Cambridge scientists honoured by Royal Society

Each has been recognised for making significant contributions to their respective fields by a historic award from the Royal Society, the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence.

Hughes Medal

Professor Henning Sirringhaus, fellow of Churchill College, has been awarded the Hughes Medal for “his pioneering development of inkjet printing processes for organic semiconductor devices, and dramatic improvement of their functioning and efficiency”.

The Hughes Medal is awarded biennially for original discoveries relating to the generation, storage and use of energy; past winners have included Alexander Graham Bell and Stephen Hawking FRS.

Professor Sirringhaus is Head of the Microelectronics and Optoelectronics Research Groups in the Cavendish Laboratory and co-founder of Plastic Logic Ltd, a technology start-up company leading the development and commercialisation of plastic electronics.

As current Hitachi Professor of Electron Device Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, Professor Sirringhaus’ research interests focus on the relationship of charge transport with organic molecules. 

He is an expert in the printing fabrication of organic devices and applications of organic semiconductors in transistors and solar cells.

Bakerian Lecture

Professor Lynn Gladden CBE FREng FRS, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at the University, has been awarded the Bakerian Lecture for her “development of magnetic resonance techniques to study multi-component adsorption, diffusion, flow and reaction processes”.

The Bakerian Lecture is regarded as the premier lecture in the physical sciences and is given annually at the Royal Society in London.

In 2009 she was awarded a CBE for services to science.

The Shell Professor of Chemical Engineering, her research interests lie in the application of magnetic resonance imaging techniques in porous media.

Professor Gladden is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Institute of Physics.

Francis Crick Lecture

Dr Duncan Odom has been awarded the Francis Crick Lecture in recognition of his “pioneering work in the field of comparative functional genomics, which has changed our understanding of the evolution of mammalian transcriptional regulation”.

The Francis Crick Lecture is given annually in any field of the biological sciences, but with preference to genetics, molecular biology and neurobiology.

Dr Odom is a tenured senior Research Group Leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute.

Graduating from the New College of Florida in 1995 with a BA in Chemistry, he went on to receive his PhD in 2001 from Caltech.

He then changed research fields to undertake postdoctoral studies in genetics and genomics at the Whitehead Institute at MIT.

Dr Odom’s first major postdoctoral work demonstrated that  human tissue can be used to map where diabetes-linked transcription factors bind the human genome in liver and pancreatic islets.

His current research interests lie in Genomics and molecular, cellular and structural biology.

He is an expert in transcriptional regulatory evolution in mammalian tissues.

Previous recipients

In 2006, three researchers from the University of Cambridge were awarded medals from the Royal Society. The awards recognise their research contributions to respective fields.

Rumford Medal

Professor Jean-Pierre Hansen from the Theoretical and Computational Chemistry group, Department of Chemistry, has been awarded the Rumford Medal for 'an important recent discovery in the field of thermal or optical properties of matter'.

Professor Hansen's pioneering work on the theory of ionic fluids and dense plasmas has led the way to a quantitative understanding of the structure and dynamics of strongly interacting systems of charged particles.

Hughes Medal

Professor Michael Kelly of the Centre for Advanced Photonics and Electronics (CAPE), Department of Engineering, has been awarded the Hughes Medal 'in recognition of an original discovery in the physical sciences'.

Professor Kelly's research has advanced the physics of tunnelling and hot electron injection in semiconductor multilayers, leading to two new generation microwave devices now in production.

Sylvester Medal

Professor Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer has been awarded the Sylvester medal for 'the encouragement of mathematical research'.

The medal is awarded in recognition of his fundamental work in arithmetic geometry and his many contributions to the theory of ordinary differential equations.