create an ultimate test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour indistinguishable from that of a human. 70 years later, however, we are as far from understanding how to assess AI’s capacities as ever before. The main aim of our research project is to develop a novel AI evaluation framework based on the current understanding of cognitive capabilities in humans and animals, that assesses patterns of AI performance across multiple cognitively inspired tasks. Such an approach will allow us to make robust inferences about cognitive capabilities of AI. My research is specifically focused on developing novel suites of tasks and validating them on existing AI systems.
I recently completed my PhD in Cognitive Science at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour (The Netherlands). I also hold a M.Sc. in Language, Mind and Embodied Cognition from University of Edinburgh and a B.Sc. in Psychology from University of Ljubljana.
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College Research Associate
Psychological and Behavioural Sciences (PBS)
Artificial Intelligence.
I am working as a research associate at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. There, I am part of the Kinds of Intelligence Programme where I am working on the research project RECOG-AI (i.e., Robust Evaluation of Cognitive Capabilities and Generality in Artificial Intelligence).
Alan Turing had a vision. To create an ultimate test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour indistinguishable from that of a human. 70 years later, however, we are as far from understanding how to assess AI’s capacities as ever before. The main aim of our research project is to develop a novel AI evaluation framework based on the current understanding of cognitive capabilities in humans and animals, that assesses patterns of AI performance across multiple cognitively inspired tasks. Such an approach will allow us to make robust inferences about cognitive capabilities of AI. My research is specifically focused on developing novel suites of tasks and validating them on existing AI systems.
I recently completed my PhD in Cognitive Science at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour (The Netherlands). I also hold a M.Sc. in Language, Mind and Embodied Cognition from University of Edinburgh and a B.Sc. in Psychology from University of Ljubljana.
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Dr Davide Salaris
College Research Associate
Archaeology
As a Near Eastern archaeologist, Dr. Davide Salaris specialised in the ancient Iranian world, focusing on southwestern Iran from the 1st
millennium BCE to the early 1st millennium CE. His current research strategically employs Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing analyses to advance the archaeology of the Ancient Near East. The combination of computational spatial technologies with archaeological data offers unprecedented opportunities to unravel and interpret complex historical and archaeological dynamics, significantly enriching the comprehension of ancient civilizations. Dr. Salaris began his academic career at the University of Rome "La Sapienza” (Italy),
where he earned his undergraduate degree in Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology. He then advanced his studies in Australia, earning an MA in Archaeology from the University of Sydney and a PhD in Ancient History and Archaeology from Macquarie University, Sydney.
Presently, Dr. Salaris is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Fellow, funded by UKRI for the period of 2024-2026. He is affiliated with the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge, working under the supervision of Professor
Cameron Petrie. His current research project, “PersianTRAIL,” aims to reconstruct the Persian Royal Road, a monumental infrastructure that connected the ancient Achaemenid Empire from East to West in the 1st millennium BCE, utilizing GIS and Remote Sensing
technology.
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College Research Associate
Archaeology
As a Near Eastern archaeologist, Dr. Davide Salaris specialised in the ancient Iranian world, focusing on southwestern Iran from the 1st
millennium BCE to the early 1st millennium CE. His current research strategically employs Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing analyses to advance the archaeology of the Ancient Near East. The combination of computational spatial technologies with archaeological data offers unprecedented opportunities to unravel and interpret complex historical and archaeological dynamics, significantly enriching the comprehension of ancient civilizations. Dr. Salaris began his academic career at the University of Rome "La Sapienza” (Italy),
where he earned his undergraduate degree in Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology. He then advanced his studies in Australia, earning an MA in Archaeology from the University of Sydney and a PhD in Ancient History and Archaeology from Macquarie University, Sydney.
Presently, Dr. Salaris is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Fellow, funded by UKRI for the period of 2024-2026. He is affiliated with the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge, working under the supervision of Professor
Cameron Petrie. His current research project, “PersianTRAIL,” aims to reconstruct the Persian Royal Road, a monumental infrastructure that connected the ancient Achaemenid Empire from East to West in the 1st millennium BCE, utilizing GIS and Remote Sensing
technology.
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Dr Kasturi Shah
College Research Associate
Mathematics
Kasturi Shah is a McDonnell Foundation Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. Her research is at the interface of earth sciences and applied mathematics. Using theoretical and experimental techniques, she develops minimal models to explain well-observed yet poorly understood geophysical phenomena, informed by her engagement with field and satellite data. A running theme of her research is dynamical self-organisation, in particular, how order and structure spontaneously emerge in geophysical systems. Some examples of current and past work include self-organisation of wildfire smoke into aerosol-filled vortices, granular cryospheric dynamics such as ice mélange and ice-sediment interactions, atmospheric transport, and multiscale turbulence in stellar and planetary interiors. She moved to Cambridge from the other Cambridge, where she completed her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In her free time, she enjoys distance running, painting, and contributing to communities she is part of, such as the vibrant College life at St. John’s.
