Emeritus, Honorary and Foundation Fellows

Siddharth completed his DPhil, focused on developing statistical methods for time series forecasting, at Somerville College.

His research interests include Biomedical Signal & Image Processing, Statistical Modelling, Forecasting, and Chaos Synchronization. His work is primarily concerned with two application areas: Healthcare, and Energy.

Currently, Siddharth is investigating remote technologies for the diagnosis and monitoring of Parkinson’s disease. He develops statistical algorithms using data for voice, gait, posture, reaction times, dexterity, and tremor, collected using smartphones in a home and community setting. These algorithms are aimed at identifying patterns in the data, which can be used to discriminate people with Parkinson’s disease from healthy controls and accurately monitor the severity symptoms of the disease over time.

Siddharth is also working on a NHS funded project aimed at predicting the A&E arrivals, admissions and discharges across hospitals in the West Midlands. The algorithms developed as part of this project will be used operationally by the NHS to optimize staffing decisions, which would help reduce patient waiting times.

http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/arora/

Neeraj manages OICSD’s partnerships, strategic communications, research outreach design and relationship building, and is responsible for the Centre’s operations.

He works with the Research Director on developing the Centre’s research strategy, global presence and impact.

Neeraj’s research interests are in social policy in India with a focus on its social justice approach. He works on issues of accessibility to public services in education and healthcare for marginalised sections of Indian society.

Previously, Neeraj worked as a Research Support Officer at the Oxford Internet Institute where he administered the Visiting Research Fellowship and the internal departmental ethics process. He holds an MSc in Politics of Conflict, Rights and Justice from the School of Oriental-Asian and African Studies (SOAS) University of London.

Dr Radhika Khosla is Associate Professor at the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment and Research Director of the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development at the University of Oxford. She is the Programme Leader in Zero Carbon Energy Use at Oxford’s ZERO Institute. 

Radhika’s research portfolio includes being Principal Investigator of the Oxford Martin School’s interdisciplinary and multi-country programme on the Future of Cooling, which examines rising extreme heat and the unprecedented increase in cooling energy demand in relation to the sustainable development goals. She is the Co-Investigator of Oxford Net Zero, an interdisciplinary research programme aimed at informing effective, equitable, and ambitious climate action, where she co-leads the workstream on inclusive and just net zero transitions.

Radhika works closely at the interface of research and policy. She is Editor-in-Chief of the high-impact peer reviewed journal, Environmental Research Letters. She has been Special Scientific Advisor to the UK’s House of Commons Environment Audit Committee for the inquiry on heat resilience and sustainable cooling (2023-24). She serves on the UK Government’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office UK-India Advisory Board. 

She has supported authorship of a number of international scientific reports and is lead author of the UNEP’s spotlight report on the first Global Cooling Watch (2023). She has also been an author of the UNEP Emissions Gap Report (2020) and the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (2022). 

An urban climatologist by training, her work seeks to advance understanding of one of the most fundamental questions of our time: how can societies improve human well-being while preserving and enhancing the natural environment? Her interdisciplinary research examines the productive tensions between energy consumption trajectories, urban transitions, and climate change governance – in the context of development – that lie at the heart of this global challenge.

Radhika has led research agendas and international knowledge networks on cooling, urban energy demand, sustainable development, and climate change policy. Using socio-technical systems analysis she examines these themes across levels of governance. Her research priorities include interrogating how, when, and why does energy use change as households urbanize and lifestyles change? What forms of governance and political rationalities characterize the varied urban responses to climate change, given their (often competing) objectives to provide urban services? Whether, and how, can emerging economies accelerate energy demand transitions? And how can we understand and equitably shape the future of global cooling demand in response to unprecedented extreme heat?

In 2023, she received an Honourable Mention for the Bina Agarwal Prize in Ecological Economics for her work on energy consumption pathways. As Research Director of the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, she helps bridge research and networks on India at Oxford and international and was recognized as one of the ‘most influential people’ in UK-India relations (2019).

Radhika’s research has been covered widely in over 2,700 articles across 53 countries since 2021, including by The New York Times, The Times, The Independent, Reuters, the FT, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, CNN, Time Magazine, Times of India, The Conversation and Carbon Brief. She has appeared on podcasts and broadcast television including the Sky News Daily Climate Show, Channel 5 News (1 million+ live viewers) and DW News (47,000 views).

