The prizes were presented by Professor Graham Virgo, Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education.

Professor Virgo said: “We are extremely proud of the outstanding education we deliver at Cambridge. The prizewinners showcase many of the qualities that make Cambridge teaching exceptional. From creative curriculum design to engagement with world-leading research, from support for outreach and inclusivity to careful and committed personal attention in supervisions, our students have benefitted immensely from the imagination and dedication shown by the recipients of this year’s awards.”

This year’s ceremony was held at Girton College, which is celebrating two anniversaries: 150 years since its foundation as the UK's first residential College for women to study in higher education and 40 years since the College became co-educational. 10 Girton Fellows have previously been awarded Pilkington Prizes.

The 2019 Pilkington Prize winners are;

Dr Ruth Abbott, Faculty of English

A three-time winner at CUSU’s student-led teaching awards, Dr Abbott’s students attest to the life-changing experience of being taught by her. She is deeply committed to outreach, diversity and equality, and has worked tirelessly to make teaching spaces safe and enabling.

Professor Catherine Barnard, Faculty of Law

Professor Barnard consistently receives outstanding feedback from the 200+ students who take her compulsory core course on European Union law every year. There is a strong synergy between her world-leading research and her teaching, and she also undertakes extensive public engagement, particularly in relation to Brexit, on which she is a sought-after commentator.

Dr Cecilia Brassett, Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience

As the University Clinical Anatomist, Dr Brassett has pioneered the innovative use of technology to supplement traditional dissection demonstrations in the teaching of anatomy. She has also led the creation of a new Biological and Biomedical sciences module within the Natural Sciences Tripos, undertaken extensive teaching and examination duties, and engaged in vital public engagement and outreach work through the Festival of Ideas and working with the Sutton Trust.

Dr Manali Desai, Department of Sociology

Dr Desai has helped to deliver improvements in teaching at every level in the department, from slight adjustments in classroom delivery to macro-level reforms of the curriculum. She works on a continuous feedback basis, incorporating immediate change where possible, and working creatively and collaboratively to plan and deliver larger reforms where necessary.

Dr Sonja Dunbar, Department of Plant Sciences

Dr Dunbar is not only an outstanding and dedicated teacher herself, she is also committed to improving the educational experience of all students in her department. She has undertaken research into how students access scientific papers (which is now informing departmental practices), introduced new teaching methods, led course reform, revised teaching materials, and personally recruited and trained supervisors to ensure students receive teaching of outstanding quality.

Dr Midge Gillies, Institute of Continuing Education

As Institute Teaching Officer in Creative Writing, Dr Gillies is remarkably skilled at adapting her teaching to the diverse needs and experiences of students in continuing education, acting as expert tutor and critical friend to learners from a wide range of backgrounds and with a wide range of writing projects. She is a driving force for change, helping bring new courses and projects to fruition, in particular the new University of Cambridge Centre for Creative Writing.

Dr Jessica Gwynne, Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy

Dr Gwynne has revolutionised teaching in her department, helping to make Materials Science one of the most popular options in the Natural Sciences Tripos. She has a passion for helping students to reach their full potential, and plays an energetic role in all aspects of departmental teaching, including lecturing on a wide range of subjects, course coordination, examining, outreach, and training and motivating staff involved in teaching.

Dr Cesare Hall, Department of Engineering

Dr Hall was voted best Part 1A lecturer in his department for two years running, and is known for his fun and accessible thermodynamics lecturers featuring live experimental demonstrations. His research, on new propulsion technology to reduce emissions from aircraft, features heavily in his teaching. He is also committed to access and outreach and regularly delivers engineering masterclasses and admissions talks.              

Dr Liz Hook, Department of Pathology

Dr Hook has transformed Clinical Pathology teaching from a traditional lecture-based course into an interactive, clinically-integrated programme featuring innovative e-learning modules and a new exam structure with practical assessment. She receives glowing student feedback for her engaging teaching.

Dr Nikku Madhusudhan, Institute of Astronomy

Dr Madhusudhan introduced a novel course on the theory of extrasolar planets which has no precedent in Cambridge or elsewhere. He used a combination of the latest research literature, innovative pedagogical techniques, web-based tools and his engaging lecturing style to create a very successful course receiving excellent student reviews. He regularly goes above and beyond for his students with extra supervisions, careers guidance, and special consideration for inclusive teaching.

Dr Laura Moretti, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Dr Moretti’s innovative approach to her flagship course in Classical Japanese has resulted in a dramatic increase in students opting for the paper. She is equally fervent in developing educational opportunities for younger scholars and professionals, students in Japan and the general public, and has developed and run multiple summer schools in Asian and Japanese studies for different audiences.

Professor Anna Philpott, School of Clinical Medicine

Professor Philpott has conceived, designed and implemented a highly innovative MRes/PhD programme in cancer biology and medicine which substantially extends the reach of graduate teaching in this important and cross-cutting discipline at Cambridge. Throughout her career she has championed diversity and has sought in particular to mentor younger female trainees, to encourage them to reach their full potential.

Professor Simone Teufel, Department of Computer Science and Technology

Professor Teufel was the main author of a new Part IA course in Machine Learning for Real World Data which her colleagues consider exceptionally innovative in its design, content and mode of delivery, unlike any equivalent course anywhere else in the world. The course was enthusiastically received by students and was key to the Department’s successful expansion of its first-year undergraduate teaching and restructuring of the Tripos to deliver more practical experience.

The Pilkington Prizes were initiated by Sir Alastair Pilkington – graduate of Trinity College, engineer, businessman and the first Chairman of the Cambridge Foundation – who passionately believed that teaching excellence was crucial to Cambridge’s future success. Largely as a result of his efforts, and supported by a significant personal donation, the University’s Pilkington Prizes Fund was created in 1992. More recently, the Fund was augmented with a generous donation from the late Clifford Anthony Ingram.

I am fascinated by the physics of the Universe across the largest scales. I am a theoretical physicist by training and specialise in theoretical and mathematical physics. I was awarded a PhD in Theoretical Cosmology from LMU Munich. I spent two years as a Research Associate at Utrecht University before moving to Cambridge, and am now a Research Associate at the Stephen Hawking Centre for Theoretical Cosmology and a Junior Research Fellow at Fitzwilliam College.

I am embedded in an active and diverse community - from applied mathematics to astrophysics and astronomy. Since I am applying methods from different fields of physics and mathematics to problems in cosmology, it’s invaluable to be among experts in all kind of areas. I also find it quite stimulating to be surrounded by so many smart and motivated young researchers.

My research aims at understanding the cosmic web - the skeleton of matter in our Universe. With large telescopes, we can see this cosmic web as an intricate pattern of galaxies on the sky. I’m trying to describe how those structures were formed. This is particularly interesting because we know that there were virtually no structures in the early universe. If we look at the afterglow of the Big Bang, the so-called cosmic microwave background, we observe that the matter was evenly distributed across the universe with tiny deviations of 10 parts in a million. 

My research can feel a bit like detective work. We are trying to unveil what drives the evolution of our universe and determines its fate from a couple of key observations.  I find it fascinating to look for models that can describe almost 13 billion years of cosmic history. Since I am a theorist, I spend a large part of my day thinking, reading and calculating. Thanks to the active scientific life at DAMTP, almost all of my days include listening to seminars or colloquia talks and chatting to my colleagues from a lot of different fields of theoretical physics. When I am not travelling, I usually work either in the Centre for Mathematical Sciences or in Fitzwilliam College.

