Melinda Mills (MBE, FBA) is Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science (LCDS) and Professor of Demography and Sociology at the University of Oxford and Nuffield College. She received her PhD in Demography from the University of Groningen, and her Bachelor and Masters degrees at the University of Alberta, Canada. She has supervised over…

I enjoyed both maths and physics at school as they explain how the world works, and some amazing teachers helped to build my enthusiasm in these topics. I went on to complete an undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Physics at UCL. During my degree, I chose to focus on applied mathematics as the tools and…

I was born in a rural town in the mountains of Catalonia, and I have had a passion for nature since I was a toddler. At the age of nine, I witnessed how wildfires sweeped across the neighbouring mountains next to home, and over the years I followed the vegetation recovery. This sparked many questions that…

I’m originally from Lisbon, Portugal where I finished my degree in 2006. My first real contact with science was when I moved to London to the School of Pharmacy, UCL and working with Prof. John Moses discovered the use of click chemistry to develop new and better drugs against cancer, those were really exciting times!…

My ancestors were slaves, my grandparents attended segregated schools during the Jim Crow era in the American South, and my parents work as a janitor and a receptionist. Obviously, my working-class background doesn’t match the stereotypical privileged background associated with Oxford students. Nevertheless, the privilege of being raised an hour south of Seattle, Washington –…

I am a final year DPhil student studying clinical neuroscience at Oxford. My first encounter with neuroscience was when I was studying for my undergraduate degree in Natural Science at Cambridge. I found it amazing that scientists could study the biological processes behind the amazing array of thoughts, feelings and experiences that make up our…

Since childhood Ingmar has been fascinated by the notion of machine intelligence. Like many in his field of research (applied artificial intelligence) he was inspired early on by science fiction works such as those by Isaac Asimov. Ingmar attended Aston University in Birmingham to study Electronic Systems Engineering. He then went on to do a…

I can’t remember a time I’ve not been excited by science and maths! The universe is just so amazing and there’s so much we don’t know.  For my tenth birthday I got given a book called ‘The Physical World’ – I loved it, read it cover to cover and decided to study physics from that…

I studied Psychology as an undergraduate, and then joined Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust to gain experience in mental health and in research. The plan was to eventually become a Clinical Psychologist, but I realised after a short while that I really enjoyed the challenges in research, and wanted to keep working in this area.…

At school, Mike Dodd enjoyed biology and chemistry, and had an inspirational teacher who had worked in research. It was therefore an obvious choice for Mike to study biochemistry and follow his passion to become a scientist. While an undergraduate at Bath, Mike travelled to the USA twice for research placements investigating the brain. On…

One of my earliest memories is being totally awestruck and overwhelmed looking at the star filled sky when visiting my grandfather’s house in rural India when I was 5 years old. Since then, I always held studies of the Universe at the back of my mind as something I was very interested in. At school…

Imad Ahmed is an environmental geochemist and an RSC Chartered Chemist (CChem). Before joining the Department of Earth Sciences at Oxford University as research fellow in experimental geochemistry, Imad worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Environmental Magnetism and the Aquatic Chemistry research groups at Lancaster University and at the Environmental Geosciences research group…

Pete is a mathematician contributing to a range of digital analytics concepts and topics including social media, retail, consumer goods, maritime trade and transport, mobile banking/telco, security, and behavioural analytics sectors. He works within emerging economies developing behaviour-based credit referencing; the retail and supply sectors (customer-centred insights); the energy sector and the analysis of customer…

As a child, Elspeth Garman was inspired to get into science by her father and her physics teacher. After school, she taught science and maths in a large girls secondary school in Manzini, Swaziland, Southern Africa, an experience which has since inspired many aspects of her life. While studying physics as an undergraduate at Durham…

Nicola has a peculiar fascination with blood vessels!  Through her research, she hopes to understand how they form in the developing embryo, how they become dysfunctional in disease and how they may (one day) be regenerated to benefit heart failure patients.  After a BSc in Biochemistry at the University of Kent and a PhD investigating…

I did my undergraduate degree in Nutrition at King’s College London, and worked as a nutrition analyst for a private market research company for four years while I did my Masters in Food Policy at City University London. While working and doing my Masters I came up with a method that links food sales data…

I am a social scientist by background and I am interested in interaction and organisation in different kinds of settings. As part of Human Centred Computing at Oxford, I work on projects that investigate the social impacts of new technologies and that seek to identify mechanisms for the improved design, responsible development and effective regulation…

I’m interested in how the planets (and other bodies) in the Solar System formed, evolved and what it is like there at the moment. That’s my science interest, but I am also keen on building things, particularly electronics. I manage to combine these two interests by helping to build scientific instruments that are sent to…

I grew up in Trowbridge, in rural Wiltshire.  I did my undergraduate degree and then D.Phil. in physics at Oxford University. After a brief spell in industry as a Systems Analyst in London, I came back to do a couple of postdocs in Oxford, before a lecturer in the physics department in 1996. My research…

I was born and raised in Hong Kong. I attended Chinese-speaking schools when I was growing up because my parents wanted me to learn the local language. However, since my Filipino parents only spoke English and Tagalog, I couldn’t ask them for help with my homework. I also found it hard to relate to my…

I am a Research Fellow in the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, and am currently finishing up my Ph.D. in psychology and philosophy at Yale. One way I bring these topics together is by studying issues in the philosophy of science as they relate to psychology as a discipline. In…

I am a DPhil student in Condensed Matter Physics, part of the Physics and Application of Soluble Semiconductors group working with Prof Donal Bradley. My main research interests include (i) probing the electronic structure and transport in novel materials for applications in the solar cell, lighting and display technologies, and (ii) studying the interplay of…

Lynda completed her PhD at Bart’s Cancer Institute working on viral gene therapy for cancer and is now a postdoc at the Jenner Institute. Her post-doctoral work has been on the development of adenoviral vectors for cancer gene therapy and more recently as vaccine vectors for infectious disease. She is currently  researching the use of…

I earned my undergraduate (B.S.) degree in applied mathematics from California Institute of Technology and my doctoral degree from the Center for Applied Mathematics at Cornell University. I spent time as a postdoctoral scholar at Georgia Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology (and also briefly at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley,…

I study evolution and behaviour in insects. I’m interested in figuring out answers to questions like: why do males and females evolve different behaviour and morphology? How does the battle of the sexes play out over evolutionary time? How do conflicts of interest get resolved between different individuals – males and females, parents and offspring,…

I was born and raised in a family of nine in a tiny village of Amalo in Rift Valley Kenya. I studied in a local primary school called Lelaibei Primary, which had very limited resources (many teachers couldn’t converse in English even though we were supposed to be taught in English, and our national exams…

I’m an evolutionary biologist and work mostly with big reptiles, like crocs, birds and dinosaurs. I’m one of those annoying people who always knew what they wanted to be, even in kindergarden I’d excitedly peep out “Dinosaur Scientist!”. I went on to do a biology undergrad in Germany, at the University of Göttingen, with a…

Medicine is a great place for subjects to meet: sciences like anatomy, physiology and pharmacology meet statistics and economics, philosophy and law, and you can maintain a huge range of complimentary interests. Since finishing medical school at Oxford, I’ve started training to specialise as a trauma and orthopaedic (bone and joint) surgeon, but I am…

I read for my PhD at Birkbeck College, University of London and received postdoctoral training at University College London, the National Institute of Mental Health, USA and Oxford. My work investigates how improving cognitive abilities and changes in brain function and structure shape emerging social brain networks during development. I am particularly interested in the…

Colin is the Professor of Sleep Medicine at the University of Oxford, where he is Director of the Experimental & Clinical Sleep Medicine research programme, and Clinical Director of the Oxford Online Programme in Sleep Medicine. He is also an Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychology, at the University of Glasgow. He is internationally known for his…