Radhika’s other current academic affiliation is at the University of Pennsylvania (USA). She is on the boards of various organizations, journals and book presses; and holds a range of advisory roles within and beyond Oxford. Previously, she has been a Research Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (India), and Staff Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (USA). Radhika holds a PhD in the Geophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago and an undergraduate and master’s degrees in Physics from the University of Oxford.

Teaching

Spaces, Infrastructure and Technology for Net Zero, Sustainable Development, for the MSc in Enterprise and the Environment

Governance, Policy and Politics for the MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance, School of Geography and the Environment

Environmental Governance and Development for the MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance, School of Geography and the Environment

Climate Change Negotiations: Policy Challenge for the Master’s in Public Policy, Blavatnik School of Government

Global Opportunities and Threats: Oxford Program for MBA students, Saïd Business School

Climate Change School, Oxford Climate Society, University of Oxford

As Director for the Margaret Thatcher Scholarship Trust, Jessica oversees the financial aspects of the Trust and ensures that the objects of the charity are met. She works closely with the Director of the Thatcher Scholarship Programme, the Principal, Development Director, Trustees and Patrons in the execution of her role.

As we enter a new phase of fundraising to meet the College’s five-year strategy, Jessica has taken on the role of Campaign Director, working closely with the Development Director and Principal on the fundraising strategy, developing campaign messages, setting goals and developing the projects and tools that will allow the team to achieve the ambitious targets.

As Programme Director of the MTST, Claire is responsible for mentoring and supporting the Thatcher Scholars and for publicising and evaluating the Thatcher Scholarship Programme. Claire also devises, adapts and oversees the Development Programme, which is open to all students of Somerville.

Claire read Biochemistry at Somerville before gaining a PhD in Plant Molecular Biology from the University of Cambridge. During her Post-Doc in Cambridge, she was awarded a Media Fellowship, working with Tim Radford at The Guardian and subsequently as a freelance science writer. After deciding to hang up her lab coat in 2001, Claire pioneered a cross-disciplinary Master’s Programme in Bioscience Enterprise at Cambridge in partnership with MIT, aimed at bio-entrepreneurs and future leaders of the life science sector.

In 2005, Claire joined the Babraham Institute – a biomedical research organisation in Cambridge – where she was responsible for corporate communications, media liaison, public engagement and knowledge exchange and undertook PR for the campus, home to over 40 life science companies. She established a successful Science & Society Programme delivering novel science enrichment activities for schools, and summer research opportunities to inspire young people about science and STEM careers. During this time, Claire was a Graduate Tutor at Newnham College, Cambridge providing pastoral support and mentoring for a growing graduate community.

Claire is a trustee of STEM Team East, an educational charity that enriches science in schools, and has received awards for work with schools. She joined the Board of the biomedical charity Understanding Animals in Research in 2016 and is a member of the BioIndustry Associations’ Communications Advisory Committee. After joining the Centre for Personalised Medicine in Oxford during its start-up phase in 2013, Claire now offers consultancy in science communication and public engagement. She is a fellow of the Society of Biology, the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and in 2012 was selected as a fellow of the British-American Project – a transatlantic leadership network from a broad spectrum of occupations and backgrounds.

I’m Jo Ockwell and I’m Somerville’s Student Welfare Lead and Disability Co-ordinator.

I lead the College’s welfare team who are here to help with life’s ups and downs. We’re all trained to support you in a non-judgemental way and will do our best to help.  I’ve worked at Somerville for almost 15 years so have helped students with all sorts of problems. While I’m not an expert on every possible welfare concern you might have, I will definitely know someone who is!

Adjusting to university life at Oxford is exciting and fun, but it can be difficult too. Here at Somerville we are a supportive and caring community: we believe that seeking help is always the start of sorting out an issue, and never a sign of weakness. The whole welfare team, which includes me as well as our Student Welfare Advisors, college counsellor, and nurse, are here to support you to find the resources or methods that you need to manage any welfare concerns you have and for you to be in control of your own wellbeing.

Part of my role is to support our disabled students. If you have a disability, seen or unseen, please let me know so that we can put in place support to help you through your academic studies. I also co-ordinate examination adjustments, so if you have a disability or health condition that means you need adjustments for examinations, please let me know. There is more information about how we support disabled students here.