My favourite project is describing galaxy clustering using number counts. What I find so fascinating is that there are certain clustering statistics that contain a lot of information and can still be predicted accurately. This situation is quite remarkable because in general, it is hard to make good predictions for gravitational clustering where initially small deviations from mean density are amplified (making the system highly nonlinear). As a theoretical physicist, I love to look for ’smart’ observables that can be calculated from first principles and provide an accurate description of observations in the real world.

In 2016 I spent an incredibly inspiring week with more than 30 Nobel Laureates. This was the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Physics, attended by more than 400 young participants. And as if that wasn't thrilling enough, I also had the opportunity to present part of my PhD research in a plenary talk at the Bavarian evening. It was certainly a dare to give a scientific talk in a dirndl in front of so many people, but it sparked great discussions and I am happy I got this chance.

My advice to everyone is to follow your interests and strive to achieve your own goals. Find people who don’t push you around but push you forward. Seize the opportunities and don’t give up too easily. Explore, enjoy and try to make yourself comfortable outside your current comfort zone.

Recent innovations in engineered timber have laid the foundations for the world’s first wooden skyscrapers to appear within a decade, a feat that is not only achievable—according to the Centre for Natural Material Innovation—but one they hope will beckon in an era of sustainable wooden cities, helping reverse historic emissions from the construction industry.

The research team based at the Faculty of Architecture, is interdisciplinary, composed of architects, biochemists, chemists, mathematicians and engineers, who specialise in plant-based material, including cross-laminated timber, arguably the first major structural innovation since the advent of reinforced concrete, 150 years ago.

Principal Investigator Dr Michael Ramage, said “Until cross-laminated timber, there was simply no building material to challenge steel or reinforced concrete. To construct cities and indeed skyscrapers, we just had to accept the good and the bad of existing materials.

“Concrete is about five times heavier than timber, which means more expense for foundations and transport; it’s resource-intensive, and contributes to tremendous carbon dioxide emissions. After water, concrete is the most consumed material by humanity. But now we have an alternative, and it’s plant-based.”

The team envisage trees supplanting concrete as the predominant building material for cities, with buildings sown like seeds and cities harvested as crops, a way of simultaneously addressing climate change and global housing shortages.

Dr Ramage explained: “In England alone, we need to build 340,000 new homes each year over the next 12 years to accommodate our population. Concrete is unsustainable. Timber, however, is the only building material we can grow, and that actually reduces carbon dioxide. Every tonne of timber expunges 1.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Doing the calculations, if all new English homes were constructed from timber, we could capture and offset the carbon footprints of around 850,000 people for 10 years.

“The sustainable forests of Europe take just 7 seconds to grow the volume of timber required for a 3 bedroom apartment, and 4 hours to grow a 300 metre supertall skyscraper. Canada’s sustainable forests alone yield enough timber to house a billion people in perpetuity, with forested trees replenishing faster than their eventual occupants.”

Various teams around the world are hoping to produce the tallest wooden skyscraper, however the team from Cambridge is confident they’ll be the first, having done holistic work on three proposals for timber skyscrapers in London, Chicago, and the Hague, all of which are set to be showcased to the public at the Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition 2019, freely open to the public from July 1–7.

The team’s exhibit—Timber towers of tomorrow—will embody their vision, the stand itself modelled after a typical apartment nested within their proposed Oakwood Timber Tower at the Barbican Tower, where visitors can experience life in a treehouse while talking with the team, viewing architectural models of timber towers, learning about the fire performance properties of engineered timber, and hearing about the genetic, cellular, and macroscale innovations which have led to ply in the sky designs becoming a reality.

Beyond tackling climate change and promoting sustainability, the team are eager to outline the branching benefits society stands to gain by embracing timber architecture: the psychological well-being that comes from being surrounded by wood as compared with concrete, as well as the return to an ancient building material, that’s intimate as it is natural.

We’ve all done it, offered an excuse for our poor behaviour or rude reactions to others in the heat of the moment, after a long commute or a tough day with the kids. Excuses are commonplace, an attempt to explain and justify behaviours we aren’t proud of, to escape the consequences of our acts and make our undesirable behaviour more socially acceptable.

The things we appeal to when making excuses are myriad: tiredness, stress, a looming work deadline, a wailing infant, poverty, a migraine, ignorance. But what do these various excuses have in common that allows us to recognize them all as plausible? Do they differ from the excuses used in criminal law, like duress or coercion? And what does having an excuse get us – does it really exonerate us?

A researcher from Cambridge University has suggested that the answers lie in what they all tell us about our underlying motivation. When excuses are permissible, it’s because they show that while we acted wrongly, our underlying moral intentions were adequate.

Intentions are plans for action. To say that your intention was morally adequate is to say that your plan for action was morally sound. So when you make an excuse, you plead that your plan for action was morally fine – it’s just that something went awry in putting it into practice. Perhaps you tripped, and that’s why you spilled the shopping you were helping to carry. Or you were stressed or exhausted, which meant you couldn’t execute your well-intentioned plan.

This research presents for the first time a unified account of excuses - the Good Intention Account - that argues our everyday excuses work in much the same way as those offered in a courtroom. When lawyers appeal to duress or provocation in defense of their client, they are claiming that the client may have broken the law but had a morally adequate intention: she was just prevented from acting on it because fear or anger led her to lose self-control.

Until now little light has been shed on what unifies the diverse bunch of everyday reasons we offer when making excuses. Dr Paulina Sliwa’s study from the Faculty of Philosophy, suggests a morally adequate intention is the crucial ingredient.

Recent work in psychology suggests that intentions have a distinctive motivational profile, with philosophers and psychologists both arguing that they are key to understanding how we make choices. Dr Sliwa argues that intentions are the key to making sense of our everyday morality.

Dr Sliwa goes on to explain that appealing to excuses has its limits. “Successful excuses can mitigate our blame but they don’t get us off the hook completely. Saying we were tired or stressed doesn’t absolve us from moral responsibility completely, though they do change others’ perceptions of what we owe to make up for it and how the offended party should feel about our wrongdoing.”

This means that when we make excuses we are trying to haggle, to negotiate whether we deserve anger and resentment, or punishment and how much we need to apologise or compensate. This is why it can be so annoying if someone makes spurious excuses – and also probably why we continue to make excuses in the first place.

Dr Sliwa said, “A successful excuse needs to make plausible that your intention really was morally adequate – but something beyond your control prevented you from translating it into action. That’s why considerations like the following often work: I am sorry for forgetting the appointment – I had a terrible migraine / I haven't slept for the last three nights / I was preoccupied with worries about my mother's health; or I'm sorry I broke your vase – I stumbled over the rug. They all indicate an adequate underlying moral motivation that was thwarted by external circumstances.

“Things that will never work are appeals to weakness of will ‘I just couldn't resist’ or ‘it was too tempting’ don't work. Nor do appeals to things that are obviously immoral.

“The same is true of legal excuses: not every appeal to duress, coercion or provocation will be successful – it will depend on the details of the case.

“Philosophy can give us a better understanding of our mundane, everyday moral phenomena. There are a lot more puzzles to think about in relation with excuses: what's the difference between explaining someone's bad behavior and excusing it?”

The study is published in the ethics journal Philosophy and Public Affairs.