In primary school I really liked the parts of science class that dealt with the planets, objects melting and freezing, and how things moved, behaved and interacted with their surroundings. It was only later in secondary school that I realised that “physics” was the name given to all of these different parts of science that…

I’m Australian and completed both my undergraduate degree and PhD at the University of Sydney.  I came to Oxford in 2012 to work with Professor Tim Softley. I’ve previously held a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Research Fellowship in the Department of Chemistry. I currently hold a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship in the Department of…

My background includes a BSc. in Environmental Science at the University of Sheffield and a PhD from Imperial College before working at the NERC Centre for Population Biology and the University of Zurich. I am interested in biodiversity change – how it is lost, how we can restore it, and the consequences for ecosystems services…

I’ve always been interested in how things work, and as a kid had fun building little robot arms and electronics to connect them to computers. I studied engineering at Cambridge and Imperial College London. I’m concerned about climate change, and a big part of addressing this is to change our energy systems so that we…

I am the Professor of Applied Statistics in the Department of Statistics at the University of Oxford. I am also Professor of Statistical Epidemiology in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London.  At Imperial I am also Associate Director of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis and Deputy Director of the WHO…

Birds have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. When I began writing a personal diary at the age of 6 my first entry was about how I had managed to get very close to a Great Tit by climbing into a tree and spending hours sitting motionless on a branch. At age 10,…

Seth went to Harvard for his BA in computer science and math. After graduating, he spent a few years in Switzerland doing research at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the World Health Organisation. He contributed to global health research on questions including: how many people in the world having hearing loss or are blind?…

Sean completed his undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences at the University of Oxford and recently finished his DPhil in Clinical Medicine at the Jenner Institute. He is currently working at the Jenner Institute as a Post-Doctoral Immunologist working on Malaria Vaccine Clinical Trials amongst other things. The primary aim of Sean’s DPhil project was to…

fter growing up in the garden chasing after wildlife and watching David Attenborough documentaries, I studied Biological Sciences at Oxford for my undergraduate degree. I am now in the final year of a PhD in Interdisciplinary Bioscience looking at evolution and behaviour in fruit flies. In particular, I look at whether being related affects how…

I got interested in the effects of alcohol on the brain for two reasons. First, in my work as a psychiatrist assessing people with memory problems I was aware how frequently people were drinking. Second, the existing research in the area appeared to be contradictory. By that I mean that while really heavy drinking was…

Bryony is a clinical researcher who investigates the experience of hearing voices.  One of the most fascinating aspects of voices for Bryony is the variety of forms that they can take.  Some people for example hear voices that say helpful, interesting or even inspiring things, whilst other voices can be threatening or critical to the…

My research has focussed on the development and evaluation of surgical implants and technologies, including joint replacements, minimally invasive surgery and tissue engineering scaffolds. My patient orientated research has included the development of patient reported scores for the assessment of the outcomes of surgery (the Oxford Scores) and defining the indications for, and ethics of,…

I was born and raised in Zimbabwe and spent most of my childhood exploring nature. After leaving school, I spent a year volunteering for a lion research project in Hwange National Park which convinced me to pursue a career in wildlife conservation. I first studied Conservation Ecology at Stellenbosch University in South Africa and then…

I’m an astronomer who works on understanding how galaxies form and evolve, while also spending time finding exoplanets, supernovae and other unusual things. I run the Zooniverse platform, which invites you all to take part in these projects from the comfort of your sofa, via the web.  My career started with a degree in Cambridge,…

I always thought I was a physicist – with the first name ‘Barley Rose’ I thought studying plants would be too much of a cliché. I took a gap year before uni and was in need of a job, I wanted to do something ‘sciency’ before I started my undergrad and with no physics institutes nearby…

Amanda Cooper-Sarkar first came to Oxford as an undergraduate in 1968, and stayed to complete her DPhil in physics on Kaon-proton (subatomic particles) scattering. After her DPhil, she took on a series of research posts that were more about travel than physics. Starting at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, in Bombay, she went on…

My doctoral research centres on emerging threats to journalists from new internet-connected technologies, which seems natural given that I’ve always been fascinated by both investigations and sci-fi scenarios. My on-going DPhil in Cyber Security here, at Oxford, follows an MA in Science and International Security from King’s College London, a certification from SciencesPo, Paris, and…

After growing up in South Wales spending the majority of my youth on a rugby pitch I attended Oxford University for my medical training where I, quite stereotypically, developed a keen interest in orthopaedics. As a medical student, and during my Junior Doctor years, I worked on orthopaedic research projects focussing on the hip under…

Starting his career in arboriculture as a climbing arborist, followed by almost ten years as a climber on the Tree Team at the National Arboretum, Westonbirt, Ben has spent the last ten years working in the role of Arboretum Curator; curating, developing and managing 130 acres of historic landscapes, meadows and semi-natural woodlands at the Harcourt…

Prof Charles Spence runs Oxford University’s Crossmodal Research Laboratory (http://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/research/crossmodal-research-laboratory). His interests lie in trying to apply the latest insights concerning the multisensory nature of human perception to the real world, in everything from the design of food and packaging, to car warning signals and handheld technologies. He has worked with a number of the world’s…

My parents emigrated from a village in Bangladesh to London, where I was born. I grew up on a council estate there and went to a school where we had one teacher for every subject. My parents divorced, so I moved with my mum and changed schools, while my dad and brother moved to Qatar.…

I received my bachelor’s degree in 1996 from Claremont McKenna College, a small liberal arts college in California. I then read just about everything Stephen J Gould ever wrote over the following three years while wandering the deserts of Turkmenistan and working for an environmental consultancy in Azerbaijan. Deciding that evolution was cooler than oil,…

I studied as a medical student in Cambridge and did my PhD in London at Imperial. I am now  a Consultant Physician in Oxford looking after people living with HIV and I run a research group at the University where we explore the question of how to cure HIV infection. My work is part of…

I am a marine biologist with a passion for the aquatic world. My PhD on the conservation genetics of European seahorses provided valuable information for captive breeding and international monitoring programmes. As principal scientist with Nekton my work broadly focuses on the state of the oceans. This includes among other aspects, documenting biodiversity, connectivity and…

I am a Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience in Experimental Psychology at Oxford. I am Italian in origin but studied in Southern Africa, then St. Andrews, Canada, London, with a brief stint in New York and Nottingham before settling in Oxford a while ago now. I am very interested in what guides our attention, in…

I am an engineer at heart. This started when I was a little boy and would take everything to bits, from telephones to cars – rarely did those things come together again. During my studies I learnt how to be a bit more constructive and build laser processing machines – you can have a lot…

I am a Professor of Statistical Machine Learning at the Department of Statistics of the University of Oxford, a Faculty Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute for Data Science and a Research Scientist at DeepMind working on Artificial Intelligence research. I obtained my Ph.D. at the University of Toronto, and did postdoctoral work at the…

I’ve always been fascinated by the natural world and love being outdoors in general. My childhood dream was to be an astronaut (a hope I’ve still not totally abandoned!), but I began my current career direction after developing a passion for geology at A-level. I followed that up with an undergraduate degree in Earth Sciences…

Dr. Tingting Zhu is a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow and Member of Faculty within the Department of Engineering Science, Oxford. She is an Associate Research Fellow of St. Hilda’s College and a Stipendiary Lecturer at Mansfield College. Ever since she was a child, Tingting has been fascinated about medicine and the study of…

I graduated from Somerville College in 2016 with an Mmath in Mathematics. Whilst writing my fourth year dissertation, entitled The Mathematics of Mary Somerville, Somerville’s passion for acquiring knowledge and awe of nature completely captured my imagination. After reading her honest and candid Personal Recollections (1874), in which she detailed her life as a woman…