Some students understandably worry about confidentiality. I want to assure you now that all members of the Welfare Team at Somerville work within the same guidelines on when they should share any information that a student has told them in confidence. You can find out the detailed guidance on our website, but here it is in a nutshell; we don’t disclose anything that you have told us in confidence unless we are seriously concerned that you might harm yourself or someone else. That basic principle underlines how we work.

I am always pleased to chat to anyone who knocks on my office door (House 4, on the ground floor of House Building) who needs a confidential chat or advice/guidance on all manner of welfare or disability concerns. We can talk in my office, or take a walk and chat if that works better for you; just let me know what you prefer.

My training includes:

A note for parents: We would sometimes like to be able to speak to parents about our students if we are concerned about them. However, we are unable to do so without the student’s explicit consent unless there is an emergency situation and the parent is listed as the student’s trusted contact on their Oxford University student record. 

Anita Mehta is an Academic Visitor and Consultant at the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics.

Professor Mehta is a theoretical physicist of complex systems: in addition to her current research on the modelling of speech perception, she is working on heterogeneities in granular media, mechanisms of long-term memory (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVH1djSzspg&feature=youtu.be ), agent-based modelling of risk and optimisation schemes for NP-complete problems.

A Rhodes Scholar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NojaK4hTDQ), she did her MA and DPhil in theoretical physics at Oxford, and subsequently worked in Cambridge, Birmingham and India. She was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard in 2006-7, an EPSRC Fellow at the Clarendon Laboratory in Oxford in 1998-9, and  a Leverhulme Visiting Professor in Oxford in 2018-2019.

A Fellow of the American Physical Society, her other interests include writing (fiction and non-fiction), languages (she speaks English, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi and French with native fluency, can get by in Italian and has a basic knowledge of Spanish) and Western classical music (she is a pianist and music  critic, see, e.g. https://serenademagazine.com/author/anita-mehta/).

I teach Biology at Somerville, and most of my teaching concerns plant biology because this is the interesting part of the subject.

In the first year the topics I cover include plant life histories including pollination, biological classification, the use of plants in medicine, the emergence of agriculture, and conservation.  In the second year I teach about plant adaptations (particularly those found in Mediterranean-type regions), ecology, and ethnobotany.  In the final year I run an option on species conservation and I teach on the Tenerife Field Trip.

Prior to coming Somerville I worked at the Oxford Botanical Gardens and Harcourt Arboretum for the best part of 34 years, the last 26 as Horti Praefectus (i.e. director).  My particular interests are plant conservation and the genus Euphorbia which is a fascinating group of 2000 species found all over the world.

http://www.timothywalker.org.uk

I teach linguistics to undergraduates at colleges across the University, including Somerville.

I provide supervision and teaching for students doing linguistics as part of a degree in Modern Languages and Linguistics, or Psychology, Philosophy, and Linguistics.

My background is in Classics and linguistics. I read Classics as an undergraduate at New College, Oxford, and then completed a DPhil in linguistics, working on aspects of forms of address in Latin and the Romance languages, including their grammar, meanings, and uses. My main interests are in questions of how languages change in general and in the history of Latin and French in particular. Within this my research has often focused on changes that relate to semantics or pragmatics, such as the lexicography of medieval Latin and the history of T/V distinctions in romance languages.

Since finishing my doctorate, I have taught both Classics and linguistics at a number of colleges across Oxford as well as for the university. From 2004 to 2008, I was a member of the Classics Faculty Language Teaching Team and during that time he and James Morwood published Writing Latin (Bristol Classical Press, 2007), an introduction to prose composition in Latin. In 2008 I joined the faculty research project preparing the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, first as an assistant editor, in which role I was instrumental in developing the project’s use of technology; from 2011-14 I was the Dictionary’s final editor. Since 2014 I have been Lecturer in Classical Languages at University College, in which role I provide language teaching to the college’s classics students.

Dr Esther Cavett specialises in teaching music theory and analysis to the music students in Somerville College, and is Personal Tutor for Prelims.

Alongside her work at Somerville, she is Tutor in Music at Jesus and Lincoln Colleges, and Oxford Music Faculty Chair. She is also Senior Research Fellow in the music department at King’s College, London, where she co-ordinates the King’s St George’s Academy, which offers small-group, after-school music teaching for children living in Southwark, involving King’s College, London students as teaching assistants.