A free version is available at: http://paulinasliwa.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/0/4/19046427/final_submission.pdf

As technology improves, so too does our ability to create life-like artificial agents, such as robots and computer graphics – but this can be a double-edged sword.

“Resembling the human shape or behaviour can be both an advantage and a drawback,” explains Professor Astrid Rosenthal-von der Pütten, Chair for Individual and Technology at RWTH Aachen University. “The likeability of an artificial agent increases the more human-like it becomes, but only up to a point: sometimes people seem not to like it when the robot or computer graphic becomes too human-like.”

This phenomenon was first described in 1978 by robotics professor Masahiro Mori, who coined an expression in Japanese that went on to be translated as the ‘Uncanny Valley’.

Now, in a series of experiments reported in the Journal of Neuroscience, neuroscientists and psychologists in the UK and Germany have identified mechanisms within the brain that they say help explain how this phenomenon occurs – and may even suggest ways to help developers improve how people respond.

“For a neuroscientist, the ‘Uncanny Valley’ is an interesting phenomenon,” explains Dr Fabian Grabenhorst, a Sir Henry Dale Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. “It implies a neural mechanism that first judges how close a given sensory input, such as the image of a robot, lies to the boundary of what we perceive as a human or non-human agent. This information would then be used by a separate valuation system to determine the agent’s likeability.”

To investigate these mechanisms, the researchers studied brain patterns in 21 healthy individuals during two different tests using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures changes in blood flow within the brain as a proxy for how active different regions are.

In the first test, participants were shown a number of images that included humans, artificial humans, android robots, humanoid robots and mechanoid robots, and were asked to rate them in terms of likeability and human-likeness.

Then, in a second test, the participants were asked to decide which of these agents they would trust to select a personal gift for them, a gift that a human would like. Here, the researchers found that participants generally preferred gifts from humans or from the more human-like artificial agents – except those that were closest to the human/non-human boundary, in-keeping with the Uncanny Valley phenomenon.

By measuring brain activity during these tasks, the researchers were able to identify which brain regions were involved in creating the sense of the Uncanny Valley. They traced this back to brain circuits that are important in processing and evaluating social cues, such as facial expressions.

Some of the brain areas close to the visual cortex, which deciphers visual images, tracked how human-like the images were, by changing their activity the more human-like an artificial agent became – in a sense, creating a spectrum of ‘human-likeness’.

Along the midline of the frontal lobe, where the left and right brain hemispheres meet, there is a wall of neural tissue known as the medial prefrontal cortex. In previous studies, the researchers have shown that this brain region contains a generic valuation system that judges all kinds of stimuli; for example, they showed previously that this brain area signals the reward value of pleasant high-fat milkshakes and also of social stimuli such as pleasant touch.

In the present study, two distinct parts of the medial prefrontal cortex were important for the Uncanny Valley. One part converted the human-likeness signal into a ‘human detection’ signal, with activity in this region over-emphasising the boundary between human and non-human stimuli – reacting most strongly to human agents and much less to artificial agents.

The second part, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), integrated this signal with a likeability evaluation to produce a distinct activity pattern that closely matched the Uncanny Valley response.

“We were surprised to see that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex responded to artificial agents precisely in the manner predicted by the Uncanny Valley hypothesis, with stronger responses to more human-like agents but then showing a dip in activity close to the human/non-human boundary—the characteristic ‘valley’,” says Dr Grabenhorst.

The same brain areas were active when participants made decisions about whether to accept a gift from a robot by signalling the evaluations that guided participants’ choices. One further region – the amygdala, which is responsible for emotional responses – was particularly active when participants rejected gifts from the human-like, but not human, artificial agents. The amygdala’s ‘rejection signal’ was strongest in participants who were more likely to refuse gifts from artificial agents.

The results could have implications for the design of more likable artificial agents. Dr Grabenhorst explains: “We know that valuation signals in these brain regions can be changed through social experience. So, if you experience that an artificial agent makes the right choices for you - such as choosing the best gift - then your ventromedial prefrontal cortex might respond more favourably to this new social partner.”

“This is the first study to show individual differences in the strength of the Uncanny Valley effect, meaning that some individuals react overly and others less sensitively to human-like artificial agents,” says Professor Rosenthal-von der Pütten. “This means there is no one robot design that fits—or scares—all users. In my view, smart robot behaviour is of great importance, because users will abandon robots that do not prove to be smart and useful.”

The research was funded by Wellcome and the German Academic Scholarship Foundation.

Reference
Rosenthal-von der Pütten, AM et al. Neural Mechanisms for Accepting and Rejecting Artificial Social Partners in the Uncanny Valley. Journal of Neuroscience; 1 July 2019; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2956-18.2019

In a vote of the University's Regent House, 79% approved the new disciplinary framework, which replaces relevant parts of its Statues and Ordinances that govern how complaints against students are handled.

The new framework has also enhanced the clarity and transparency of disciplinary procedures, detailing examples of unacceptable behaviour, which include intimate partner abuse. 

It also incorporates recommendations recently released by the independent body set up to review student complaints, the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education, such as having student representation on disciplinary committees.

A range of sanctions and measures within the procedure ensure that the University is able to have a rehabilitative approach to misconduct, to give students the skills to understand and reflect on the impact of their behaviour.  The University are working with a small number of specialist organisations to deliver appropriate workshops and sessions.

Sarah d’Ambrumenil, Head of the Office for Student Conduct, Complaints and Appeals said: “We launched Breaking the Silence back in 2017, this procedure is the last brick in the wall of strengthening our response work for any misconduct, but particularly for sexual misconduct and other forms of abusive behaviour.

"These changes have increased transparency to allow students to understand better what behaviour is appropriate, but also when people’s behaviour towards them can be called out and reported.

"Throughout our consultations with staff and students on these changes, and developing the procedure, our focus has been on ensuring our environment is safe, welcoming and inclusive.

"However, it has also been on educating people coming into our community on how to behave appropriately both here and when they leave Cambridge."

She added that the change to the standard of proof aimed to ease one of the emotional barriers complainants face when they come forward and report an incident of harassment.

"In practice the vast majority of cases considered by the discipline committee are upheld.

"However, from what complainants have told us about how fair the procedure seems to them, we know that this change will have a significant effect."

The Cambridge University Students' Union said in a statement that it was "thrilled" with the result, particularly the change in the standard of proof which brings the institution into line with best practice across the higher education sector.

"This is an incredibly important change which will ensure that students have access to a disciplinary procedure which is fair, just, and transparent," CUSU added.

My research sets out to develop new types of antibiotics. Antimicrobial resistance is a global concern at the moment which could threaten public health and food provision as bacteria can develop resistance quickly to common antibiotics. My research is looking at creating new antibiotics which combine old and new drugs with different mechanisms of actions to try and prevent resistance from developing.

As a chemist, I am constantly amazed by biology. Some of my research is looking into creating new drugs for blood-related diseases, and recently I was able to spend the day looking at blood cells through a microscope – this might not sound very interesting but being able to see it all with my own eyes was incredible and not something you’re able to do day-to-day as a chemist. I want to improve healthcare and this helps spur me on when nothing is working. I think it’s important for all scientists to keep in mind why we want to do our research, and why it is important. I hope my research will lead to at least one drug which is more effective, or has fewer side effects, that what is currently available to patients.