I graduated with a BA from Oxford in 1969, and followed this up with a PhD at Bristol University. I held Research Fellowships at Cambridge and then Liverpool Universities, and then was a lecturer at Stockholm University, University College London and Liverpool University before returning to Oxford. My principal research interests lie in understanding social…

As a neuroscientist, I am interested in how the brain works, and particularly how the human visual system can produce the amazingly colourful image that we have of the world. When I was applying to University I had never heard of neuroscience and instead applied to study Psychology and Physiology. It was during this course…

George followed his lifelong passion for the natural world to read Zoology at Edinburgh University. In Edinburgh, he got hooked on evolutionary science and conservation fieldwork in Africa and has remained in academic scientific research ever since. Following Edinburgh, he studied for further research degrees, including a Masters in Conservation and Evolution from Imperial College and…

Jessica Lam always wanted to be an astronaut, but was let down by her eyesight. Staying close to her passion, she chose to study for a degree in Chemical Engineering and Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Many NASA astronauts are MIT alumni, plus MIT had classes and tutorials from people such as…

As an undergraduate, Alan Barr studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge. He chose to specialise in physics as he found biology “too hard”. He spent a summer working at CERN in Switzerland and became hooked. Alan stayed at Cambridge for his PhD, contributing to the development of sensitive detectors for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and…

I was born and raised in Vietnam for the first 15 years of my life. When I was about 6, my favorite thing to do with my best friend was to sneak into the kitchen and mix up all the spices and oils that we could find (don’t tell our parents this secret!). Looking back,…

I have been interested in plants since I was little. And later I heard that there is a place called Kew Gardens in England, where a huge collection of plants from all over the world can be found. Since then, I had always dreamed of visiting Kew Gardens, and enjoying her beauty for all four…

Thomas Woolley became interested in maths as he found it fun and it was a common language across the sciences. But it was during the third year of his Master’s degree that he found his real calling, Mathematical Biology. This discipline uses mathematical tools to unravel mysteries such as how animals get their skin patterns…

I currently study cyber harm propagation in organisational threat intelligence sharing, drawing on law, computer science, and the social sciences. I also have an interest in improving regulatory frameworks surrounding mobile applications marketed to vulnerable populations. I hold a Master of Law from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, and B.A. in Political Science from…

I’ve loved natural history since I was a wee lad, collecting fossils on the beach or looking for bugs on the moors. My favourite part was always geology though, the processes and timescales involved are beyond human imagination. The world has changed so much that, by studying rocks, you can travel to an alien world.…

After completing his degree in Mechatronics Engineering, Clarence went on to pursue a Masters of Science in Biomedical Engineering at Oxford University. During that time, he was exposed to the power of advanced light microscopy and its ability to further the understanding of biology in stem cells. It was during his DPhil at Oxford University…

I grew up in rural Newfoundland in Canada, and always had a keen interest in the natural world around (and above!) and how it all worked. I did my undergrad at Memorial University of Newfoundland in Applied Mathematics and Physics, and worked at the Institute for Aerospace Research and the Institute for Ocean Technology as…

I am originally from Florida, in the United States. In 2010 I received a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Psychology from the University of Miami. My first research position was as a clinical research assistant at Brown University in Rhode Island, USA, where I worked with families of children with asthma and allergic rhinitis. Here…

Siôn Glyn-Jones read medicine at Cambridge and later conducted his clinical attachment in London. Thereafter, he went on to complete his surgical and orthopaedic training in Oxford, where he gained a DPhil. He now works as a Consultant Hip Surgeon in the Adult Hip and Knee Reconstruction Service at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre. He undertakes all…

When I was younger I was constantly asking questions about the natural world and that never really stopped!  I studied Biological Sciences at the University of Oxford and stayed to pursue a PhD here.  As a biologist, I am fascinated by the trillions of bacteria that inhabit our bodies and in particular the ways in…

I am a philosopher at the University of Oxford, based at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. I studied in Italy, at the University of Milan, and I worked for a few years in Australia before coming back to this side of the world. I work mostly in bioethics, which is why most philosophers…

I am a full time DPhil student at Nuffield Department of Women’s and Reproductive Health. My current research examines the pathophysiological mechanisms that cause Gestational Diabetes Mellitus. Despite being the most common metabolic gestational complication, affecting 10% of pregnancies, few women have heard of it before they’re told they have it. One of the most…

I completed my undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Newcastle graduating with 1st Class Honours in 1978. My postgraduate studies were in the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh. In 1983 I joined the Department of Psychology at Nottingham where I established and led the AI Research Group.…

I’ve been interested in aviation and space for as long as I can remember. I’m Australian and trained in medicine at the University of Adelaide, where I developed interests in anaesthetics/critical care and aerospace medicine. Following my early hospital training in Adelaide, I did some training in aerospace medicine at NASA in the US, before…

I’ve always been captivated by animals and the natural world. I decided to become a conservationist after studying Environmental Humanities at Whitman College (USA) and continued to pursue this ambition while I completed my MSc in Conservation Science at Imperial College a few years later. I first became interested in wildlife trade when I worked…

Imagine a never-ending power-cut, or getting a sore throat because your light at home is coming from a kerosene candle. For over 600 million people in Africa, this is the daily reality as they do not have reliable access to electricity, especially in rural communities. I want to help to change that through my research,…

I completed my undergraduate education at University College, Oxford studying chemistry, completing my final year project in Graham Richards’ group.I then went to the University of Cambridge to study structural bioinformatics supervised by Tom Blundell. In 2000 I published my thesis entitled “Protein structure prediction: amino acid propensities and comparative modelling”. Now, my research covers…

Growing up on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay and in the woods of the Appalachian Mountains in Maryland (USA), I have always loved and been fascinated by nature. By the time I enrolled in university at the University of Maryland, I knew that I wanted a career that would allow me to work towards…

As a 6 year old, Jonny had a toy laptop that could only play games like Hangman, Remember the Numbers and the Arithmetic test. Between that, some parental inspiration and a handful of incredible teachers along the way, he got hooked on mathematics. Jonny retained this love of mathematics and studied it at the University…

I have always been a bit of a geek, growing up watching Star Trek! My dream job as a child was to be a scientist – and now I am one! My research focuses on making better images of the Cosmic Microwave Background, which is kind of like the faint afterglow of the Big Bang.…

Alize’s experience in the P450 field started in a previous postdoctoral fellowship in South Africa at the University of the Free State in Martha Smit’s group followed by a year in Prof. Luet Wong in Inorganic Chemistry Department of Oxford University where Oxford Biotrans technology span out. Alize holds a PhD in chemistry from the…

Ross combines his experience fighting bushfires in Australia with an expertise in computer science to create systems which help responders save more lives during crises. He is investigating the power that social media can give to communities in helping themselves recover from disaster. He is currently completing his PhD with the Oxford Department of Computer…

I’ve always loved the beauty and mystery of the natural world, and fascinated by the history of our planet, with its strange past environments and creatures. However as much as I was curious I was also horrified by its destruction and driven to understand why and how it could be prevented. A Natural Sciences degree…

I joined WildCRU in 2014 after completing my first postdoctoral research position and DPhil in Zoology at the Edward Grey Institute of Ornithology, University of Oxford. Prior to my postgraduate studies, I did my B.Sc. in Life Sciences at the National University of Singapore. My passion for the arts and education drives my constant pursuit…

Rick Hamilton completed his PhD on Molecular Electronics in 2003 and immediately joined Merck Chemicals Ltd, where he produced several patents on liquid crystal in-plane switching displays, but then moved into the Polymer Electronics group headed by Iain McCulloch in 2005. Seeing the potential in Organic Photovoltaics he took an opportunity at Imperial College London…

