Darwin Community Appointments and Awards

Congratulations to the Fellows listed below:

Professor Christopher Bishop is a Microsoft Technical Fellow and Laboratory Director of the Microsoft Research Lab in Cambridge. He is also Professor of Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh, and a Fellow of Darwin College. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. In April he was appointed to the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology.

Professor Andy Fabian is an Emeritus Fellow and former Vice-Master of Darwin College. He has been awarded the 2020 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, one of the world's most prestigious science prizes.  The Prize was awarded for his pioneering research and persistence in pursuing the mystery of how black holes influence their surrounding galaxies on both large and small scales.

Dr Georgios Hadjidemetriou is a Darwin Postdoctoral Research Associate; he is the 2020 winner of the Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing Postdoctoral Awards for Research Excellence. Georgios is currently working on the SAFEWAY project – A GIS-based infrastructure management system for optimised response to extreme events on terrestrial transport networks which aims to address the ability of transport systems to function during challenging circumstances and quickly recover to acceptable levels of service after extreme events. 

Congratulations to our Alumni listed below:

Dr Sudarsanam Babu is an alumnus of Darwin (1988, Materials Science), and was supervised by Darwin Fellow, Professor Sir Harry Bhadeshia. He has been appointed to a key US Administration post. The announcement was made by the White House on 20 April 2020. Dr Babu, of Tennessee, has been made a Member of the National Science Board for a six-year term.

Dr Marzia Munafò is an alumna of Darwin (2016, Medical Sciences) and has been awarded the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute Graduate Student Thesis Prize. During her studies, she investigated how piRNAs are produced and how they protect the genome from harm, using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism. This work advances our understanding of how the cells respond to external threats and how they evolve novel molecular functions.

Dr Cecily Morrison is an alumna of Darwin (2006, Computer Science) and has been appointed MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list for services to inclusive design. Dr Morrison is a principal researcher at the Microsoft Research Lab in Cambridge.

Congratulations to the student listed below:

Mr Daniel Kottmann is a PhD student at Darwin College and the Department of Medicine. He has received an Outstanding Contribution to Education Award from the Cambridge University Centre for Teaching and Learning. His team was highly commended in the Innovation Practice category for their work with the Cambridge MedTech Foundation, where Daniel substantially contributed to develop the Innovation Programme, an educational programme to introduce students to medical device development.