My work is laboratory-based - I spent the majority of my time synthesising biologically-relevant compounds. To test these, I visit groups or institutions that the Spring Group has collaborations with, including other departments, other universities and industrial pharmaceutical companies (all within Cambridge). I also have a collaborative research project with a group at the Technical University of Denmark, so have travelled there in the past. It’s always a great moment when I finally manage to make a compound that I’ve been working on for months. After trying again and again, it’s such a good feeling when the hard work pays off.

I am lucky that I am surrounded by amazing, inspirational and nurturing women who are there to help me and prove that women can succeed in STEMM. Having mentors and strong female friendships within your field is very important.

While you should always be ambitious and work towards your goals, remember to give back. Do every sort of outreach, public speaking and wider-engagement event that you are offered, because one of the most important things is representation. Subconsciously, young girls will never believe that they can be successful if women in STEMM are not visible.

Smartphones offer the potential of instant, round-the-clock access for making phone calls, playing games, gambling, chatting with friends, using messenger systems, accessing web services (e.g. websites, social networks and pornography), and searching for information. The number of users is rapidly increasing, with some estimates suggesting that there are now more than 2.7 billion users worldwide.

While most people using smartphones find them a helpful and positive part of life, a minority of users develop excessive smartphone use, meaning that smartphone use has significant negative effects on how people function in life. Previous research has linked excessive smartphone use to mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and problems with self-esteem.

A collaborative team of researchers from the University of Chicago, University of Cambridge, and the University of Minnesota, developed the Health and Addictive Behaviours Survey to assess mental health and well-being in a large sample of university students. They used the survey to investigate the impact of smartphone use on university students. Just over a third (3,425) of students invited to take the test responded. The results are published today in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions.

The self-report survey consisted of 156 questions. Based on their responses, the students were given a score ranging from 10 to 60, with a score of 32 and above being defined as problematic smartphone use. This definition was based on a threshold recommended previously in clinical validation studies using the scale. Typical characteristics of problematic use include: excessive use; trouble concentrating in class or at work due to smartphone use; feeling fretful or impatient without their smartphone; missing work due to smartphone use; and experiencing physical consequences of excessive use, such as light-headedness or blurred vision.

The researchers found that one in five (20%) of respondents reported problematic smartphone use.

Problematic smartphone use was greater among female rather than male students – 64% of problem users were female. Importantly, the researchers found a link between problematic smartphone use and lower grade point averages (academic achievement).

“Although the effect of problematic smartphone use on grade point averages was relatively small, it’s worth noting that even a small negative impact could have a profound effect on an individual’s academic achievement and then on their employment opportunities in later life,” said Professor Jon Grant from the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Chicago.

While students reporting problematic smartphone use tended be less sexually active than their peers (70.9% compared to 74%), the proportion of students reporting two or more sexual partners in the past 12 months was significantly higher among problem users: 37.4% of sexually-active problematic smartphone users compared with 27.2% sexually-active students who reported no problem use. The proportion with six or more sexual partners was more than double among sexually-active problematic smartphone users (6.8% compared to 3.0%).

“Smartphones can help connect people and help people feel less isolated, and our findings suggest that they may act as an avenue for sexual contact, whether through sustained partnerships or more casual sex,” added Dr Sam Chamberlain, Wellcome Trust Clinical Fellow and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge and the Cambridge & Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust.   

The researchers found that alcohol misuse was significantly higher in those with problematic smartphone use compared to the control group. To assess this, the team used a scale known as the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test: a score of eight or above indicates harmful alcohol use. 33.3% of problematic smartphone users scored eight or above compared to 22.5% of other smartphone users. The researchers found no significant link with any other form of substance abuse or addiction.

In terms of other mental health problems, the researchers found that problematic smartphone use was significantly associated with lower self-esteem, ADHD, depression, anxiety, and PTSD, mirroring similar findings elsewhere.

“It’s easy to think of problematic smartphone use as an addiction, but if it was that simple, we would expect it to be associated with a wide range of substance misuse problems, especially in such a large sample, but this does not seem to be the case,” added Dr Sam Chamberlain. 

“One possible explanation for these results is that people develop excessive smartphone use because of other mental health difficulties. For example, people who are socially isolated, those who experience depression or anxiety, or those who have attention problems (as in ADHD) may be more prone to excessive smartphone use, as well as to using alcohol. Smartphone use likely develops earlier in life – on average – than alcohol use problems and so it is unlikely that alcohol use itself leads to smartphone use.”

While the sample size for this study was relative large, suggesting that the findings should be fairly robust, the researchers point out that as a cross-sectional study (one that takes a ‘snapshot’ at one particular time, rather than following people over a longer period), and so direction of causality cannot be established. In other words, the study cannot say that problematic smartphone use leads to mental health issues or vice versa.

The researchers point out the effect sizes were also generally small, and that more research is needed into positive and negative effects of smartphone use and mental health, including how this changes over time.

Reference
Problematic Smart Phone Use is Associated with Greater Alcohol Consumption, Mental Health Issues, Poorer Academic Performance, and Impulsivity. Journal of Behavioral Addictions; Date; DOI: 10.1556/2006.8.2019.32

These negative life experiences could partially explain higher rates of anxiety and depression symptoms and lower life satisfaction in autistic adults compared to non-autistic adults.

Mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression, are extremely common in autistic adults. Negative life experiences increase the risk of anxiety and depression in the general population, yet few studies have investigated whether vulnerability to these types of experiences might be responsible for higher rates of depression and anxiety and autistic adults.

One barrier to investigating vulnerability in autism is the lack of suitable measures. The research team, based at the University of Cambridge, Autism Research Centre, therefore developed a new measure called the Vulnerability Experiences Quotient (VEQ).

The team worked with an advisory group of autistic adults to develop the measure to ensure that it included experiences that autistic people felt were relevant to them. The VEQ asks participants whether they have experienced 60 negative life events, across a wide variety of settings, and including both adulthood and childhood experiences.

426 autistic adults and 268 non-autistic adults completed the VEQ via an online survey. The two groups had similar levels of educational attainment and the majority of autistic adults did not have intellectual disability. The autistic participants reported higher rates of 52 of the experiences in the VEQ.

This included items relating to financial hardship: 45% of autistic adults said they had had a period of life without enough money to meet basic needs, compared to 25% of the non-autistic adults; domestic abuse: 20% of autistic adults that had been in a relationship had been sexual abused by their partner, compared to 9% of the non-autistic adults, and ‘mate-crime’: 70% said they had been bullied by someone they considered to be a friend, compared to 31% of the non-autistic adults.

Participants also completed measures of anxiety and depression symptoms and a brief life-satisfaction scale. Autistic adults reported higher levels of depression and anxiety symptoms and lower levels of life satisfaction.

Those individuals with the highest number of negative life experiences on the VEQ also experienced the highest number of current anxiety and depression symptoms and the lowest current life satisfaction.

Although this study cannot prove that these negative experiences cause depression, anxiety or lower life satisfaction, as these are just associations, these findings are consistent with the idea that vulnerability to negative life experiences is partially responsible for higher rates of anxiety and depression and lower life satisfaction in autistic adults.

Lead author Dr Sarah Griffiths, said: “This research highlights the challenges that autistic adults face in our society. With the right support many of these events are preventable. We need to ensure that all autistic adults have appropriate support to reduce their vulnerability and to improve their mental health outcomes.”

