Fellows and Academics

Academic Background

I am a chemical engineer by training, completing my undergraduate (integrated Masters) and PhD degrees at the University of Cambridge. For my MEng project, I modelled the patterns formed by blood spots during drying, under the supervision of Prof. Alex Routh. The project is important for developing accurate paper diagnostics using blood spots. I also undertook a number of industrial summer internships, including in R&D at Procter & Gamble. My PhD work examined how a mixture of differently sized particles self assembles in a thin film as it dries. I joined Christ Church as a Junior Research Fellow in October 2022.

Undergraduate Teaching

I enjoy teaching, having 4 years’ experience of small group teaching & demonstrating to Chemical Engineering undergraduates at the University of Cambridge.

Engineering (Thermofluids & Engineering in Society)

Research Interests

I am hosted by the Oxford Colloid group based in the Department of Chemistry. My current research addresses the need to make functional materials more sustainable, by using less of the expensive components, but still delivering the required properties. It does this using the science of colloidal hydrodynamics (the motion of small particles in fluid), deriving novel equations to model how mixtures of particles flow. In my fellowship, I am working on developing a new class of three-phase composite functional materials. The resulting coatings will have highly tuneable properties and I will explore the most promising applications, from reactor materials to tissue engineering. Regarding fundamental science, the required theoretical work will advance our understanding of multiphase colloidal hydrodynamics.

Stephen Roberts (FREng, FIET, MInstP, CEng, CPhys) is Professor of Machine Learning in the Department of Engineering Science.

He leads the Machine Learning Research Group and is Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Autonomous Intelligent Machines and Systems. His main research interests lie in the application and development of mathematical methods in data analysis and data-driven machine learning, in particular statistical learning and inference and their application to complex problems in science and engineering.

Recent research has focused on non-parametric Bayesian models for multi-sensor data fusion, system optimisation and network analysis. Particular emphasis is placed on the real-world applications of advanced theory and over many years he has applied these statistical methods to diverse problems in astrophysics, biology, finance and engineering as well embedding them in a variety of commercial and industrial settings.

Alex David Rogers is a Senior Research Fellow at Somerville College. He is science director of REV Ocean where he is leading research into threats faced by the oceans.

In 1989 he obtained a B.Sc. (Hons) I Class in marine biology at the University of Liverpool. In 1992 he followed this with a Ph.D. in marine invertebrate systematics and genetics also from the University of Liverpool. His research focuses on the diversity, ecology, conservation and evolution of marine species. Alex has special interests in the deep sea, particularly seamounts, cold-water corals and chemosynthetic ecosystems. He employs molecular tools and traditional methods of taxonomy to study the evolution of marine organisms at a range of temporal and spatial scales. These encompass current environmental factors influencing genetic structure of populations, to historical events associated with past climate change that have shaped the current biota of the oceans.

Alex is internationally recognised for his expertise in deep-sea ecology and human impacts on the oceans. He has also worked extensively with governmental, intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations on impacts of human activities and climate change on marine ecosystems, particularly the high seas, deep-water ecosystems and coral reefs. His work has included reports for Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Deep-Sea Conservation Coalition, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the United Nations International Seabed Authority (ISA), UN Division of Oceans and Law of the Sea (UN-DOALOS), UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and the G8 Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE International). At present, Dr Rogers is undertaking research and fieldwork exploring seamount, coral and chemosynthetic ecosystems around the world. He is also Scientific Director of the International Programme on State of the Ocean, an NGO that is specifically analysing current impacts on marine ecosystems globally.

Dan’s principle research interest is the control and management of electrical energy using power electronic circuits and systems.

Power electronics is found across a huge range of modern engineered systems, including in electricity grids (smartgrids), renewable generation, electric vehicles, medical systems, and in consumer electronics. Alongside his principle research interest in power electronics, Dan also has interests in grid-connected energy storage systems and electrification in the developing world.

Dan leads the Power Electronics Group in the Department of Engineering Science, where he and his team work on a broad range of projects. Recent examples include demonstrating extremely power-dense power converters using advanced cooling systems, and the design of precisely controllable magnetic pulse generators for non-invasive brain stimulation. The Group works closely with industry and has a track record of taking new technologies from concept to laboratory demonstrator to industrial practice.

Amanda Rojek is a Senior Clinical Research Fellow in the Pandemic Sciences Institute. She is an emergency medicine doctor with expertise in advancing clinical research during emerging infectious disease outbreaks.

Amanda’s work focuses on emerging and high-consequence infectious disease outbreaks. Her role is to design and rapidly implement meaningful clinical research when a new outbreak emerges. These include studies to better understand the natural history of a disease, through to treatment trials of experimental treatments. The aim is to improve patient outcomes.  She is experienced in working in outbreak and outbreak-prone settings, including in resource-poor settings. Her work has included frontline clinical research based in Sierra Leone during the Ebola epidemic in west Africa and in refugee camps. She has worked as a government advisor for the COVID-19 pandemic and as an advisor to the World Health Organization.