She set up and now assists in the running of Water City Music, a charity providing access to performance opportunities for musicians of all skills levels, working collaboratively, and she is trustee of The Society of Music Theory (SMA), where she was sponsor the SMA Music Literacy research programme and for the SMA’s widening participation offering generally.

Her recent publications and publications in progress focus on music literacies and pedagogies, the ethics of writing about living composers, and the perception of repetition in the music of English contemporary composer Howard Skempton. 

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Michael is a barrister at Wilberforce Chambers.

Before going to the Bar, Michael spent six years as Fellow and Tutor in law at Somerville College. His research concerned trustees’ powers and duties and the remedial consequences of breaches of trust, with a particular focus on the so-called “rule in Re Hastings-Bass”, and was cited in the Court of Appeal in Pitt v Holt [2011] EWCA Civ 197. He lectured, examined and gave tutorials on the law of trusts and Roman law. He continues to teach land law to Oxford undergraduates.

As a barrister, he appears regularly in the High Court and County Court, both as sole counsel and as a junior in a larger team.

Michael’s particular interests are in all aspects of litigation and advice relating to trusts law. This encompasses both traditional private client work and pension schemes, together with professional negligence in those fields.

Recent notable instructions include:

• British Airways v Maunder. Acting for British Airways in a long-running claim against the trustees of the Airways Pension Scheme for alleged breaches of trust in the exercise of discretionary powers, culminating in a 7-week trial before Morgan J (with Michael Tennet QC and Sebastian Allen).

• Acting (as sole counsel) for a minor beneficiary in two sets of contested High Court proceedings, first pursuant to Schmidt v Rosewood Trust Ltd to obtain trust accounts and other information to explain the diminution of the trust fund, and secondly to remove and replace the existing trustees.

• Acting (as sole counsel) in High Court proceedings for a beneficiary seeking to establish his entitlement to a half share in a substantial trust fund, and to value and realise that share.

• Acting (as sole counsel) for the claimant firm of solicitors in the County Court trial of their claim to recover unpaid fees from a client for whom they had acted in Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings.

• Advising the defendant administrator on claims under the under the Inheritance (Provision for Family of Dependants) Act 1975 concerning overseas property, the validity of UK and foreign marriages and divorces by both claimant and deceased, and the recognition in England of foreign polygamous marriage.

Dr Helen Ashdown is a GP and clinical researcher based in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences.

Helen completed her pre-clinical training at Cambridge, before moving to Oxford for her clinical studies and post-graduate training and DPhil in academic general practice. She is now an NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care in Oxford. Her principal research interests are in respiratory disease and diagnosis in primary care, particularly the use of medical devices for diagnosis and monitoring. She also has longstanding interests in infection and child health, particularly infant feeding. Her current research uses information from large linked datasets collected from routine primary care consultations, and diagnostic prospective observational studies of novel medical technologies in primary and ambulatory care.

Helen works part-time as a GP at 19 Beaumont Street surgery in Oxford, where she is the Respiratory Lead GP.

At Somerville, Helen is the lead tutor for Clinical Medicine (Undergraduate Years 4-6 and Graduate Entry Years 2-4) and leads the team of tutors delivering clinical medicine tutorials, as well as having responsibility for pastoral care of students during their clinical years. She is passionate about teaching medicine and helping students to thrive during their time at Somerville.

I am Somerville’s Lecturer in Biochemistry.

I am a virologist and crystallographer based at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchotron. The aim of my research is to shed light on proteins interactions occurring between viruses and their host cells. Viruses use host cell resources to carry through their life cycle, but infection triggers host cell antiviral defense mechanisms that in turn drive viral adaptation. Thus it is crucial to understand not only the biology of the virus but also the biology of the host and the different cell pathways hijacked by the virus. This project will initially focus on unravelling the mechanism of viral membrane fusion.

Another research focus is the single-wavelength anomalous dispersion of S atoms (S-SAD), an elegant phasing method to determine crystal structures that does not require heavy-atom incorporation or selenomethionine derivatization. Nevertheless, this technique has been limited by the paucity of the signal at the usual X-ray wavelengths, requiring very accurate measurement of the anomalous differences. The I23 beam line at the Diamond light source has been designed to provide an optimized environment for difficult S-SAD experiments, by increasing the anomalous signal with minimal noise.