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College Research Associate
Mathematics
Kasturi Shah is a McDonnell Foundation Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. Her research is at the interface of earth sciences and applied mathematics. Using theoretical and experimental techniques, she develops minimal models to explain well-observed yet poorly understood geophysical phenomena, informed by her engagement with field and satellite data. A running theme of her research is dynamical self-organisation, in particular, how order and structure spontaneously emerge in geophysical systems. Some examples of current and past work include self-organisation of wildfire smoke into aerosol-filled vortices, granular cryospheric dynamics such as ice mélange and ice-sediment interactions, atmospheric transport, and multiscale turbulence in stellar and planetary interiors. She moved to Cambridge from the other Cambridge, where she completed her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In her free time, she enjoys distance running, painting, and contributing to communities she is part of, such as the vibrant College life at St. John’s.
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Dr Paul Sweeney
College Research Associate
Mathematics
Mathematical Oncology
Low oxygenation, or hypoxia, is associated with cancer evolution, resistance to therapy and metastatic spread. Currently, the spatio-temporal relationship between vascular function and oxygen delivery in solid tumours is poorly understood, thereby hampering previous efforts to alleviate hypoxia or exploit it for therapeutic benefit. Paul’s research applies machine learning to photoacoustic imaging to facilitate the extraction of high-quality vascular features from living subjects. He applies the resulting data to advanced biophysical models which predict blood and interstitial flow, and transient oxygenation in whole tumours, in order to advance our fundamental knowledge of the mechanisms underpinning hypoxia fluctuations for improved therapeutic outcomes.
He is currently a Wellcome Trust Junior Interdisciplinary Fellow based in the Bohndiek Lab at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. He received his doctorate in Applied Mathematics from University College London, where he also completed a MRes in Mathematical Modelling in Healthcare Engineering. He completed my MSc in Applied Mathematics at Imperial College London and received a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Southampton.
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College Research Associate
Mathematics
Mathematical Oncology
Low oxygenation, or hypoxia, is associated with cancer evolution, resistance to therapy and metastatic spread. Currently, the spatio-temporal relationship between vascular function and oxygen delivery in solid tumours is poorly understood, thereby hampering previous efforts to alleviate hypoxia or exploit it for therapeutic benefit. Paul’s research applies machine learning to photoacoustic imaging to facilitate the extraction of high-quality vascular features from living subjects. He applies the resulting data to advanced biophysical models which predict blood and interstitial flow, and transient oxygenation in whole tumours, in order to advance our fundamental knowledge of the mechanisms underpinning hypoxia fluctuations for improved therapeutic outcomes.
He is currently a Wellcome Trust Junior Interdisciplinary Fellow based in the Bohndiek Lab at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. He received his doctorate in Applied Mathematics from University College London, where he also completed a MRes in Mathematical Modelling in Healthcare Engineering. He completed my MSc in Applied Mathematics at Imperial College London and received a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Southampton.
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Dr Sebastian Timmler
College Research Associate
Natural Science (Biological)
Biochemistry
Dr Timmler is a neuroscientist with a background in biochemistry and molecular biology. His research focusses on myelin, the cellular structure that wraps around axons, the “cables” of the brain. He wants to understand how neuronal activity regulates myelin formation and how myelin influences the function of neuronal circuits.
He studied biochemistry at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg and Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel in Germany, supported by a Cusanuswerk fellowship. During his PhD in the lab of Mikael Simons in Göttingen (Georg-August-University, MPI for Experimental Medicine) and Munich (Technical University, DZNE), he discovered that complexes of adhesion molecules cooperatively regulate myelin sheath growth. As a postdoc in the lab of Ragnhildur Thóra Káradóttir at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, he is now studying how neuronal activity changes patterns of membrane adhesion molecules to determine myelination. Recently, he secured generous funding through the Walter-Benjamin fellowship of the German Research Foundation (DFG). His main methods are light and electron microscopy, primary cell culture, optogenetics and proteomics. When he is not in the lab, he enjoys cycling through the English countryside, firing up the barbecue and gardening. You can follow him on twitter @MyelinScientist or researchgate.
