Report on Junior Research Fellowships

Junior Research Fellows’ Activities

As ever, Somerville has a vibrant population of Junior Research Fellows (JRFs), competitively appointed postdoctoral researchers from a wide range of fields. I’m pleased to report that since the relaxation of the pandemic restrictions our JRFs have grabbed the opportunity to form an active community that particularly enjoys getting together for dinner in the Private Dining Room in College every Wednesday. Our JRFs are all doing excellent research covering a number of different fields. What follows are a few highlights drawn from annual reports submitted to the College.

Susan Dunning is a Fulford JRF working in Classics; her research project is ‘Humans As Gods in the Roman World’. She has been awarded a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies and will be their Barrington Foundation Centennial Fellow in Classics this coming year. She looks forward to returning to Somerville from maternity leave this autumn.

Charlotte Albury works in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences (conveniently located next door to Somerville in what used to be the Radcliffe Infirmary outpatients building). Charlotte’s primary focus is on language use and conversational patterns that clinicians can use that are likely to support people who attend weight-loss services. Charlotte is also involved in a new project aiming to develop a new intervention to support type 2 diabetes remission. In addition to this, Charlotte has been working with the Behavioural Insights Team providing methodological advice and training, and with the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust training their research teams in qualitative methods. Charlotte has recently been awarded ‘Principal Investigator of the Year’ by the Society for Academic Primary Care.

Yvonne Lu works at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering in the Department of Engineering Science. Yvonne’s research focuses on using machine learning to provide engineering solutions to monitor patients with chronic health conditions. Yvonne has received a three-month grant to employ a PostDoctoral Research Assistant (PDRA) of her own from the Oxford John Fell Fund (£4,600, PI) and a one-year Industrial fund (£10,000, CI) from the Royal Academy of Engineering. Yvonne is leading a clinical trial at the John Radcliffe Women’s Centre for women with diabetes during their pregnancy. Yvonne has had two Somerville interns, whom she describes as ‘amazing’, in the summer of 2021. One intern did brilliant work on asthma patient monitoring. A joint paper has been accepted by IEEE Sensors, one of the top journals in this area. Apart from research, she is active in public engagement, outreach events, and enthusiastic in serving our Somerville community. For the past year, Yvonne has been a JRF representative at Somerville’s Governing Body.

Hussam Hussein works in the Department of Politics and International Relations, focusing on analysing possibilities for transboundary resource management in the Jordan and Nile basins. Hussam has also looked at how transboundary freshwater agreements change over time and the political economy of water scarcity in the Middle East. Hussam has made successful applications for funding from the University’s John Fell Fund and from the Council for British Research in the Levant.

Georgia Drew works in the Zoology Department (soon to combine with the Department of Plant Sciences to form the Department of Biological Sciences). Georgia’s work focuses on the evolution of host-microbe interactions. Georgia’s laboratory experiments explore the relative effectiveness of a model host’s immune response to a pathogen and the protection afforded by a microbial agent. Georgia will soon start a science communication project, which will combine a public biology lecture and art exhibition to highlight all the fantastic things microbes do (from serotonin synthesis to crop growth promotion). The project ‘Unseen workers: the beneficial roles of microbes’ has secured its first chunk of funding (thanks to the British Ecological Society) and will take participants on a visual, acoustic and literary journey through the microbial world.

Joel Alves has been awarded two research grants. The first grant was awarded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust and will focus on the use of genetics and archaeology to study the intertwined history of rabbits and ferrets. The second grant was awarded by the Oxford John Fell Fund and aims to investigate the evolution of camouflage in the Australian desert. He has also been a co-author of a publication in The Science of Nature journal (https://link.springer.com/ article/10.1007/s00114-022-01804-x) studying the effect of apex predators on ecosystems, and has had a major first author publication accepted at PNAS studying the biological invasion of Australia by rabbits. He has been leading the team that is building the first Ancient DNA laboratory in Portugal at CIBIO Institute as the result of the European-funded Biopolis project (https://www.biopolis.pt/en/). Finally, he has established a collaboration between Biopolis and one of the major Portuguese newspapers (Público) to create a journalistic project on Environment and Sustainability with a dedicated team of ten journalists (https://www.publico.pt/azul), to improve scientific communication and outreach to the general public.

Shobhana Nagraj works in the Nuffield Department of Medicine, pursuing a range of research interests linked by