THE COLLEGE RECORD I
FELLOWSHIP ELECTIONS
Official Fellows
John Orr has been elected to an Official Fellowship from June 2018. He is an EPSRC Early Career Fellow and University Lecturer in Concrete Structures. He graduated in Civil Engineering from the University of Bath in 2009 and completed a PhD ‘Flexible Formwork for Concrete Structures’ in 2012. He became a lecturer in 2013 before moving to the University of Cambridge in 2017. John’s research has its focus in minimising embodied energy and improving construction productivity. He works primarily in concrete structures, creating new methods for analysis, optimisation, and automation of their construction. He leads several interlinked research projects. To ensure optimisation is undertaken in a reliable manner, John leads EP/M020908/1 (£1.1M) a fiveyear project to develop ‘peridynamics’ as a mesh-free analysis method for reinforced concrete. He also leads WP3 ‘Construction Solutions’ in the EPSRC project ‘Healthy Housing for the Displaced’ (EP/P029175/1 £1.6M) which has the fundamental aim of creating a new science of shelter design for the 1 billion displaced people on our planet.
Sarah Atkins has been elected to an Official Fellowship from September 2018. She remembers picking pears in the Fellows’ garden in 2002 when she came up to Magdalene to read Theology. The pear tree is no more, but Sarah is more surprised than anyone that the fruit of her time as a student is that she should now serve as Chaplain (unless the illicit pear episode disqualifies her). She grew up in Dorset and on Dartmoor, attending village schools and a large comprehensive before coming to Cambridge. Work in schools, offices, and Ghanaian and Cambridgeshire churches led to ordination training at Ridley Hall and then a curacy at nearby Trumpington. She is married to Gareth, whom she met at Magdalene in the Chapel Choir, and they have two small children, Anna and Adam. She enjoys music, theology and the arts, gardening, and picnics in all weathers. But most of all she loves sharing life with others.
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