I studied natural sciences specialising in Chemistry at the University of Cambridge as an undergraduate. I then had a couple of years out of science but missed it! I decided I wanted to be in an area of science where I could apply my chemistry to wider-scale, or even planetary-scale, environmental questions so I applied…

I studied Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, where my inspirational tutor at Magdalen College, Brian Bellhouse, encouraged me to seek engineering applications in medicine. I completed a PhD in hip replacement biomechanics at the University of London, co-supervised and given extensive theatre experience by a surgeon, and won an EC Marie Curie Fellowship…

Unlike many palaeontologists, Allie’s love of fossils did not stem from a childhood interest in dinosaurs. While studying Biology during her Bachelor’s degree at Queen’s University in Canada, she took a first year geology course as an elective that convinced her that rocks were cool and the fossils preserved in them fascinating. She quickly switched…

I’ve been interested in exploring the planets ever since seeing TV programmes about NASA’s Viking landers to Mars and the Voyager missions to the outer planets as a child in the 1970s.  However, I never thought I’d actually be able to work on space-stuff like this for a job.  I did a degree in Physics…

I always wanted to be a physicist but growing up in a middle income family in India means that job prospects take first priority, so I did the balancing act of studying Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in the picturesque north-eastern city of Guwahati. There I pursued my research interests independently and…

I am a thin-film material scientist who manages the Centre for Applied Superconductivity, in the Materials Science department at Oxford University. I am also the chair of the LGBT+ advisory group to Oxford University and in 2018 I won the first diversity role model award from the University. I run a youth group for LGBTI+…

My research centres around how to monitor penguins and other marine predators in difficult environments such as Antarctica. Many of the most important environments on the planet are too data deficient to understand the changes occurring there, and the implications for global change, which in turn stalls effective management. I spend a lot of time developing tools and…

Sneha Malde undertook her first degree at Oxford, studying physics. After graduating she started training to be an accountant, but the draw of physics didn’t go away. After a year she returned to Oxford for her DPhil in Particle Physics. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) wasn’t yet built, so her research was conducted as part…

I studied Zoology at Cambridge but always had an affinity for computing since learning to program the ZX Spectrum I got as a Christmas present as a child. I decided to go into software engineering after university and in my early career was involved with the W3C, an organisation founded by Tim Berners-Lee to develop…

Jennifer is the Director of Statistical Consultancy in Department of Statistics at the University of Oxford. She has a BSc in Mathematics and Statistics and a MSc in Statistics, both from Lancaster University, and a PhD from the University of Warwick. Her work is primarily focussed on developing novel statistical methodologies for the analysis of…

I have been interested in the natural world for as long as I can remember. So, studying Biological Sciences as an undergrad was an easy decision to make! During my late teens and my undergraduate degree I became particularly interested in plant ecology and botany, spending time learning to identify plants. After graduating I spent…

What initially got me started was my interest in technology, and my passion for knowing how things work. After finishing high school in Athens, Greece, I attended Cardiff University where I obtained a BEng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Towards the end of my Bachelor’s degree, I realised I wanted to delve deeper into electromagnetism…

When you are a medical student you get to spend time working in each specialty – for example as a heart doctor or a kidney doctor. I did this in London and Cambridge Universities and realised I wasn’t very interested in the heart (it’s basically just a pump) or the kidney (it’s a filter). What…

I always enjoyed the hands-on aspects of science experiments, mechanical gadgets and photography so by the time I went to Oxford university as an undergraduate I felt particularly drawn to learning more about trees; probably due to some distant memory of trees and forests in various children’s books, so plant biology was a natural direction. I…

I am from a family of artists and grew up to think that passion means knowing what you want and going through any walls that separate you from your goal. This made me incredibly melancholic, because I did not know what I wanted, I did not even know what was out there in the world,…

I studied medicine in Edinburgh, and moved to Oxford to train clinically in psychiatry. I became interested in forensic psychiatry after working in secure hospitals and prisons, and have been researching the mental health of prisoners, violence risk assessment, and adverse outcomes in severe mental illness over the past few years as part of a…

I was always a curious child growing up, trying to understand the natural world around me through climbing trees, studying and collecting spiders and watching nature documentaries. My love for nature and the environment continued throughout my schooling and higher education. I studied science at A Level (Physics, Biology and Geography), which enabled me to…

Jane Langdale graduated from the University of Bath in 1982 with a BSc in Applied Biology specializing in microbiology. She went on to do a PhD in Human Genetics at the University of London and then postdoctoral research at Yale University on the molecular and genetic basis of plant development. She returned to the UK…

Prof Simon Hiscock is Director of the University of Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum, and a Professor of Botany in the Department of Plant Sciences. His research focuses on using genetics and genomics to explore the fundamental processes underlying plant reproduction and evolution. He is currently working on the Senecio (ragworts, Asteraceae) and Sorbus (whitebeams,…

My family is from North West India – the Punjab. My father moved to Northern Ireland in 1954 and my mother and brother moved in 1957. I was born in 1959 and went to school in Northern Ireland before going to university in Oxford. My true passion is football and I really wanted to be…

I am a sociologist who studies the social and cultural impact of the Internet. The Internet is one of the most important innovations to emerge in the past half century. It is causing wide changes in British society and culture. I use data from the Oxford Internet Survey to understand how the Internet changes the way…

Inspirational teachers were behind Kit Yates choosing to study maths. He also liked the fact that maths was based on a set of rules that enabled you to solve different problems, rather than having to rote learn facts. Kit came to Oxford as an undergraduate, taking courses in mathematical biology and physiology. He stayed at…

In 2015, Tim left Oxford to take the post of Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research and Knowledge Transfer, at the University of Birmingham. At school, Tim Softley felt there was plenty to learn about Chemistry and they were hardly scratching the surface. He came to Oxford to study Chemistry and found his suspicions were right. After graduating, Tim moved…

From a young age I’ve always been interested in space. I wanted a telescope for my birthday when my friends all wanted bikes. So when it came to choosing my University degree, it was a no brainer for me. I went to Durham University and did my Masters in Physics and Astronomy and then my…

I’ve always been really interested in the natural world. When I was younger, this took the form of spending most of my time outdoors looking for birds, bugs and other wildlife, while my time indoors was often spent reading about local natural history. As I progressed through school, I became more and more interested in…

I’ve always been interested in combining physics and chemistry, and in the area of small scale phenomena where physics and chemistry meet. I did my undergraduate at University College Utrecht (Utrecht University, the Netherlands), where I focussed on physics and chemistry. I then did a masters in the physics of nanomaterials at Utrecht University (the…

I work on understanding how humans and other species differ at the genetic level, and how this reflects events in our past. I’ve developed methods that analyse DNA differences to understand human history, our past movements, and mixing events. I am also investigating the biology of how DNA differences arise, are shuffled during reproduction, and…

I am an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, and a tutorial fellow at St. Catherine’s College. My research focuses on artificial intelligence. My goal is to design, analyse, and evaluate the algorithms that enable computational systems to acquire and execute intelligent behaviour. I’m particularly interested in machine…

Gil McVean is Professor of Statistical Genetics at the University of Oxford and Acting Director of Oxford’s Big Data Institute within the Li Ka Shing Centre for Health Information and Discovery.  After an undergraduate training in Zoology, he worked in Cambridge and Edinburgh on evolutionary genetics before joining Oxford in 2000. His research focuses on…

As a Chemical Engineering graduate of Bath University I have spent my career within the petrochemical and refining sectors, first as a process engineer then transferring to commercial roles such as technical sales, marketing and product management. I became involved with Oxford Sustainable Fuels after meeting with co-founders from Oxford University ICL. After seeing the…

Sooo, I studied Physics at Cambridge University and then went to work in a bank, as you do. After 3 years I decided I wanted to come back to science (part of me had never really left), so next was a PhD in Chemistry at UCL, before moving to Oxford in 2006 to work in…

I moved frequently with my family – I was born in a rural town in China and by the age of 12 had lived in Shanghai, Texas, New York and Beijing. As a child, I was deeply interested in animals and plants. I remember getting a set of encyclopaedias for my 6th birthday, and I…

Barbara is the Director of Lancaster University’s internationally-renowned Centre for Environmental Magnetism & Palaeomagnetism, in the Lancaster Environment Centre. She has a BSc in Geography and a PhD in Environmental Geophysics, both from Liverpool University. In addition to working on past climate records from geological sequences, she uses magnetic methods to resolve environmental processes and…

I received my first degree in botany and biochemistry at the University of the North-West in South Africa and moved to the University of Cape Town for my doctoral studies in Chemical Pathology. Currently, I am a University Lecturer and a tenured Associate Professor of Physiology. Ironically, I have never officially studied physiology, but rather arrived…

Rachel completed her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences at the University of Oxford followed by a DPhil in Clinical Medicine at the Jenner Institute.