Will Dawes(ARAM, PGDip (RAM), BMus (Hons) has been Director of Chapel Music of Somerville College since 2017. He has also been Director of Music at the church of St Mary Magdalen, Oxford since 2011.

A graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied Choral Conducting under the inspirational guidance of Paddy Russill, he has directed the BBC Singers, the Eric Whitacre Singers and worked as chorusmaster for the Netherlands Radio Choir. He was the founding Director of Music of Frideswide Voices, the first choir to offer 7-13 year old girls the opportunity to sing in regular liturgical events in Oxford College Chapels. The choir is now the girl’s choir of Christ Church Cathedral.

As well as being in demand as a conductor, he is also a professional baritone, and for 16 years, he was a member of Stile Antico, one of the foremost vocal ensembles on the planet. He has also sung with most of the top professional choirs in the UK including The Sixteen, The Cardinall’s Musick, Ora, Magnificat, Gabrieli Consort, Polyphony, and London Voices. His work has taken him across the globe, including to Auckland, Shenzhen, Delhi, New York, and Jerusalem.

He is always happy to hear from singers interested in applying for choral awards at Somerville or Oxford in general. As the coordinator of the intercollegiate organ awards scheme, he is also happy to offer advice about organ awards at Oxford.

Matthew Wood is Professor of Neuroscience and Associate Head of the Medical Sciences Division (http://www.medsci.ox.ac.uk/support-services/matthew-wood) in the University of Oxford. His laboratory is based in the Department of Paediatrics.

Matthew graduated in Medicine from the University of Cape Town in 1987, working in clinical Neuroscience before gaining a doctorate in Physiological Sciences from the University of Oxford in 1993. His research team works on developing gene therapies for degenerative disorders of the brain and muscles – so-called neuromuscular diseases. This is exemplified by landmark work using small DNA patches called oligonucleotides to correct the genetic abnormalities underlying the fatal childhood muscle disease Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Further information is available at Professor Wood’s page with the Oxford Neuroscience and Department of Paediatrics.

Stephen Weatherill works on the constitutional, institutional and substantive law of the European Union.

He retired from the Jacques Delors Chair in European Law in 2021, and is now Professor Emeritus in the University and a Senior Research Fellow of the College.

His research interests embrace the field of European Law in its widest sense, although his published work is predominantly concerned with European Union trade law. . He is the author of LAW AND VALUES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION (Oxford University Press, 2016), PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE IN EU SPORTS LAW (Oxford University Press, 2017), THE INTERNAL MARKET AS A LEGAL CONCEPT (Oxford University Press, 2017), CONTRACT LAW OF THE INTERNAL MARKET (Intersentia, 2017), EU CONSUMER LAW AND POLICY (Edward Elgar, 3rd edition, 2013), CASES AND MATERIALS ON EU LAW (Oxford University Press, 12th edition, 2016) and co-author of CONSUMER PROTECTION LAW (Ashgate Publishing, 2nd edition, 2005, with Geraint Howells), EUROPEAN ECONOMIC LAW (Dartmouth Publishing, 1997, with Hans Micklitz), and WEATHERILL AND BEAUMONT’s EU LAW (Penguin Books, 3rd edition,1999, with Paul Beaumont). The areas in which he has published papers in journals and edited collections in recent years include; the impact of subsidiarity in EU law; the involvement of the EU in private law; aspects of “flexible” integration in Europe; the elaboration of strategies for the management of the internal market; sport and the law; and the law and practice of product safety.

Rajesh Thakker (FRCP, FRCPath, FmedSci, FRS) is the May Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford.

He was previously Professor of Medicine at The Royal Postgraduate Medical School, The Hammersmith Hospital, London, until 1999, when he took up his present position in Oxford.

His main research interests include the molecular basis of disorders of calcium homeostasis. He has published over 350 articles, and has been the recipient of many prizes which include Young Investigator Award from the ASBMR (USA), the Raymond-Horton Smith Prize (Cambridge University, UK), the Society for Endocrinology (UK) medal, the European Journal of Endocrinology Prize (EFES), the Graham Bull Prize from the Royal College of Physicians (UK), the Parathyroid Medal from the Fondazione Raffaella Becagli (F.I.R.M.O.), the Jack W. Coburn Endowed Lectureship from the American Society of Nephrology, and the Louis V Avioli Founder’s Award from the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (USA). In addition, he has served on the MRC Physiological Medicine and Infections Grants Committee (1994-1997), the MRC Clinical Training and Career Development Panel (1997-2000), the MRC Physiological Medicine and Infections Board (2000-2005), as Secretary to the Forum on Academic Medicine for the Royal College of Physicians (UK) and the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (2002-2005), and on the Council for the Society for Endocrinology (2003-2006). He has been Chairman of the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) / MRC Efficacy and Mechanisms Evaluations (EME) Board since 2008. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2014.

