Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF) | |
---|---|
Awarded for | Research fellowship for outstanding scientists who have the potential to become leaders in their field |
Sponsored by | Royal Society |
Country | United Kingdom |
Reward(s) | |
Website | Royal Society Scheme page |
The Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF) is a research fellowship awarded to outstanding early career scientists in the United Kingdom who are judged by the Royal Society to have the potential to become leaders in their field. [1] The research fellowship funds all areas of research in natural science including life sciences, physical sciences and engineering, but excluding clinical medicine. [1]
The URF scheme provides the opportunity for fellows to build an independent career in scientific research. Fellows are expected to be strong candidates for permanent faculty posts and academic tenure in universities at the end of their fellowships. As of 2023, applicants are permitted to apply for a maximum award value of £1.83 million, over eight years. The fellowship funds up to 80% of basic salary costs for the awardee, with the other 20% usually provided by the University hosting the fellow.
Fellowships are awarded annually. In 2022, there were 28 universities across the UK and Ireland hosting 50 newly appointed University Research Fellowships. [2] In 2015, the success rate of applications was 8%. [3] [4]
As of 2017 [update] , examples of current and former Fellows include:
A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher educational institutions, a fellow can be a member of a highly ranked group of teachers at a particular college or university or a member of the governing body in some universities; it can also be a specially selected postgraduate student who has been appointed to a post granting a stipend, research facilities and other privileges for a fixed period in order to undertake some advanced study or research, often in return for teaching services. In the context of research and development-intensive large companies or corporations, the title "fellow" is sometimes given to a small number of senior scientists and engineers. In the context of medical education in North America, a fellow is a physician who is undergoing a supervised, sub-specialty medical training (fellowship) after having completed a specialty training program (residency).
Fellowship of the Royal Society is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science, and medical science".
Christopher Michael Hull is a professor of theoretical physics at Imperial College London. Hull is known for his work on string theory, M-theory, and generalized complex structures. Edward Witten drew partially from Hull's work for his development of M-theory.
Tom Sanders is an English mathematician, working on problems in additive combinatorics at the interface of harmonic analysis and analytic number theory.
Sarah Louise Bridle is a Professor of Food, Climate and Society at the University of York. She previously served as Professor of extragalactic astronomy and cosmology in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester where she applied statistical techniques to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and on the use of weak gravitational lensing in cosmology. From 2006 - 2015 she co-led weak lensing efforts with the Dark Energy Survey (DES), was co-lead of the Euclid weak lensing working group and was Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) UK Project Scientist from 2013 to 2017.
David George Charlton is Professor of Particle Physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Birmingham, UK. From 2013 to 2017, he served as Spokesperson of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Prior to becoming Spokesperson, he was Deputy Spokesperson for four years, and before that Physics Coordinator of ATLAS in the run-up to the start of collision data-taking.
Simon Tavaré is the founding Director of the Herbert and Florence Irving Institute of Cancer Dynamics at Columbia University. Prior to joining Columbia, he was Director of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, Professor of Cancer Research at the Department of Oncology and Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) at the University of Cambridge.
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and co-director of the Wellcome Trust PhD Programme Neuroscience at University College London.
Katherine Jane Willis, Baroness Willis of Summertown, is a British biologist, academic and life peer, who studies the relationship between long-term ecosystem dynamics and environmental change. She is Professor of Biodiversity in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford, and an adjunct professor in biology at the University of Bergen. In 2018 she was elected Principal of St Edmund Hall, and took up the position from 1 October. She held the Tasso Leventis Chair of Biodiversity at Oxford and was founding Director, now Associate Director, of the Biodiversity Institute Oxford. Willis was Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 2013 to 2018. Her nomination by the House of Lords Appointments Commission as a crossbench life peer was announced on 17 May 2022.
Benjamin Guy Davis is Professor of Chemical biology in the Department of Pharmacology and a member of the Faculty in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. He holds the role of Science Director for Next Generation Chemistry (2019-2024) at the Rosalind Franklin Institute.
David John Wales is a professor of chemical physics in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge.
(Edith) Yvonne JonesFLSW is director of the Cancer Research UK Receptor Structure Research Group at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. She is widely known for her research on the molecular biology of cell surface receptors and signalling complexes.
Sarah (Sally) Lois Price is Professor of Physical Chemistry at University College London.
Dame Angela Rosemary Emily Strank is head of downstream technology and chief scientist of BP, responsible for technology across all the refining, petrochemicals, lubricants and fuels businesses.
Neil Burgess is a British neuroscientist. He has been a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London since 2004 and a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow since 2011. He has made important contributions to understanding memory and spatial cognition by developing computational models relating behaviour to activity in biological neural networks.
Michael Arthur Moore is a British physicist and Emeritus Professor of theoretical physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester where he has worked since 1976.
Andrew John King is a Professor of Neurophysiology and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.
Suzanne Lyn Sheehy is an Australian accelerator physicist who runs research groups at the universities of Oxford and Melbourne, where she is developing new particle accelerators for applications in medicine.
Timothy Peter Softley is Pro-vice-chancellor (PVC) for research and knowledge transfer at the University of Birmingham.
Andrew Dawson Taylor was director of the Science and Technology Facilities Council National Laboratories – Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Daresbury Laboratory, and the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh until his retirement in 2019.
“All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” -- "Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies". Archived from the original on 25 September 2015. Retrieved 9 March 2016.{{cite web}}
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