I’ve always loved being outdoors and surrounded by nature. From an early age I was fortunate enough to have experiences that taught me that protecting our planet is more than just counting species, or putting up fences, it’s about working with people to find solutions. As an undergrad I studied Environmental Geography and International Development…

Describe yourself in three words Enthusiastic, forgetful, determined. What’s the best thing you’ve ever done in your career? Field trips are always amazing and I’ve been lucky enough to visit Iceland, Oman, Indonesia, Italy and a Greek island, all in the name of geology! Day-to-day, the best feeling is being faced with something I don’t…

Describe yourself in three words Excitable, organized, slight-worrier. What’s the best thing you’ve ever done in your career? As a PhD student you often get to go to conferences all over the world and meet so many different people with new ideas. I have really enjoyed that and enjoyed making amazing new friends. What or…

Tom has studied many aspects of ecology and conservation, driven by a love of wildlife and fieldwork, and his interest in problem solving. For his doctorate he studied populations of water voles at Oxford University, and went on to run a water vole reintroduction programme, resulting in seven new populations in Oxfordshire. He feels that…

I was born and raised in Accra, the capital of Ghana, to a land valuation officer and a travel-ticketing agent. I have three siblings—a sister and two brothers—all of whom I very much adore. I completed my basic education at Redeemer Preparatory and Junior High School (also in Accra), where I was a boarder for…

Quantum physics opens a window to a miraculous world, where extraordinary things happen that cannot be explained by our everyday experience. Things like quantum teleportation sound like science fiction, but they are being realised today in quantum laboratories. If we can harness these exciting phenomena, we can build new technologies that outperform their existing, classical…

I was born in South London, both of my parents are first generation immigrants from Guyana and myself and my two sisters where raised in a traditional Muslim family. I have always had a keen interest in science and often wondered how things worked and why they were a certain way. No doubt inspired our…

Dorothy Bishop was always interested in psychology, although she admits she didn’t know much about it until becoming an undergraduate at Oxford. It was the ability to study psychology using a scientific, experimental approach that ultimately hooked her into making it her career. After graduating, Dorothy undertook an MPhil in Clinical psychology at the Institute…

The brain is the most precious thing we have. It is what defines our social interactions, our dreams, our regrets, our way of perceiving and thinking about the world, and our actions. It is magic to me that brains evolved to question their role in the universe. Being of a rather practical nature, I aim…

I’m an evolutionary anthropologist which means I study the influence that evolution has had upon human behaviour, physiology and anatomy. I am particularly interested in close human relationships: romantic partnerships, close friendships, parent/child bonds and relationships between close relatives. I study relationships using a range of tools encompassing genetics, neuroscience, psychology, behavioural science and physiology.…

My interest in underground construction stems from my long-standing fascination with civil engineering ‘mega projects’ such as Crossrail and the Thames Tideway Tunnel, to take recent examples. I studied Civil Engineering for my undergraduate degree at the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG). In 2014 I joined University of Oxford as a postdoctoral researcher in…

I work on the optical properties of materials at the Clarendon Laboratory, and I am also a Fellow of The Queen’s College, where I am one of two tutors teaching approximately 24 physics students. I have been a permanent member of staff here since 1990. Full details of my teaching and research activities can be found…

Kate Watkins loved the sciences as a student, but wasn’t sure which area to focus on. By choosing to study Natural Sciences at Cambridge, she was able to study many different subjects. During her second year she studied Psychology and was hooked. Following a Master’s in Neurological Sciences, Kate became interesting in the neurosciences and…

Network science is the study of how objects interact with each other. Quite often, even simple behaviour at an individual level can lead to extraordinary complex emergent behaviour across a network. Networks appear everywhere. The way we get around on roads, planes, and trains all can be modelled as a network. Similarly the human body…

I didn’t start off as a scientist – rather I majored in English literature at Tufts University in the states. However, I’ve always been interested in health and healthcare and soon became involved with the Community Health programme at Tufts. My first work on tobacco was a summer job at Tufts in which I abstracted…

I am a Radcliffe Scholar in Plant Sciences reading for a doctorate at the University of Oxford. Restoring our forests is crucial for both mitigating climate change and conserving the biodiversity. However, many trees can hardly track suitable climates and may go extinct or extirpated. My current research incorporates genomic models and climatic scenarios to…

I’m a DPhil researcher in computer science, and a part of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Cyber Security. My research explores the ethical design of smart devices in the home, sitting at the intersection of computer science, philosophy, and design. I study how people make sense of complex technological artefacts, as well as how…

Tim Coulson did his PhD at Imperial College, before conducting post-docs at the Institute of Zoology, London, and the University of Cambridge. He returned to Imperial as a senior lecturer in 2004 and was made Professor of Population Biology four years later. He moved to Oxford as Professor of Zoology in January 2013. Tim’s research…

I studied mathematics (both as an undergraduate and a postgraduate) at the University of York, and then worked in mathematical research for a couple of years before turning full time to the history of mathematics.  I have always been interested in the question of where mathematics comes from, and much of my own research in…

I’ve been interested in how people behave for as long as I can remember.  Apparently, even as a toddler, I would be happiest sitting in a corner trying to observe what everyone was doing.  But although I always thought I would like to study psychology in some form, it wasn’t until I was doing my…

I have always been interested in space and geology, so I am excited to be in a field where I can study rocks on other planets as part of a number of space missions – the LRO, OSIRIS-REx, Comet Interceptor, and Lunar Trailblazer missions. I received my undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis, where…

rom the very early days of investigating the brain we have looked at how damage to different areas of the brain affects how people think, remember, act or feel. Now we also have MRI scans to allow us to peer directly into the brain. I combine these two things, looking at how the brains of…

Hugh Watkins initially trained in medicine, mostly in London but with a spell in Oxford, with the expectation of becoming a full-time clinician. He found that his chosen speciality, cardiology, was an exciting area for clinical practice, but wasn’t very scientific. So he decided to explore his long-standing interest in genetics by training in a…

I grew up in Zimbabwe before completing my Bsc and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. I have been working for the past 10 years in the Cyber Physical Systems group at the University of Oxford, firstly as a postdoc and more recently as an associate professor. I…

I have been fascinated by plants for a long as I can remember. I spent much of my childhood growing bizarre and unusual plants including carnivores and parasites. I have carried this passion with me ever since and I’ve been fortunate enough to see some rare and extraordinary plants in their natural environments. I won…

I was born in Shanghai, China. The majority of my school education took place during the infamous Cultural Revolution. There was no encouragement of academic achievement. Fortunately, the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, when I was 16, and it became normal again for teenagers to study and apply for university places. I entered Fudan University…

Stuart Peirson is an Associate Professor in the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology and a Group Leader in the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute (SCNi). After completing a BSc in Neuroscience at Sheffield University, and a PhD at the Institute of Ophthalmology UCL he moved to Imperial College to work as a BBSRC postdoctoral Research Associate.…

I received my BSc and MSc degree in Artificial Intelligence in The Netherlands, at Radboud University Nijmegen. Even though I was always fascinated by the new technologies and the possibilities that come with them, I was also wary about the downsides they could provide. When an advert for a PhD position came up at the…

I’m a University Research Fellow at the Clarendon Lab in Oxford. I am developing devices — like quantum memories and frequency converters — based on coherent atom-light interactions, with the aim of enabling large-scale quantum photonic information processing.

