The UK’s national research funding agency has awarded over £5.8m for Imperial to develop our most talented early career researchers and innovators.

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has named four Imperial academics in its 2024 Future Leaders Fellowships (FLF) Awards.

The awards provide funding for up to four years to support early career world-class research and innovation leaders in tackling ambitious and challenging projects.

The four Imperial researchers to receive this prestigious boost to their careers are:

• Dr Rachael Barry, from our Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, receives £1.5m for her research into understanding, treating and preventing colorectal cancer.
• Dr Tolga Birdal, from our Department of Computing, receives £1.55m to develop his research into the challenges of enabling machine learning to deal with complex relationships.
• Dr Rachel Edgar, from our Department of Infectious Disease, receives £1.5m for her research into how cells and viruses interact.
• Dr Frank Schindler, from our Department of Physics, receives £1.2m for his research into further developing the theory of topological materials in which energy is not lost to heat.

Celebrating the awards, Dr Liz Elvidge, Head of Postdoc and Fellows Development at Imperial, said: “World-class science and innovation is at the heart of Imperial’s strategy, and we aim to foster the spirit of research with our students and academics from day one. These UKRI Fellowships are an important element in the pipeline of progression from having a passion for learning to discoveries that will shape our future and our planet.”

Bowel cancer: Dr Rachael Barry

Dr Rachael Barry’s research addresses the critical issue of bowel cancer, the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the UK, where more than half of cases are preventable. Her fellowship focuses on enzymes, specifically hydrolases, that when overly active, cause damage to the bowel and activate the immune system in a way that can contribute to cancer development.

The goal of Dr Barry's fellowship, funded with £1.5 million from UKRI, is to identify specific hydrolases contributing to bowel damage and cancer, and to develop strategies to inhibit them. Her research includes analysing bowel contents from cancer patients to profile active hydrolases, and using patient-derived models to test the effects of blocking these enzymes.

Speaking about her fellowship, Dr Barry said: “This award reflects not just personal achievement but also the potential for ground-breaking discoveries in gut health. The fellowship's scope and the dedicated leadership training will transform my career. I now hope to uncover new mechanisms that drive cancer, ultimately aiming to deliver innovative prevention treatment strategies and improve patient outcomes for colorectal cancer.”

Machine learning and AI algorithms: Dr Tolga Birdal

With a £1.55 million award, Dr Tolga Birdal aims to develop a new set of Artificial Intelligence algorithms that will advance machine learning across a wide spectrum of applications. These will ultimately be used in applications such as self-driving cars, life sciences, 3D imaging, CAD modelling, and medical imaging.

His project aims to take AI beyond mere image and text processing, venturing into domains where data is complex and intricately structured. Using a branch of mathematics called algebraic topology to generalise machine learning, his fellowship aims to develop a comprehensive software suite designed to effortlessly extract meaningful insights from complex data and solve real-world problems.

Dr Birdal said: “UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship is way beyond a monetary support. It's the first step of a long-term dream, it's a community, it's a mental state. Over the next four years and more, my team and I will be developing ways to leverage complex datasets like never before. The project is truly interdisciplinary and I will be educating a new generation of computer scientists, informed by the deep notions in mathematics, especially algebraic topology. This award is great news for the future of AI-driven science, vision systems and drug discovery."

How cells interact with viruses: Dr Rachel Edgar

Dr Rachel Edgar’s research investigates water availability at a cellular level and how this affects and interacts with infectious diseases. Her fellowship will look into how regulation of water impacts infection and whether viruses manipulate these systems to promote their replication and transmission.

Her lab recently discovered new mechanisms that maintain optimal water balance in cells over different time scales to ensure they survive and thrive. They also discovered that water in cells is highly sensitive to temperature which means that fevers could directly influence the activity of every cell. During this fellowship, worth £1.5 million, Dr Edgar’s team will investigate how water regulates inflammatory and antiviral immune responses.

Dr Edgar said: “My UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship will greatly accelerate my team’s research, giving me the freedom to pursue my scientific ideas whilst building my leadership skills and forging new collaborations. It will help us better understand how cells communicate, their immune responses and infection susceptibility, ultimately informing interventions to limit virus transmission. We will also gain an insight into a wide range of different areas such as cell growth and movement, circadian rhythms, aging and neurodegeneration.” 

New recipes to counter heat loss: Dr Frank Schindler

Almost all of us have experienced our phone getting hot when we use it for too long. This is because the imperfections in conductive materials like silicon cause electrical energy to be converted to heat; a key challenge preventing progress in electronics and wasting energy.

A recently discovered mechanism called ‘topological robustness’ promises to overcome this challenge by stabilising conduction in materials and giving them desirable properties.

Dr Frank Schindler’s fellowship, worth £1.2 million, aims to further develop the theory of topological robustness beyond ‘non-interacting’ materials, in which electrons essentially do not talk to one another. This could lead to advances in stable technologies that exploit quantum mechanics, such as in quantum sensors and quantum communication systems, as well as quantum computers. Currently, such systems require carefully controlled conditions that are hard to achieve outside of a laboratory environment.

Speaking of his award, Dr Schindler said: “Topological robustness offers a rare opportunity for physicists today, as it directly relates deep mathematical ideas to tabletop experiments and technological applications. The FLF will allow me to do groundbreaking research in this field by significantly growing my team and bolstering our international visibility.”