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College Research Associate
Natural Science (Biological)
Biochemistry
Dr Timmler is a neuroscientist with a background in biochemistry and molecular biology. His research focusses on myelin, the cellular structure that wraps around axons, the “cables” of the brain. He wants to understand how neuronal activity regulates myelin formation and how myelin influences the function of neuronal circuits.
He studied biochemistry at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg and Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel in Germany, supported by a Cusanuswerk fellowship. During his PhD in the lab of Mikael Simons in Göttingen (Georg-August-University, MPI for Experimental Medicine) and Munich (Technical University, DZNE), he discovered that complexes of adhesion molecules cooperatively regulate myelin sheath growth. As a postdoc in the lab of Ragnhildur Thóra Káradóttir at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, he is now studying how neuronal activity changes patterns of membrane adhesion molecules to determine myelination. Recently, he secured generous funding through the Walter-Benjamin fellowship of the German Research Foundation (DFG). His main methods are light and electron microscopy, primary cell culture, optogenetics and proteomics. When he is not in the lab, he enjoys cycling through the English countryside, firing up the barbecue and gardening. You can follow him on twitter @MyelinScientist or researchgate.
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Dr Zvonimir Vlah
College Research Associate
Natural Sciences (Physical)
Cosmology
I am a theoretical physicist working primarily on cosmology and galaxy clustering, with broad interests ranging from gravity and dark matter physics to galaxy formation and gravitational waves. I am an expert in the formation of large scale structure of the Universe. My work consists mainly of cutting edge analytic modelling and calculations in cosmological structure formation using field theory methods.
I was born in the north of Croatia, where I lived until finishing the master's degree in Physics at the University of Zagreb.
I obtained a PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Zürich in Switzerland in 2014. I was a research fellow at the KIPAC at SLAC & Stanford University and, afterwards, at the Theory group at CERN in Genéva.
Currently, I hold a senior fellowship at the KICC in Cambridge.
Besides physics, my other interests range from other natural sciences and economics to sociology, history, philosophy, and religion. I also enjoy spending time outdoors, hiking, skiing and exploring.
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College Research Associate
Natural Sciences (Physical)
Cosmology
I am a theoretical physicist working primarily on cosmology and galaxy clustering, with broad interests ranging from gravity and dark matter physics to galaxy formation and gravitational waves. I am an expert in the formation of large scale structure of the Universe. My work consists mainly of cutting edge analytic modelling and calculations in cosmological structure formation using field theory methods.
I was born in the north of Croatia, where I lived until finishing the master's degree in Physics at the University of Zagreb.
I obtained a PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Zürich in Switzerland in 2014. I was a research fellow at the KIPAC at SLAC & Stanford University and, afterwards, at the Theory group at CERN in Genéva.
Currently, I hold a senior fellowship at the KICC in Cambridge.
Besides physics, my other interests range from other natural sciences and economics to sociology, history, philosophy, and religion. I also enjoy spending time outdoors, hiking, skiing and exploring.
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Dr Jenny York
College Research Associate
Natural Science (Biological)
Behavioural flexibility allows animals to be responsive to their environment and to exert control over their social and physical worlds. My research uses multiple approaches to examine both how behavioural flexibility relates to underlying physiology, and to its adaptive function. From behavioural adaptations such as male advertisement song, to manipulative cuckoo calls and elaborate animal architecture, the questions I investigate are inspired by being a curious naturalist at heart. I am currently especially interested in the role that behavioural flexibility, and phenotypic plasticity more broadly, might play in the origins and maintenance of biodiversity. I mainly investigate these questions in wild birds including the white-browed sparrow weavers of the Kalahari desert, interactions between brood parasitic common cuckoos and their reed warbler hosts in the lush green Cambridgeshire fens, and most recently, the interactions between Diederik cuckoos and the African weaverbirds.
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College Research Associate
Natural Science (Biological)
Behavioural flexibility allows animals to be responsive to their environment and to exert control over their social and physical worlds. My research uses multiple approaches to examine both how behavioural flexibility relates to underlying physiology, and to its adaptive function. From behavioural adaptations such as male advertisement song, to manipulative cuckoo calls and elaborate animal architecture, the questions I investigate are inspired by being a curious naturalist at heart. I am currently especially interested in the role that behavioural flexibility, and phenotypic plasticity more broadly, might play in the origins and maintenance of biodiversity. I mainly investigate these questions in wild birds including the white-browed sparrow weavers of the Kalahari desert, interactions between brood parasitic common cuckoos and their reed warbler hosts in the lush green Cambridgeshire fens, and most recently, the interactions between Diederik cuckoos and the African weaverbirds.
Full profile