With interests in subjects as diverse as volcanology and marine biology, Anna decided to study Natural Sciences at Cambridge. Here, she rediscovered a love of genetics, which had interested her at school. Anna carried out projects on Japanese ladybirds and microscopic worms, learning that science often doesn’t allow you to get the right answer first…

Kieran Clarke is Professor of Physiological Biochemistry and heads the Cardiac Metabolism Research Group in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford after joining the University of Oxford in 1991.  Prior to her current appointment, she was a Group Leader for the National Research Council of Canada and an Adjunct…

Victoria grew up in Lesotho and South Africa and has always had a passion for wildlife and protecting the environment. She obtained her B.Sc. Honours degree in biodiversity and ecology from Stellenbosch University, South Africa in 2006 and then went on to do a Masters degree in Integrative Bioscience at Oxford University in 2008. Upon…

I’ve always been a fish geek, being given an aquarium for my 5th birthday and fascinated by the aquatic world ever since.  After finishing with a degree in Natural Resource Management from the University of Wisconsin, I worked as a teacher in the Peace Corps in the West Indies, teaching children about the sea.  After…

My research is about how to take the best quality pictures inside the human brain, using Magnetic Resonance Imaging – MRI.  I’m really privileged to work with some amazing doctors, psychologists, and biological scientists to help them get the very best quality pictures of the what the brain looks like, and how it functions. At…

I took a roundabout route to get to planetary exploration. I was looking for work with my Physics degree which was environmentally responsible and commercially relevant, and this took me to Sydney (Australia) where I got a Masters degree researching double glazing for two years. Although I enjoyed the research environment, I decided glass wasn’t…

I first became interested in neuroscience as an undergraduate student. I discovered a lecture called “Introduction to Neurophysiology” and was completely swept away. The lecturer was a huge advocate for hands-on, lab-based tutorials which meant that I was learning how to do electrophysiology recordings from actual neurons in the first week of term – it…

I am a population ecologist. I was born and raised in Spain, where I attended the University of Cadiz for my BSc in Environmental Sciences. Further academic education took me to the UK for my MSc and the USA for my PhD, in addition to postdocs in Germany and Australia. My fascination for science started…

My research is focused on the development and functions of chloroplasts in plants. Chloroplasts are the subcellular organelles responsible for photosynthesis – the process whereby sunlight energy is harnessed to power the cellular activities of life. Consequently, chloroplasts are of vital importance, not just to plants, but (owing to trophic dependencies, and agriculture) to the…

I am a marine biologist fascinated by the largest environment on planet Earth: the oceans. As a student, I gained a broad knowledge on all aspects of Biology during my Bachelor’s degree at the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, then focused in Aquatic Sciences during my Master’s at University College of London (UCL), before specialising in Marine…

I started out studying Physics at the University of Southampton, and followed that up by working offshore as a Geophysical engineer for a couple of years. I wasn’t satisfied with that career path however, and so I turned my attention back to science and research, and after attending some IoP conferences, I became very interested…

I have always been interested in nature, growing up in rural Sussex. I did an undergraduate degree at Oxford in Pure and Applied Biology, which was very interesting because it combined core subjects like evolution and animal behaviour with really applied topics in agriculture and forestry. For my PhD at Imperial College London I worked…

Hindolo is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Energy and Power Group, within Oxford’s Department of Engineering Science. He comes from an Electrical and Uncertainty Engineering background and enjoys applying his assorted skill set to building and maintaining reliable power systems. As a kid, Hindolo wanted to become a Catholic Priest but later developed a knack…

Diogo Veríssimo is an Oxford Martin Fellow focusing on the design and evaluation of behavior change interventions to tackle the demand for illegal wildlife products. His research interest are at the intersection of social marketing and conservation science, with a strong focus on understanding human motivations and influencing human behavior towards more sustainable outcomes. Diogo…

“Professor Przybylski is an experimental psychologist and Director of Research at the Oxford Internet Institute. His work is mainly concerned with applying psychological models of motivation and health to study how people interact with virtual environments including video games and social media. He is particularly interested in integrating open, robust, and reproducible science with evidence-based…

As a geography teacher I always wanted to equip students with the skills and knowledge to look at the world around them, ask questions about it and begin finding answers. As links between climate change and human involvement became more clearly identified and that solutions to the problems it was causing needed finding, I decided…

The fascination of artificial intelligence and the ability of computers to “predict” the future, based on data, has been with me since school – machine learning has much to offer society, and “intelligent” systems offer the potential to address many of the problems affecting the modern world. Dr. Clifton is a tenure-track member of faculty…

My research focusses on Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, which are diseases where brain cells get sick and die. In particular, I study the role of microglia (a type of brain cell) and whether we can improve their function using drugs. My work uses human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), made by reprogramming adult skin…

After my A-Levels, I faced the challenging question of what to study at university. One of the first topics that came to mind was computer science. Computing was not a topic I had the experience of studying before, but it was one that always piqued my interest; particularly the part about building cool applications! I…

I am a laboratory astrophysicist who uses high-powered lasers to create scaled astrophysical objects such as supernovas to unravel the mysteries behind the origin of magnetic fields in our universe.  However, if you asked me ten years ago, I would have never guessed that I would be a physicist!  I have been an artist all…

I study why females fight, which I first got interested in because it seemed like most science only focused on why males fight. So really, it’s a feminist project. During my DPhil in Zoology at Oxford, studied how female stalk-eyed flies use exaggerated traits during fights, and how mating affects female fruit fly aggression. Before…

I studied theoretical physics in Maynooth University, Ireland, and while I loved learning about science, I realised that a life as a researcher was not for me. I did love talking about science, and realised that this could be a job – so, after my degree, I did a Masters in ‘Science Communication’ at Dublin…

I think that I have always liked finding out how things work, and while I was at university (I went to Cambridge to study natural sciences) it seemed to me that trying to figure out how cells work would be a really interesting and useful way to spend my time. I was lucky to be…

As a teenager, Michele Paulatto became curious about how the Earth and the Universe work, so chose to study physics and geophysics at the University of Trieste in Italy. During this time he became fascinated by volcanoes. In 2007 Michele came to the UK to study for a PhD at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.…

Kylie has always been fascinated by how cells function, and to get a deeper understanding she studied Chemistry at the University of Melbourne and is now applying chemical techniques to address questions in biology. Her group are particularly interested in bacteria that live on hydrogen gas as their energy source and what they can teach…

I am an electronics engineer and scientist working on the improvement of solar energy generation. Climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time and I firmly believe that we must do everything possible to achieve a low-carbon future. This is why I am committed to working on materials and technologies that can…

My research aims to understand how climate change may affect animal communities in tropical forests, our richest and highly threatened ecosystems. In particular I look at insects, which are the majority of animal life on Earth and perform many functions integral to healthy ecosystems. Insects are the most fascinating group to me and have enabled…

I actually first became interested in the science behind the weather during geography lessons at school. I thought it was really neat how we could explain, and therefore predict, how something so tangible as a cloud could come into being. I did some research, and to my delight found that in order to become a…

My early research was as a member of the Work Interaction and Technology (WIT) Centre at King’s College London.  It was here that my work was at a very local level of consideration, through a workplace studies approach (informed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis). My PhD focused on unpacking the interactional accomplishments underpinning the management of a…

