It has been a difficult eighteen months for us all, but news of great work undertaken by members of our community is uplifting. This includes those who are continuing to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, and those working in many other fields. Here’s what has been happening in the last few days.
Alumna Professor Catherine Green (U93) and Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert received GQ magazine’s “heroes of the year” award for their work on the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. The award was presented virtually by the Duke of Sussex.
Honorary Fellow, Professor Sir Colin Humphreys, was awarded the Royal Medal 2021 by the Royal Society for excelling in basic and applied science, university-industry collaboration, technology development and transfer, academic leadership, promotion of public understanding of science, and advising on science to public bodies. Sir Colin will also be giving a talk at the Alumni festival called ‘The magic of graphene: from basic science to manufacturing devices’.
Fellow Dr Lisa Jardine-Wright is spearheading a new University initiative that will aim to support talented students from non-fee paying UK schools and widening participation backgrounds through seventeen months of their A-levels.
Fellow and CARES Director for the Singapore-Cambridge CREATE Research Centre, Professor Markus Kraft, is the co-author of a new book, Intelligent Decarbonisation, exploring how artificial intelligence could help address climate change.
Extraordinary Fellow and Mathematician, Professor Benedikt Löwe, will serve as Vice-Director for Research of the interdisciplinary Institute for Logic, Language and Computation at the University of Amsterdam from 1 September 2021 – 28 February 2023.
Director of the Archives Centre, Mr Allen Packwood, joined Dr Annie Grey on the Chris Mann show on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire to discuss the Archive Centre’s Open Cambridge event ‘The Cook, the PM, his wife and their foodways’ (10-19 Sep) based on Annie Gray’s book ‘Victory in the Kitchen’.
Alumnus Dr Alessandro Rossi spoke to Nature about how he applies quantum physics to the study of measurements in a ‘mind-boggling’ marriage of disciplines.
Statistician Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter commented on new data from the Office of National Statistics showing that while immunity remains high in the elderly, there has been a decline in the number of people of this age testing positive for antibodies.
We will continue to keep you informed of all of the work being done by the Churchill College Community. If you have any news you would like to share, please get in touch by emailing comms.manager@chu.cam.ac.uk.