Dr Carrie Allison, one of the Cambridge research team said: “The results of this study are a wake-up call indicating the serious extent of negative experiences that autistic adults suffer in most areas of their lives. This study focused on intellectually able autistic adults due to the online survey method. Future work will focus on adults with intellectual disability who may have a different set of vulnerabilities.”   

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge, said: “This research is vital to inform Government policy makers worldwide about the appalling violations of autistic people’s human rights. Our next step will be working hard to translate these findings into new policies, such as the need for every autistic person to have a life-long support worker to whom they can turn to help them navigate the world”.

Clara, an autistic adult from London commented on the study: “This research is so important to me. Despite being intelligent and good with people, I've had too many negative challenging situations in my life - with work, close relationships, access to health, social services, and education. It has affected, and continues to affect my mental health"

This study was funded by the charities Autism Research Trust and Autistica. The research also benefited from funding from the Queen Anne’s Gate Foundation, Mishcon de Reya LLP with support from Gesher School, the NIHR CLAHRC East of England and the IMI AIMS2TRIALS.

Reference
Griffiths, S., Allison, C., Kenny, R., Holt, R., Smith, P. & Baron-Cohen, S. (2019) The Vulnerability Experiences Quotient (VEQ):  A study of vulnerability, mental health and life satisfaction in autistic adults. Autism Research.

The ‘Vegebot’, developed by a team at the University of Cambridge, was initially trained to recognise and harvest iceberg lettuce in a lab setting. It has now been successfully tested in a variety of field conditions in cooperation with G’s Growers, a local fruit and vegetable co-operative.

Although the prototype is nowhere near as fast or efficient as a human worker, it demonstrates how the use of robotics in agriculture might be expanded, even for crops like iceberg lettuce which are particularly challenging to harvest mechanically. The results are published in The Journal of Field Robotics.

Crops such as potatoes and wheat have been harvested mechanically at scale for decades, but many other crops have to date resisted automation. Iceberg lettuce is one such crop. Although it is the most common type of lettuce grown in the UK, iceberg is easily damaged and grows relatively flat to the ground, presenting a challenge for robotic harvesters.

“Every field is different, every lettuce is different,” said co-author Simon Birrell from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “But if we can make a robotic harvester work with iceberg lettuce, we could also make it work with many other crops.”

“At the moment, harvesting is the only part of the lettuce life cycle that is done manually, and it’s very physically demanding,” said co-author Julia Cai, who worked on the computer vision components of the Vegebot while she was an undergraduate student in the lab of Dr Fumiya Iida.

The Vegebot first identifies the ‘target’ crop within its field of vision, then determines whether a particular lettuce is healthy and ready to be harvested, and finally cuts the lettuce from the rest of the plant without crushing it so that it is ‘supermarket ready’. “For a human, the entire process takes a couple of seconds, but it’s a really challenging problem for a robot,” said co-author Josie Hughes.

The Vegebot has two main components: a computer vision system and a cutting system. The overhead camera on the Vegebot takes an image of the lettuce field and first identifies all the lettuces in the image, and then for each lettuce, classifies whether it should be harvested or not. A lettuce might be rejected because it’s not yet mature, or it might have a disease that could spread to other lettuces in the harvest.

The researchers developed and trained a machine learning algorithm on example images of lettuces. Once the Vegebot could recognise healthy lettuces in the lab, it was then trained in the field, in a variety of weather conditions, on thousands of real lettuces.

A second camera on the Vegebot is positioned near the cutting blade and helps ensure a smooth cut. The researchers were also able to adjust the pressure in the robot’s gripping arm so that it held the lettuce firmly enough not to drop it, but not so firm as to crush it. The force of the grip can be adjusted for other crops.

“We wanted to develop approaches that weren’t necessarily specific to iceberg lettuce so that they can be used for other types of above-ground crops,” said Iida, who leads the team behind the research.

In future, robotic harvesters could help address problems with labour shortages in agriculture, and could also help reduce food waste. At the moment, each field is typically harvested once, and any unripe vegetables or fruits are discarded. However, a robotic harvester could be trained to pick only ripe vegetables, and since it could harvest around the clock, it could perform multiple passes on the same field, returning at a later date to harvest the vegetables that were unripe during previous passes.

“We’re also collecting lots of data about lettuce, which could be used to improve efficiency, such as which fields have the highest yields,” said Hughes. “We’ve still got to speed our Vegebot up to the point where it could compete with a human, but we think robots have lots of potential in agri-tech.”

Iida’s group at Cambridge is also part of the world’s first Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in agri-food robotics. In collaboration with researchers at the University of Lincoln and the University of East Anglia, the Cambridge researchers will train the next generation of specialists in robotics and autonomous systems for application in the agri-tech sector. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has awarded £6.6m for the new CDT, which will support at least 50 PhD students.

Reference:
Simon Birrell et al. ‘A Field Tested Robotic Harvesting System for Iceberg Lettuce.’ Journal of Field Robotics (2019). DOI: 10.1002/rob.21888

DORA’s recommendations call for institutions not to use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles when assessing researchers’ contributions in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions. It encourages universities, researchers and others to assess research on its own merits rather than on the basis of the journal in which the research was published and highlights the need to capitalise on the opportunities provided by online publication.

Professor Chris Abell, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research at Cambridge, said: “The University of Cambridge is committed to producing excellent research. By signing up to DORA, we want to demonstrate to our researchers that we value the quality and content of their research regardless of how and where it is published.”

Professor Steve Russell from the University’s Department of Genetics, will chair the DORA Working Group, which will oversee the implementation of the DORA recommendations.

“This is an important step for the University, particularly for early career researchers where all too often career progression is based on judgments using flawed metrics,” says Professor Russell. “By signing DORA the University is making very positive step towards developing a culture where research excellence is assessed by the quality of the work and not by the title of the Journal where it is published.”

DORA calls on institutions to be explicit about the criteria used to reach hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions, clearly highlighting, especially for early-stage researchers, that the content of a paper is much more important than publication metrics or the identity of the journal in which it was published.

In addition to research publications, DORA recommends considering the value and impact of all research outputs (including datasets and software) and a broad range of impact measures including qualitative indicators of research impact, such as influence on policy and practice, for the purposes of research assessment.

The University’s HR Division will begin implementing a number of changes to ensure the agreement’s recommendations are reflected across its recruitment, reward and promotions schemes.

Brigitte Shull, Director of Scholarly Communications Research & Development at Cambridge University Press, added: “The principles of DORA align with our open research strategy and ongoing activities around improved metrics and recognizing author contributions. By signing up to DORA, we want to help improve the way the quality of research is assessed and expand the range of tools to better account for a variety of research outputs.”

In February, Cambridge became one of the first UK universities to publish a position statement on Open Research. Its statement set out the key principles for the conduct and support of Open Research at the University, which aims to increase inclusivity and collaboration, unlock access to knowledge and improve the transparency and reproducibility of research.

The recommendation to sign DORA at the University was made by the Open Research Working Group, chaired by Professor Richard Penty, and at the Press by the Open Research Steering Committee, chaired by Brigitte Shull.

Some individuals are at greater risk of developing anxiety and depression than others and this depends in part upon the interaction between our genes and our environment, such as stressful or adverse events in our lives. Moreover, some of those who develop anxiety or depression may respond better to treatment while others struggle to benefit.