While studying maths for my undergraduate and masters degrees at Cambridge, I was always interested in practical applications of the maths that I learned. This is what led me to do a PhD in machine learning at Oxford. My current research interests fall broadly under scaling up probabilistic inference, that is, methods of learning probabilistic…

Alison is an Associate Professor in the Biochemistry Department at the University of Oxford where she leads a research team working on the genetics of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. Her current work concerns molecular mechanisms of cell fate determination and morphogenesis during C. elegans development, as well as research on mechanisms of biological ageing. Alison is also very…

Describe yourself in three words Ginger cat enthusiast. What’s the best thing you’ve ever done in your career? Four years on the most exciting thing is still when I attended a planetary science meeting to discuss where to send the European Space Agency’s next rover to Mars. I’ll never forget the thrill of being fresh…

Professor Kia Nobre left her hometown of Rio de Janeiro with great ambivalence to study at a liberal arts college in the United States. She had wanted to study science from a young age, but wasn’t sure what area. It wasn’t until she took a college course on ‘brain and behaviour’ that she found an…

I was always interested in and good at Maths and Science, so was inclined towards a scientific discipline from a young age. My father is a Mechanical Engineer, so I was exposed to the field from early on. In primary school, we learned about Roberta Bondar, the first Canadian woman in space and that’s where…

I have a background in mathematics (Canterbury University, New Zealand), and now I am a computational scientist at Oxford specialising in human genetics (Wellcome Centre, Human Genetics).  The DNA of modern humans contains lots of information about demographic history, and my work involves using statistical and computational techniques to uncover this information from genetic data.…

I grew up in Madurai, a small town in the state of Tamil Nadu, Southern India. From my childhood, I was always amazed by nature and intrigued by how some bacteria can be beneficial and some can cause disease in both animals and plants. During secondary school, I was fascinated by biological sciences and enjoyed…

I work in the department of Quantum Nanoscience at the TU Delft and am fellow of Linacre College, Oxford. I experimentally study single-molecule devices and am keen to find out how efficiently a single molecule could convert (waste-) heat into usable electricity.

I did a maths degree at Oxford but I got increasingly interested in applying maths to other areas of science as I learned more about how seemingly simple equations can explain so many aspects of how things work.  Maths is a good background for studying all sorts of science, as a lot of it is…

I like to call myself a research engineer because I pride myself that I work on real-life engineering projects e.g Bloodhound SSC or Formula 1 but I also try to undertake novel research to bring new methods and ideas to the engineering design process. I did all my studies at the University of Manchester (undergrad…

Malcolm John grew up in Penzance, west Cornwall. He had an early interest in maths and physics, which he studied at A level. He moved to Imperial College, London, for his degree in physics, and stayed to complete a PhD. His research area was the initial stages of the LHCb experiment. This is now a…

My parents are of Indian heritage. My dad was born in Uganda and arrived in the UK in 1972 as a refugee after the expulsion of South Asians from Uganda. My mum was born in India and met my dad while visiting a friend in the UK. They married and settled just outside London, where…

My name is Nacho and I come from Avila, a little town up the mountains in central Spain. For my undergrad, I did biology and Biochemistry in Madrid but I decided my thing was to be in the field and not in the lab. My main interest is conservation science and research although I have…

Ever since I was little, I have wanted to be an archaeologist. As soon as I was old enough, I went on archaeological excavations uncovering artefacts buried deep in the ground for hundreds of years. In secondary school I began to really enjoy science, and I even wrote a book review on genetics in archaeology.…

I became interested in visual neuroscience after a conference I attended whilst studying my A Levels. Before coming to Oxford for my DPhil, I studied my integrated masters at the University of York. So far since starting here I’ve helped run public engagement events in the Natural History Museum with my department. For part of…

I originally studied Physics at Durham University before working in the oil industry as a field engineer. I got to travel and work in some amazing places, including rain forests in Indonesia, deserts in the Middle East, and offshore in the North Sea. I’d always wanted to continue my studies so eventually left the oil…

Mat Charles studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge, sidestepping biology by choosing Maths with Physics. He focused on particle physics in his final year, including a research project using data from the Large Electron-Positron collider at CERN in Switzerland. Hooked on the subject, he moved to Oxford for his DPhil, helping to prepare the LHCb experiment…

My main area of interest lies in the development of medical devices, and their translation from research concept to the clinic, where they have the potential to help improve patient outcomes. I have a research background in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine – which I studied at Sheffield University – and previous industry experience in…

I have always been fascinated by how and why things work. In particular, when I was at school, I was interested in engines and fuels; but the engineering answers I was given didn’t always satisfy my curiosity, so I started looking into the chemistry of the fuels themselves – this led me to studying Chemistry…

I grew up in a family of eight in Kumasi, Ghana, and they currently live in Accra. Each of us is unique, so home was very lively with lots of laughter. Perhaps, what we share in common is our deep-rooted faith and love for music. Almost everyone has been a chorister at some point. I…

Before coming to Oxford in 2012, I studied Engineering and Economics at TU Kaiserslautern (Germany) and joined both Lancaster University’s InfoLab21 and Lufthansa AG as a visiting researcher, where my love of aviation was rekindled. I now research the security of large systems at Oxford’s Department of Computer Science, focusing in particular on aviation and…

immune system fights back. This process seemed to me almost like a finely orchestrated game of wits! I went on to do my PhD in immunology from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India. Here, I studied the immune consequences of infection by Salmonella, a microbe that can cause a multitude of diseases from…

My main research interests are in the development of medical devices that support the repair of damaged or diseased biological tissues such as tendons and ligaments. I graduated as a bioengineer from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium) in 2007 and then obtained my DPhil in tissue engineering at the Engineering Science Department of the…

Christine completed a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Paris V University (CNRS) on isolation and characterization of a novel cDNA expressed during the neuroretina development. She was trained in cancer biology for 4 years as a post-doctoral fellow in the Cancer Research UK unit of Prof. A.L. Harris at the WIMM in Oxford.…

Eleanor Stride obtained her BEng and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from University College London, where she subsequently appointed to a lectureship and a Royal Academy of Engineering and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Research Fellowship. In 2011 she was awarded an EPSRC Challenging Engineering grant and joined the Biomedical Ultrasonics, Biotherapy and Biopharmaceutical…

I received my PhD in Neuropsychology (summa cum laude, direct track) from the Ben-Gurion University in 2007, and I focused mainly on humans understanding of numbers. How do we perceive numbers, and what brain regions are involved in such process. I had my postdoctoral training at University College London where I expand my skills to…

I studied Engineering at Oxford University. Whilst this is a general engineering course, the part that interested me the most was biomedical engineering. Running is my passion and I soon realised that I could combine my work with my hobby by specialising in the field of biomechanics (looking at the way that people move). I…

I grew up in the little fishing town of Kilkeel in County Down, at the foot of the Mourne Mountains.  I did my undergraduate degree and then a Ph.D. in astrophysics at Cambridge, and after postdocs at the Royal Greenwich Observatory and the Cavendish Laboratory I came to Oxford as a lecturer in the physics…

Tom is a Mathematician at the University of Oxford where he holds the position of Early Career Teaching and Outreach Fellow at St Edmund Hall. He also runs the award-winning website tomrocksmaths.com and associated social media profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube @tomrocksmaths. Tom was featured as YouTube’s ‘Creator on the Rise’ in December 2020. Tom regularly appears on the BBC, Oxplore – Oxford University’s digital outreach portal, and Numberphile –…

My work involves developing particle detectors and other kit for experiments such as the ATLAS project at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. I always loved playing with instruments, computers and electronics. When I began my physics degree at Durham University, I assumed I would end up working in industry, but along the way I…