Richard Stone (FREng, FSAE, FIMechE) is one of Somerville’s Engineering Fellows, having been one of the first men to join the Governing Body of Somerville College in 1994.

Professor Stone is a world-renowned authority in the mobility industry, and the author of Introduction to Internal Combustion Engines, arguably the definitive textbook on the topic. His research interests are the modelling and measurement of combustion and heat transfer in spark ignition engines, cryogenic systems, and the measurement of laminar burning velocities in zero gravity.

Read Professor Stone’s retirement feature in the Somerville Magazine

Professor Lahiri’s interests are in phonology, phonetics, historical and comparative linguistics, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. She is also the Director of the University’s pioneering Language and Brain Lab.

Her work combines theoretical and experimental approaches to answer questions such as why sound alternations exist between different forms of one and the same word and how such words are represented in the mental lexicon, how words change over time, and how they are processed in the brain.

Recent advances from her team include the development of a cutting-edge flexible speech recognition system, Flex-SR. The technology was used to create a mobile phone app to help second language learners improve their pronunciation by analysing words and sentences spoken into the app and giving specific personal feedback. Her leadership on the project was recognised by the University with a Vice-Chancellor’s Innovation Award in 2018.

The first Indian woman to hold a professorial chair at Oxford, she helped to found Oxford University’s Faculty of Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics. She served as its inaugural Chair in 2008, and returned to the role for a second term in 2019. In the 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours, she was made a CBE in recognition of her services to the study of Linguistics.

In 2010, she was eleted a fellow of the British Academy, and currently serves as Vice President (Humanities) for the body. She has also been elected a member of the Academia Europaea and an Honorary Life Member of the Linguistic Society of America. She is Principal Investigator on European Research Council grants, as well as two Arts and Humanities Research Council grants, including one for a project involving Somerville Senior Research Fellow Professor Frans Plank.

http://brainlab.clp.ox.ac.uk

http://www.ling-phil.ox.ac.uk

Renier is a plant biologist interested in understanding the manipulation of plants by microbial plant pathogens.

His research activities also aim at improved recombinant glycoprotein production in plants and pioneering activity-based proteomics in plant science.

Renier was born in Leiden, the Netherlands in 1971 and was fascinated by plant biology from early childhood. He studied chemistry at Leiden University and focused soon on plant molecular biology and biochemistry. After his graduation in 1996, he started his PhD in Molecular Phytopathology (Wageningen University, Prof. Dr. Pierre de Wit), where he worked on the tomato Cf resistance proteins.

He continued working on Cf proteins in Wageningen as a postdoc, and started his own research program by introducing and applying activity-based protein profiling in plants. To further develop the technology he joined the phosphoproteomics group of Dr. Scott Peck for one year (Sainsbury lab, John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK).

He initiated the Plant Chemetics lab in October 2005 at the Max Planck Institutes of Cologne and Dortmund as part of the Chemical Genomics Centre of the Max Planck Society. His research group operated independently from the departments at the Max Planck Institutes while he trained twelve MSc students, nine PhD students, eleven postdocs and over 30 visiting scientists.

In October 2013, he was appointed Associate Professor at the Department of Plant Sciences of the University of Oxford, and elected Tutor in Plant Sciences at Somerville College. His research focuses on the use of chemical proteomics to uncover novel host manipulation mechanisms employed by microbes when colonizing the apoplast.

http://www.plantchemetics.org

https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=6UPEEfUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

Anne Manuel was the College Librarian and Archivist at Somerville for 13 years. 

Her current research interests include gender inequality in Higher Education, the use of Internet technologies in research and information literacy amongst undergraduate students. She is able to assist with queries concerning all aspects of information searching but has a speciality in legal and government information.

She has edited a short history of the College: Breaking New Ground : A history of Somerville College as seen through its buildings