Although much research has been dedicated to finding effective treatments, we still have a poor understanding of how mental health disorders such as these develop and of the underlying brain mechanisms.

A study published today in PNAS has identified specific brain mechanisms that may underlie how genetic variation in the serotonin transporter gene, a key gene that regulates mood and stress responses, can influence the way we respond to perceived threat.

In a previous study working with marmoset monkeys, Dr Andrea Santangelo in the laboratory of Professor Angela Roberts at the University of Cambridge showed that the particular variant of the gene carried by a monkey will influence whether it perceives an ambiguous stimulus as being high or low threat. This characteristic of an individual’s personality is called ‘trait anxiety’.

High trait anxiety is a risk factor in humans for developing anxiety and mood disorders, and genetic variation in the serotonin transporter gene has been linked with an increased likelihood of developing these disorders.

But in this earlier study, the researchers showed that variants of the gene also affected how a monkey responds to certain medicines. Specifically, individuals carrying the variant of the gene associated with high anxiety actually increased their anxiety towards a threat immediately after treatment with a commonly-used antidepressant known as a ‘selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor’, or SSRI. This so called ‘anxiogenic’ effect is often seen in patients in the early stages of treatment and is thought to be part of the reason why these patients do not respond favourably to SSRIs.

In this new study, Dr Santangelo and Professor Roberts, along with colleagues including those at the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre and Translational Neuroimaging Laboratory, have revealed how variation in the serotonin transporter gene has an impact on the number of a specific type of serotonin receptor, known as the type 2A receptor, in a specific brain area. Receptors are proteins in the brain that enable particular molecules – in this case serotonin – to affect the function of nerve cells. Monkeys carrying the variant of the gene associated with high anxiety had lower numbers of this receptor, hence changing the way in which serotonin-based drugs act upon them.

Medicines targeting these receptors have recently been used in the treatment of anxiety and mood disorders, so these findings suggest that it could be important in the future to know what variant of the serotonin transporter gene an individual is carrying when deciding on a treatment strategy.

The specific brain area where the number of receptors was reduced was the insula cortex, an important site for integrating information about sensations coming from the body with cognitive information processed in other areas to generate feelings and self-awareness, and to help guide decision-making.

This new finding suggests that those cognitive behavioural therapies (CBT) that focus on controlling sensations from the body could help patients in whom SSRI drugs are not effective.

“As many as one in three people affected by anxiety and depression does not respond to anti-depressants, so we need to find better treatments to help improve their quality of life,” says Dr Santangelo from the Department of the Physiology, Development and Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge.

“Our research suggests that differences in our DNA may help predict which of us will respond well to these medicines and which of us require a different approach. This could be assessed using genetic testing.”

The research was carried out using marmoset monkeys because this type of genetic variation in the serotonin transporter gene is only present in humans, apes and monkeys, and not rodents. Moreover, the marmoset’s brain shares many similarities with the human brain, so using monkeys in research allows us to identify exactly which mechanisms are behind conditions such as anxiety and depression, helping inform the development of much needed new treatments.

The research was funded by the Medical Research Council.

Reference
Insula serotonin 2A receptor binding and gene expression contribute to serotonin transporter polymorphism anxious phenotype in primates. PNAS; 1 July 2019; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1902087116

Empathy is an important concept within healthcare and as such is emphasised in policy, codes of practice, national clinical guidance and medical training. It is also a high priority for patients. In a healthcare context, empathy refers to care that incorporates understanding of the patient perspective, shared decision making between patient and practitioner, and consideration of the broader context in which illness is experienced.

Optimising management of diabetes is a public health priority given the growing prevalence of the disease. Type 2 diabetes affects around 4 million people in the UK, and is associated with significant risk of death from heart disease and stroke and with early death. Type 2 diabetes is estimated to cost the UK over £9billion annually, 10% of the UK NHS budget.

Researchers at Cambridge followed up 867 individuals across 49 general practices in the UK as part of the ADDITION-Cambridge study to examine the association between primary care practitioner (GP and nurse) empathy and incidence of cardiovascular disease events (such as heart attack and stroke) or death.

Twelve months after diagnosis, patients assessed their GP’s empathy and their experiences of diabetes care over the preceding year using the consultation and relational empathy (CARE) questionnaire. The researchers then divided their CARE scores into three groups.

The results of the study are published today in the Annals of Family Medicine.

Of the 628 participants who completed the questionnaire, just under one in five (19%) experienced a cardiovascular disease event and a similar number (21%) died during follow up from causes including cancer and heart attack.

Those patients reporting better experiences of empathy in the first 12 months after diagnosis had a significantly lower risk (40-50%) of death over the subsequent 10 years compared to those who experienced low practitioner empathy. Participants experiencing better empathy also tended to have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease events, although this was not statistically significant.

“In trying to manage the growing burden of chronic preventable disease, we’re increasingly moving towards precision healthcare, target-driven care and technology-based assessment, while at the same time focusing less on the human, interpersonal empathic aspects of care,” says Dr Hajira Dambha-Miller, a GP and researcher at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge.

“Our findings suggest that these more human elements of healthcare early in the course of diabetes, may be important in their long-term health outcomes. The potential impact is considerable and is comparable to prescribing medicines but without the associated problems of side effects or non-adherence.”

The researchers say there are several possible explanations for the association between greater empathy and better health outcomes. Previous studies have suggested that patients with lower levels of anxiety or those with an optimistic outlook (and who are more likely to report better perceptions of care), are also likely to live for longer.

They say it is also possible that GPs with empathic, patient-centred skills may be more likely to succeed in promoting positive behavioural change such as medication adherence or physical activity. Previous studies have also reported that greater practitioner empathy is associated with higher patient motivation towards activation, enablement and self-management of disease. Practitioner empathy may also reflect the doctor’s listening ability and the trust of the patient in disclosing what is really wrong so that it can be addressed.

The research was largely funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), the Medical Research Council and Wellcome.

Reference
Dambha-Miller, H et al. Association between primary care practitioner empathy, and risk of cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality amongst patients with type 2 diabetes: a population based prospective cohort study. Annals of Family Medicine; 8 July 2019

The inaugural IPPR prize was introduced to reward innovative ideas to reinvigorate the UK economy that force a ‘step change in the quality and quantity of the UK’s economic growth’.

Simon Szreter, Professor of History and Public Policy at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St John’s College, Hilary Cooper, economics consultant, who is married to Professor Szreter, and their son Ben Szreter, chief executive of Cambridge United Community Trust, worked together on a detailed plan to enable faster UK growth by investing in generous and universal welfare provision.

Professor Szreter said: “The key proposal, emanating directly from history, is that generous and inclusive universal welfare provision should be reconceptualised as an absolutely crucial economic growth promoter, not as merely a ‘tax burden’ on the productive economy.

“It has been proven to perform this function twice before in our history and its abandonment has twice led to faltering and then disastrous declines in national productivity, as is being currently experienced with the much-vaunted ‘productivity puzzle’.”

The trio shared the first prize with the other joint winner - seven co-workers at the London Economics consultancy who argued that a ‘big push’ towards decentralisation would unlock prosperity around the UK.

Stephanie Flanders, head of Bloombery Economics, chaired the panel of judges as they looked for the best answers to the question, “What would be your radical plan to force a step change in the quality and quantity of the UK’s economic growth?” 