My passion for Geology began at school in the Mendip Hills where I collected fossils and minerals. After school, I completed a BSc. in Geology and Physics at University College, London and a Ph.D in Geophysics at the University of Durham. My research project at Durham involved a study of the sea floor and what…

Alan Winfield is Professor of Robot Ethics at the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol. After spending his childhood taking radios to pieces, he studied electronic engineering at the University of Hull. After completing his PhD in Digital Communications in 1984, he then co-founded and led APD Communications Ltd until taking-up appointment at UWE, Bristol in 1992. Alan…

I was obsessed with animals from childhood and was very lucky to have a parent that happily indulged my passion. It was a logical choice to study Zoology when I finished school, and I graduated from the University of Southampton with a BSc in Zoology in 2011 before completing an MRes in Ecology, Evolution, and…

My passion for physics started in the last two years of high school thanks to the amazing outreach work lead by the Physics teacher at the time. Following that, I pursued Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Matter Physics at University of Rome La Sapienza.  During that time I developed the interest for optics and its…

I first became interested in science while working for the Canadian Army as an infantry reservist.  I was 19 years old and had the fortune of working alongside civilian scientists on an anti-chemical warfare exercise. I was inspired by the relevance that science plays on our ability to protect civilians. In 2015 I received my…

I have always been fascinated by the Polar Regions – the harsh but beautiful landscapes, the epic stories of human exploration, and – most of all – the animals that find their home there. These creatures don’t just survive in their environment, they thrive in it, perfectly adapted to the conditions. For my DPhil, which…

I am Professor of Human Centred Computing in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford. I lead an interdisciplinary research group looking at how to build computing systems responsibly to support human, societal and environmental values. I lead projects investigating bias in algorithms and developing trust in online platforms. I am also co-director…

I am a PhD student studying plant immunology and agricultural biotechnology. My work focuses on the use of essential oils as biocides against bacterial plant pathogens. I am also passionate about science education, communication, and outreach.

My background is fairly mixed and international. My father is Iranian, my mother is Irish and I was born in Sweden. We moved around a lot when I was younger but we eventually settled in Gloucestershire when I was 7. I went to a big secondary school (with over a thousand students). I really enjoyed…

How did I become the person I am today? Since high school I have been curious about the various factors that influence and shape an individual’s self-concept. Wanting to learn about what makes an individual unique from others I decided to study psychology at Goethe University Frankfurt. At the beginning of my undergraduate studies, whilst…

At school, Dianne Newbury was unsure of her future career path, but she found genetics fascinating and decided to study it at Nottingham University. Dianne didn’t really excel at practical lab work until her final year, when she found that working on a real project, where there was flexibility to explore rather than following a…

As a DPhil candidate in Philosophy, I am based at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. During my undergraduate studies in biology and anthropology at the Australian National University, I took an amazing class in bioethics, and discovered a love for asking the big “should” questions about scientific developments—from new reproductive technologies, to organ…

I’m a mathematician who applies maths to cancer and medicine – I didn’t even realise that existed when I was at school! I studied Maths and Philosophy at the University of Southampton and became interested in applied maths there, but I always thought that “applying maths” to real world problems meant “doing some sort of…

One of the most intriguing and complex things for me are other people. I have always wanted to learn about what makes us humans human. Therefore, I started an undergraduate programme in Psychology at Maastricht University to learn about the complexity of human behaviour, but also its underlying neurological processes. However, one other, maybe quite…

I was drawn to science after learning about the ‘plastic’ nature of the brain and its implications for brain ageing. This organ undergoes a number of changes to its structure and function as we get older, which appear to be responsible for the changes in cognition (e.g. memory) that are commonly reported by older adults.…

I was always interested in animals and fascinated by animal behaviour. After a PhD at Cambridge University studying parental care in saltmarsh beetles, I switched to pheromones, the invisible chemical signals between animals. I am exploring how pheromones evolve, across the animal kingdom. In 2017 I published ‘Animal Behaviour: A Very Short Introduction [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/animal-behaviour-a-very-short-introduction-9780198712152]’ (Oxford…

Heidi was not interested in science at school but was interested in human behaviour.  She went to the University of Oxford to study Psychology and Philosophy and realised that to understand human behaviour you had to understand how the brain works.  This led her into neuroscience and she now uses brain scanners to study how…

Initially I went to university with ideas of becoming a journalist, embarking on a Joint Honours degree in English Literature and Psychology at the University of Glasgow in 2004. However, it became clear early on that my passion really lay with psychology and that became my focus. Probably my motivation for both these subjects stems…

I started my career as an engineer graduating with a PhD in Engineering from the UCLouvain in Belgium. During my PhD, I became a research fellow at Harvard Medical School – an affiliation I have kept since. My research focussed on the development of brain imaging technologies to better understand neurological and psychiatric illnesses. As…

Kevin Foster is Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Oxford and is based between the Department of Zoology and Department of Biochemistry. After an undergraduate in Zoology at Cambridge, he worked in a number of Universities around the world, most recently Harvard, before coming back to Oxford in 2010. His lab combines ecological…

I have always been absolutely fascinated by the fact all the information required to build a human being is contained in a four-letter code. This completely blew my mind when I first heard of DNA at school, and twenty years later, the complexity and beauty of it still captivates me. Following this interest, I read…

I received my undergraduate and masters degrees in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Brescia, Italy, where I started being interested in multi-phase flows and heat transfer. Those two topics were the core of my PhD research, at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. My PhD research focused on developing a cooling system for micro-electronics using evaporative…

I’m fascinated by how and why our brains over-remember the memories we most want to forget. I studied at the University of Toronto, diving deep into theories of how the brain makes memories and then overplays unwanted memories. This got me interested in post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, the severe stress reaction that afflicts soldiers and…

I always was interested in science and biology which resulted in me doing a bachelors degree in Animal genetics at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, and two Masters degrees – one in Biomedical Sciences (University of Westminster) and one in Forensic Medical Sciences (Bart’s and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry). However, viruses were always…

During his undergraduate physics degree at Imperial College, London, Andrew developed a passion for instrumentation and fundamental physics. He gained research experience in the University’s High Energy Physics group and as a summer student at CERN in Switzerland. He found the research fascinating and moved to Oxford to undertake a DPhil. Andrew’s DPhil research centred…

I’m a PhD student here at the University of Oxford, working between the Earth Sciences and Astrophysics departments. I grew up in Birmingham, and my mum’s from India (but grew up in Canada) and my dad’s from Sri Lanka (but grew up in Brunei). I’m one of those terribly cliched people who’s been interested in…

As an 8 year old, Georgie received a chemistry kit and started running her own experiments, using her sister as an assistant.  The kit led to a further interest in science, eventually taking Georgie to Edinburgh to study biochemistry.  But it wasn’t until studying for a Masters that she discovered a particular passion for malaria…

My pathway to what I do now is a varied one, but there has always been an interest in science communication, particularly to young people. Following a degree in biological sciences in Oxford, I went on to complete an MSc in Forestry and then worked in international climate change policy for a number of years.…

I chose chemistry as a career partly because, when I was a schoolboy at a state school in rural Somerset and when I was a student both at Oxford University and at Imperial College London, I had wide interests – especially in chemistry, mathematics and geology. Becoming a physical chemist has allowed me to be active in…

David Pyle was first captivated by volcanoes at the age of seven, while sitting on the freshly erupted deposits of Villarica volcano in Chile. At university, David studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge. He first specialised in geology and later, for his PhD, in volcanology. After completing research fellowships at Cambridge and the California Institute of…

I studied Zoology at Sheffield and, after working as a research assistant and postman, took up a PhD on sexual conflict in fruit flies at University College London. I was fascinated by the idea that reproduction involves differences of interest between partners, and that these conflicts can drive rapid evolutionary change, and even help instigate the…