Imperial researchers win prestigious science research awards

Three Imperial academics have been presented with Wolfson Research Merit Awards in recognition of their outstanding scientific achievement.

The awards announced by the Royal Society provide five years worth of funding to UK based scientists as an accolade to their exceptional and ground-breaking research.

The esteemed Wolfson Research Merit Awards were established in 2000 and are jointly funded by the Wolfson Foundation and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The award aims to attract and retain respected and talented scientists with exceptional potential.

This year 21 awards have been announced across the UK and three of those awards go to researchers based in the College’s Faculty of Natural Science. They are: Professor Miguel Araújo and Professor Jon Lloyd, active members of the Grand Challenges in Ecosystems and the Environment Initiative, from the Department of Life Sciences, and Dr Pierre Degond from the Department of Mathematics.

Professor Miguel Araújo, Chair in Integrative Biogeography, has been awarded for his recent research looking to improve the forecasting of changes in biodiversity, an issue which has become increasingly important as ecosystems respond to and adapt to changes brought by a warming climate.

Describing his research Professor Araújo said: “I am particularly interested in understanding how biotic interactions affect distributions of species and understand how these might affect the ability of species and communities to respond to climate changes.” Welcoming the Wolfson Research Merit Award Professor Araújo added: “I feel very privileged to receive this award. I plan to use the funding to develop an integrative research programme to design and create new theoretical models that will tell us more about changes in species distributions and how species coexist”.

Dr Pierre Degond, Chair in Applied Mathematics, has been recognised for his research probing how a wide range of independent entities - including, sperm, crowds and traffic – interact together and self-organise.

Explaining the importance of his research, Dr Degond said: “The mechanisms by which self-organization spontaneously emerges from individual interactions are still poorly understood. My goal is to make significant progress through mathematical modelling and simulation so as we can better understand, for example, how collective swimming sperm-cells impact fertility.

At Imperial, my plan is to establish cross-disciplinary research projects with engineering, biology and social sciences research groups. I am delighted to have been awarded with the Wolfson Research Merit Award as it will provide me optimal conditions to establish myself on the long term and to carry out my research with full efficiency from the very beginning.”

Professor Jon Lloyd, Chair in Global Ecosystems Function, has been recognised for his research investigating soils, biology and geography of tropical lowland forests. Despite dramatic losses in tropical rainforest cover, these species-rich lands occupy ten per cent of the Earth’s surface and play an incredibly important role in the make-up of the atmosphere.

Human activity and the impacts of climate change are altering the living conditions of tropical forests and causing widespread changes in the species able to survive. “My research uses new molecular techniques to discover what traits are most important for understanding why some trees are found where they are, and how these traits affect growth and survival in response to previous climate changes,” said Professor Jon Lloyd. “My research will ultimately help us to understand and predict how tropical tree distributions will alter in response to current changes in climate caused by humans.”