Following the financial crisis, the UK economy experienced the slowest recovery in the post-war era. In common with other advanced economies, the UK has had sluggish economic growth over the past decade. In the period since the crash, the UK growth rate has averaged 1.1 per cent compared to the long-run world average of 3.5 per cent: even if the growth rate doubled, it would still be nearly 40 per cent behind the world average. 

The judges praised Szreter, Cooper and Szreter’s ‘radical’ historical, economic and community led policy solutions to the economic challenges faced by the UK.

They said: “The authors draw on a historical analysis of the economy, looking at previous periods of British economic history to identify the enabling conditions for our most successful episodes of economic growth. Prescriptions include a new, equitable social contract alongside an intergenerational contract, incentivised and funded through tax changes, to re-establish the ethical principles on which the economic success of the Golden Age was built. 

“They each brought their different perspectives to bear on their core idea, that economic growth has been historically highest when collective welfare security is greatest – and their radical plan to incentivise altruistic economic behaviour today.” 

The proposals had to ensure fair and sustainable outcomes, including protecting the environment and reducing inequalities. The judges wanted creative thinking on whether the downward trend in the rate of UK economic growth could be reversed, whether it was realistic, desirable and achievable for the UK economy to grow at 3 or 4 per cent in the 2020s. 

The family said: "We’re really pleased that, in a world where economics seems to have increasingly veered towards models and mathematical abstractions, this prize has recognised the value of a different approach. Ours looks at history and how it can be applied to today’s practical challenges and brings the insights of political economy to propose a solution to the problems we face, especially the inequalities that threaten our productivity, our well-being and our democracy.”  

Two further prizes of £25,000 were also awarded. One went to the best under-25 entry, which was won by a Masters degree student who proposed a new way to use the fruits of the digital economy to reduce working time. The other went to the overall runner-up entry, which was authored by two investment professionals who argued for a rebalancing of the UK economy to reverse low investment and productivity. 

All four prizes will be awarded at an event in London today, where each winning entrant or team will present their ideas and discuss them further with judges. Each paper is published in full by IPPR today.

How do we make a broad case for radical action on climate change? Can we forgive and forget after major national traumas? Who will look after us in our old age? What makes us human in an age of Artificial Intelligence?

These questions and many more will be debated and discussed at this year's Cambridge Festival of Ideas.

The Festival will be held from 14th to 27th October and will celebrate the rich history of work in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University, engage the public in new dialogues and areas of interest and promote the University's museums, collections and cutting-edge research. 

The annual event, which began in 2008, will include over 250 different activities, from evening lectures and panel discussions to music, theatre and art sessions, department open days and school visits.

The general theme of the Festival this year is change and events embrace everything from identity and belonging in post-Brexit Britain to the future of China. 

Caroline Criado-Perez, Ed Miliband, Emily Shuckburgh, Rowan Williams, Professor David Runciman, Professor Mary Beard, Professor Gina Rippon and Professor Simon Baron-Cohen are among the line-up of leading thinkers taking part. Other speakers include:

● Journalist Chris Stokel-Walker, author of Youtubers: How YouTube shook up TV and created a new generation of stars in conversation with Ella McPherson, Lecturer in the Sociology of New Media and Digital Technology, on the social impact of the Youtube phenomenon

● Risk expert Professor David Spiegelhalter and social psychologist Dr Sander van der Linden explore how we can discuss risk sensibly without causing conspiracy theories and mass panic

● Leading economist Professor Diane Coyle and happiness expert Professor Richard Layard explore whether New Zealand is right to prioritise wellbeing over GDP as a marker of national success and whether others should follow its example

● Johnhenry Gonzalez on his new book on the history of Haiti and how the country went from the most profitable slave colony to the site of the only successful slave revolt in modern times

● Tyler Shores on whether social media has changed how we read.

The Festival includes a range of hands on events for children, exhibitions, film screenings, theatrical events, a live Brexit edition of the Talking Politics podcast and much, much more. Most events are free, but may require prebooking. The programme will be available in hard copy and online in August and booking opens in September.

Ariel Retik, manager of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas, said: “From a changing climate to political realignments, from the challenges of artificial intelligence to lasting effects of the Cold War and the Stonewall riots, this year’s theme of change aims to get to grips with some of the biggest issues of our time. We are delighted to invite everyone for the 12th year to hear, share and discuss some the cutting age research happening throughout Cambridge.”

The Festival sponsors and partners are St John’s College, Anglia Ruskin University, RAND Europe, University of Cambridge Museums and Botanic Garden, Cambridge Junction and Cambridge University Press. The Festival media partners are BBC Radio Cambridgeshire and Cambridge Independent.

The Institute will draw together the highest concentration of heart and lung researchers from academia, healthcare and industry in Europe. It has set an ambitious five year target to demonstrate proof-of-concept for at least ten new drugs or diagnostic approaches in heart and lung diseases.

The HLRI will be situated next to Royal Papworth Hospital, which was officially opened by HM the Queen yesterday, and forms part of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, the centrepiece of the largest biotech cluster outside the United States. It will be home to over 380 scientists and state-of-the-art laboratories in genomics, population sciences, research into cellular mechanisms of disease and translational science. It will also include a special ten bed facility where the first-in-patient studies of new treatments can be conducted.

“This is an incredibly exciting project bringing together world-renowned expertise in cardiovascular and respiratory science at Cambridge University and clinical excellence at Royal Papworth Hospital,” says Professor Nick Morrell from the University of Cambridge, Interim Director of the institute and a non-Executive Director of Royal Papworth Hospital.

“Heart and lung diseases affect many millions of people of people worldwide and the numbers are growing. Institutes such as ours, focussed on these big health challenges, are urgently needed. The discoveries made by our researchers will deliver major benefits to the public through improvements in public health, new approaches to diagnosing and treating disease, and new medicines.”

Professor John Wallwork, Chairman of Royal Papworth Hospital, said: “The Heart and Lung Research Institute will mean new treatments will be created, tested and delivered to tackle the biggest causes of premature death in the world all on one site. This will be a huge step forward and demonstrates one of the reasons Royal Papworth Hospital moved to the Cambridge Biomedical Campus – to collaborate with the best researchers in the world to help to save lives. The importance of this building cannot be underestimated and I can’t wait to see how it will transform healthcare in the years to come.”

Image: Cambridge Heart and Lung Research Institute (artist's impression)

The award is one of 11 announced from flagship capital investment scheme the UK Research Partnership Investment Fund, totalling over £670m of new investment into UK research and innovation. It complements £10 million of funding committed to the institute by the British Heart Foundation (BHF). Further funding will be provided by the University and Royal Papworth Hospital, and the Wolfson Foundation.

The BHF award, which contributes to the capital cost of the building, is one of the charity’s largest ever strategic award. The charity has also committed an additional £6m in funding for the BHF Cambridge Centre for Cardiovascular Research Excellence, which will be housed in the institute.

Professor Sir Nilesh Samani, Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, said: “Through this funding we will help create a fantastic centre that will have a key role in driving forward our ambitious programme of heart and circulatory research. By bringing together world-leading scientists it will enable exciting opportunities for collaboration between researchers from different disciplines. And it will also accelerate the transformation of discoveries in the laboratory to treatments available at patients’ bedside.

“This grant is one of the largest the BHF has ever made and we have only been able to make this investment because of the incredible generosity of the public.”