Amanda is currently an investigator for the PLATINUM treatment trial for mpox (https://platinumtrial.ox.ac.uk/) and works closely with international partners to develop the World Health Organisation’s SOLIDARITY trial for treatments for Ebola and Marburg Disease. She is a member of the International Severe Acute and Emerging Respiratory Infection consortium.

She is a Rhodes Scholar and she obtained an MSc in Global Health and and DPhil from the University of Oxford after obtaining her primary medical qualification at the University of Queensland.  Amanda teaches on a number of postgraduate public health programs internationally.

In 2015, Sacha Romanovitch became the first woman to head a major UK accounting house at Grant Thornton.

In her current role as CEO of Fair4All Finance Sacha Romanovitch (1986, MA Chemistry) helps to maintain the lifeline of affordable credit for families and small businesses. In 2018, she was elected Honorary Fellow of Somerville and awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of York. In 2020, Romanovitch was made OBE in recognition of her distinguished career and public service. Since February 2022, she has sat on the Government’s Levelling Up Advisory Council.

I joined the Domingos group in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford as a Novo Nordisk postdoctoral fellow in 2019.

My research focuses on the study of neuroimmune mechanisms underlying obesity. I use advanced molecular and genetic technologies along with computational approaches for transcriptomic profiling of sympathetic ganglia and the sympathetic neurons innervating the fat tissue. The aim is to identify the novel cellular and molecular targets that may lead to develop new tissue-specific therapies for obesity.

I completed my Ph.D. in Neuroscience at ETH Zurich in 2018. During my Ph.D., I have investigated the long-term impact of maternal overnutrition on the brain, behaviors, and metabolism. My study reveals that perinatal maternal high fat diet-induced obesogenic and addictive like phenotypes can be conserved across three generations via the paternal lineage and identifies sperm tRNA-derived small RNA as a potential epigenetic mark that partly mediates such abnormal traits to the progeny. Prior to my Ph.D., I attained an MSc in Neuroscience from the University of Bonn, Germany. I also hold a Bachelor in Medicine and Surgery (MBBS) from Dhaka Medical College, Bangladesh.

Dr Schuller is a biochemist and structural biologist specialising in ADP-ribosylation research and drug discovery for antimicrobial and oncological targets.

Following a BSc and MSc in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Ludwig Maximilian University, she obtained a DPhil in ‘Systems Approaches to Biomedical Science – Industrial Doctorate Centre’ at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Prof Stefan Knapp and Prof Benedikt Kessler, in collaboration with Novartis.

Dr Schuller investigated strategies to modify PARP14 function through macrodomain inhibition using a combination of biochemistry, structural biology and cell biology approaches. She subsequently joined the Ivan Ahel lab to pursue her interests in the development of inhibitors of ADP-ribosylation recognising modules and to study novel enzyme systems for the reversible ADP-ribosylation of DNA and their role in microbial pathogenicity.

Elena joined the Oxford University Biochemistry Department in 2014 as an independent group leader to study the structure and function of cell surface receptors in neural and vascular development.

‘Understanding how cells form tissues is important, because failure leads to developmental diseases and cancers. Specialised proteins are found at the surfaces of cells and direct their movements as tissues grow. My lab uses a range of cutting-edge techniques to understand how this works, especially X-ray crystallography, electron microscopy, cell biology assays, confocal and super resolution microscopy.’

Learn more: http://seiradake.web.ox.ac.uk

Caroline Series (1969, Mathematics) is a distinguished mathematician working in hyperbolic geometry, Kleinian groups and Dynamical systems.

After studying at Somerville in 1969, Professor Series held posts in Berkeley and Newnham College, Cambridge before arriving at the University of Warwick in 1978. In 1987 she became Reader in Mathematics at Warwick and, in 1992, Professor. In 2017, she became the third woman in its history to serve as president of the London Mathematical Society. In 2023, she was awarded a CBE in the King’s first list of Birthday Honours.

My work aims to improve psychological treatments for people experiencing severe mental health problems, with a particular focus on: i) distressing voices; and, ii) sleep disruption.

In my research, I have developed a new psychological framework for understanding why voices cause distress: listening to and believing derogatory and threatening voices. The theory was built from patient interviews and tested in 591 NHS patients who hear voices. I aim to develop this into a psychological treatment to help NHS patients who hear voices to feel less emotionally affected by them.

As part of the wider Oxford Cognitive Approaches to Psychosis team I have worked on several studies which have demonstrated that sleep disruption is one contributory cause of mental health problems, including psychotic experiences. I led a pilot trial testing a sleep intervention for psychiatric inpatient wards. The treatment was feasible to deliver. The patients who received it experienced reductions in insomnia, and there were promising reductions in the duration of inpatient admissions. I have a particular interest in nightmares, their causes and the consequences for other mental health problems. Our pilot trial demonstrated that a brief CBT intervention for nightmares showed promising reductions in nightmares, insomnia and paranoia in patients experiencing psychosis.

I am an HCPC registered Clinical Psychologist and hold an honorary clinical contract with Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust. I completed my doctorate in clinical psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, following which I joined the Oxford Cognitive Approaches to Psychosis research group as part of the Wellcome Trust funded Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute. I have since been funded by an NIHR Clinical Doctoral Fellowship and a Development and Skills Enhancement Award.