Dr Jenny Zhang is using plants to create energy through photosynthesis. Her research proposal focuses on building a platform that will accelerate the usage of successful biohybrid energy conversion products. Dr Zhang obtained her PhD in chemistry from the University of Sydney and then joined the University of Cambridge as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow to investigate how biocatalysts can be exploited in energy conversion. She holds a David Phillips Fellowship to research how living photosynthetic cells can be re-wired to materials to deliver innovative solutions for sustainable chemical and power generation
L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science UK & Ireland Rising Talent Fellows 2022
The L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science UK & Ireland Rising Talent Fellows 2024 were announced at an event at the Houses of Parliament on 25 May 2022.
Each Rising Talent has received a grant to support a 12-month period of research. The awards have been designed to provide flexible and practical financial support for winners to spend on scientific equipment, paying for childcare, travel costs or indeed whatever they need to continue their research.
Dr Christina Faust is a landscape disease ecologist and her research aims to mitigate the emergence of zoonotic diseases (animal to human diseases such as covid-19) in human populations. Her research proposal will identify mechanisms and key environmental features that minimise rodent viral zoonoses in restored forests. Dr Faust is a NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) Independent Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow in the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine. She obtained a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University in 2016.
Dr Myriam Haltalli’s research intends to investigate how the blood system is modified by infection at a molecular level and whether this results in “scars” that remain, even after recovery, and compromise health later in life. Dr Haltalli completed her PhD at Imperial College London, using an interdisciplinary approach to investigate how severe infection affects haematopoietic stem cells and their bone marrow microenvironment. She is currently a research associate at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute.
Dr Martina Cihova’s research looks to improve the way medical equipment interacts with human tissue and give a fundamental understanding into the materials’ durability with the aim to maximise the equipment’s functionality and ultimately improve patient care. Martina is currently a Research Associate in the Department of Materials at Imperial College London and Fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation. She holds an MEng in Bioengineering from KIT Karlsruhe and a PhD in Materials Science from ETH Zurich.
Dr Bernadette Stolz’s research applies mathematical methods that study 'shape' in data to show the complexities in cancerous tissue which could help with treatment predictions and scheduling. Dr Stolz obtained her DPhil, which was awarded two prizes, from the University of Oxford in 2020 and is now a postdoctoral researcher in the Centre for Topological Data Analysis in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford.
Dr Rachel Montgomery is a nuclear physicist. Her research aims to further our understanding of the sub-atomic particles which bind together to form nuclei. She is developing novel instruments to measure these particles and is particularly interested in transferring these technologies to the field of nuclear medicine. After obtaining her PhD from the University of Glasgow, Dr Montgomery was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics. She is currently a UKRI STFC Ernest Rutherford and Lord Kelvin/Adam Smith Leadership Fellow at the University of Glasgow.