The Cystic Fibrosis Trust has also committed to raise up to £5million to fund the Cystic Fibrosis Innovation Hub, which launched last year and will transfer to the new building once it has been completed. Both AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline will also embed integrated research hubs in the Institute to maximise translational impact.

Work on the HLRI will begin almost immediately, with ground-breaking taking place in November and construction starting in early 2020.

Without further medical advances, an estimated one in four people in the UK will die from heart or circulatory disease, while one in five will die from lung disease. Combined, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases cost over £840 billion worldwide every year.

My ambition to have a career in physics research began when I was at school. I grew up in Nottingham, where my Dad was the main homemaker and worked from home; and my Mum worked in a hospital pharmacy. I attended my local comprehensive and sixth form before moving to Cambridge to study Natural Sciences at King’s College.

I spent two summers working in the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy, and this sparked a desire to work in particle physics. After graduating with my MSc, I began working towards a PhD in high energy physics with the ATLAS experiment. What strikes me most about the environment in Cambridge, compared to other institutions, is the atmosphere of collaboration. Improving your understanding of your subject and exploring new and creative research ideas with everyone in the group is always prioritised above rank – there is no such thing as a stupid question here.

Having the opportunity to work with CERN is incredible. The diversity of people, with a huge range of ideas, all working towards a common goal is very inspiring. The calibre of research at both institutions motivates you to become the best researcher you can, but with enough support that you aren’t overwhelmed.

On a grand scale, my field is trying to understand what the universe is made of at a fundamental level. We are looking at how the constituent parts – called particles - can interact and combine to take us from the high energy Big Bang to the universe we see today. My research aims to find evidence for new particles in the data taken with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider, which would allow our current Standard Model of particle physics to be extended. For example, I have focused on searches for new particles predicted by a model called Supersymmetry, currently the most popular extension to the standard model that could explain phenomena such as dark matter.

A key moment for me was attending my first ATLAS conference focusing on the collaboration of the different new-physics groups. The many innovative analysis techniques being presented were very interesting and I learned a lot in the plentiful discussions, both about the work I had contributed to the conference and that of others. In the long term, I hope my research will contribute to our understanding of the universe, and lead to an exciting career in academia.

Part of my research involves reconstructing ‘missing’ particles that ATLAS isn’t designed to detect. These are either neutrinos or new physics particles and measuring them well involves carefully balancing all aspects of the detector. Generally, I spend my days doing data analysis. This can involve using computer simulations of background and signal events, using statistics and techniques like machine learning techniques to optimise where to look in the data to find new physics.

My most interesting project so far is a new project looking for signs of new physics or behaviour in a data-data comparison of oppositely charged electron-muon events. This idea is very exciting, as a deviation from the Standard Model expectation could be explained by many different new models. It also doesn’t rely on simulated data, which is getting more important now that ATLAS has taken such vast amounts of data that simulation is struggling to keep up computationally.

If you are passionate about a subject and have the drive to work hard on it then that should speak for itself. There will be challenges in your career whatever you choose to do, but the more women that follow their ambitions into STEM now, the easier it will be for the next generation of aspiring scientists.

The new company, Light Blue Fibre Ltd, will see the University unite its technological expertise with the Council's ambition to deliver better digital connectivity across the city and beyond, by making both organisations’ extensive duct and fibre networks available on a commercial basis.

One of the first of its kind in the UK, this forward thinking initiative, will offer access to over 100km of existing ducting and dark fibre on a wholesale basis.

Light Blue Fibre aims to attract telecoms companies, infrastructure providers and local technology businesses who understand the importance of full fibre connectivity and are looking to save time and money by reducing the need for expensive and time-consuming infrastructure developments.

The establishment of the company was supported at Cambridgeshire County Council’s Commercial & Investment Committee in February this year, when the go ahead was given for the development and commercialisation of the two organisations’ existing fibre ducting assets.

Board Members from the University of Cambridge and Cambridgeshire County Council formally signed an agreement to create the joint venture in May 2019, and the official launch of Light Blue Fibre took place today (Thursday 11 July) at the University of Cambridge’s historic Combination Room.

Both the University and the Council have plans to further expand their duct and fibre assets and this pioneering collaboration will help businesses to access infrastructure that would otherwise be unavailable to them, so promoting competition and innovation.

The County Council’s available fibre assets include ducting that is already incorporated into the construction  of the Guided Busway, and will be included in all new major road, path and cycle projects following recently approved council policy to include fibre ducting during construction to extensively expand council’s network of infrastructure over the coming years.

The Granta Backbone Network (GBN) is the University’s privately owned optical fibre network. Covering a large proportion of the historic city already, it radiates out to strategic locations delivering high speed, high-availability network services to colleges, institutions and research bodies linked to the University. 

Professor Ian Leslie, Chair of the Board for Light Blue Fibre, said: “This is a very exciting joint venture. The development of Light Blue Fibre will make the existing and future ducting and fibre assets of two major networks in Cambridgeshire available for community and commercial use. It will provide local businesses, government, health and the education sector with cutting edge digital infrastructure, capable of meeting their data connectivity and communication needs for now and into the future and it gives the University more opportunities for wider connectivity.”

Noelle Godfrey, Board Member for Cambridgeshire County Council, who leads the Connecting Cambridgeshire Digital Connectivity Programme, said: “Connectivity is a vital element of the Government’s national digital strategy which provides a foundation for economic strength, thriving communities and successful localities. 

“Cambridgeshire County Council and University Information Services network team have developed a strong collaboration over a number of years of joint working to the benefit of the local community and businesses alike, and this is the next step.”

Margot James, Minister for Digital and the Creative Industries, said: “Through our modern Industrial Strategy we’re building a nationwide full fibre network to make the UK fit for the future. 

“Local partnerships in Cambridgeshire are sharing resources and infrastructure in a new way to help realise this vision, bringing about a significant boost in gigabit speeds for the benefit of homes and businesses in rural areas.”

The formation of Light Blue Fibre makes all the current and future fibre assets of the University and the Council available on a wholesale basis, with no minimum term, providing quick and easy access.

More information can be found here: www.lightbluefibre.co.uk.

The U7+ summit brought together 47 universities from G7 countries and beyond, who are committed to academic freedom and scholarly values and convinced of the key role of universities as global actors, to engage in discussions leading to concrete action to address pressing global challenges.

Professor Ferran was invited by U7+ Alliance organisers Sciences Po to be one of five University presidents and representatives to carry conclusions from their discussion groups to a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, who sponsored the summit as part of his preparations for the G7 summit in Paris later this year.

"It was a great honour for Cambridge to be invited to summarise some very stimulating discussions on how universities can help to confront the global challenges facing us all for a leader with an important voice at the G7," Ferran said.

The summit provided a unique opportunity to discuss a common agenda and establish a framework for action in today’s global landscape, resulting in a 2019 Presidential Declaration, which included a mission statement and the adoption of six agreed principles.

The principles included commitments to pursue joint action through the U7+, recognition of the responsibility to train and nurture responsible and active citizens, to address environmental challenges, to combat polarisation in society, to promote interdisciplinary research, and to consolidate and share best practices worldwide.

"It was inspiring to hear from so many other University leaders who share Cambridge's determination to tackle the great challenges that lie before us in the 21st century," Ferran said. "We can all clearly see that collaboration is vital if we are to mitigate threats to humanity such as climate change and to ensure that rapid technological change works for the benefit of society."