Researchers studying a giant tortoise named Jonathan say it’s not just good genes, but lack of genetic wear and tear that have kept him going for nearly two centuries. 

We found that the gene regulators involved in energy production and DNA repair have remained incredibly stable in Jonathan over almost two centuries.Justin Gerlach

In a study published today in the journal Science Advances, scientists have pinpointed 287 unique gene variants in this remarkably old giant tortoise that reduce the usual effects of ageing. These control key processes in the body including repair of DNA damage, reducing inflammation, regulating insulin, and suppressing cancer.

Jonathan, an Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea), is estimated to be 194 years old. This makes him the oldest living giant tortoise, and oldest land animal, in the world today. He’s thought to have hatched in 1832 – making him a contemporary of Charles Darwin and Queen Victoria.

The team also compared the giant tortoise’s epigenome – the ‘on/ off’ switches on his genes – with those of younger giant tortoises of the same species. Remarkably, they found the switches controlling Jonathan’s DNA repair and metabolism genes were very similar to those in his younger relatives. Usually, the epigenome changes over time, contributing to the ageing process – this is a key reason why things start to go wrong in older bodies.

This study marks the first time the epigenome of a giant tortoise has been investigated. It was led by researchers at longevity research non-profit Kallel in the US, who say that cracking the genetic code of a multi-century life offers unprecedented insights into extreme lifespan.

“We found that the gene regulators involved in energy production and DNA repair have remained incredibly stable in Jonathan over almost two centuries,” said Dr Justin Gerlach at Peterhouse at the University of Cambridge, who was involved in the study.

He added: “There are few creatures that could tell us more about ageing than the giant tortoises of the Galapagos and Seychelles islands. Working with a really old giant tortoise is such a privilege: you get a sense of the tortoise being your collaborator, not your study subject.”

Gerlach has studied the ecology and conservation of giant tortoises for several decades, but this is the first time he has studied their exceptionally long lives.

“Nature has already solved the puzzle of ageing in remarkable ways, and Jonathan’s genome provides a blueprint for cellular resilience,” said Stephen Clark MD, PhD, founder of Kallel and senior author of the study.

He added: “Our goal is to take these evolutionary insights and immediately translate them into practical, affordable treatments for everyday people. Ageing is the greatest risk factor for nearly every chronic disease we face, and through the generosity of philanthropic partners, we can democratise access to longevity medicine.”

Jonathan (left) arrived in St Helena in 1882. Photographer: A L Innes.

Jonathan has lived most of his life on the island of St Helena, a British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic Ocean, in the grounds of Plantation House – the residence of the governor of St Helena. He arrived from the Seychelles 144 years ago, already fully grown, as a gift to the governor.

The giant tortoises of the Galapagos and Seychelles islands are the extraordinary last survivors of animals that used to dominate the ecology of many of the world’s islands.

The research was funded by the Voland Fund.

Reference

Vaisvil, B et al: Epigenetic insights into extreme longevity in the world’s oldest terrestrial animal, Jonathan. Science Advances, Oct 2026. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adw8887

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Researchers may have uncovered the reason why some of Earth’s earliest animals were commonly preserved as fossils – even though they were essentially fragile ‘bags of goo’ – while later soft-bodied creatures have largely disappeared from the fossil record. 

The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, say that the reason may lie in the evolution of microscopic organisms capable of breaking down collagen, a structural protein found in animal tissue. 

The fossil record of animal life on Earth is highly incomplete. Hard body parts like shells, bones and teeth are far more likely to be preserved than soft body parts like muscles, organs and skin, so the majority of the fossils we have today are mineralised skeletons. 

However, fossils from the late Ediacaran Period, between 579 and 539 million years ago, are different. Fossils from this time, which include the oldest known complex forms of animal life, are frequently preserved in extraordinary detail, even though none of these earliest animals had any hard body parts. In some sites, entire Ediacaran ecosystems are preserved, providing a rich window into early animal evolution. 

For decades, researchers have debated how such common preservation of soft tissues was possible. Possibilities included unusual chemical conditions in the Ediacaran oceans, different tissue compositions, or the influence of a layer of microbial slime that covered the entire seafloor. However, while these explanations work in some places, none of them works everywhere. 

But now, the Cambridge-led researchers say the answer may be the evolution of microbes that produce collagen-eating enzymes known as collagenases. Their results are reported in the journal Current Biology.

Collagen provides strength and support to animal tissues throughout the body. Once an organism dies, collagenases can rapidly break these tissues down, reducing the chances that they will be preserved long enough to fossilise.

“If you think about a modern jellyfish, for example, if it washes up on a beach and is left to decay, it will decompose in a matter of days,” said lead author Philip Vixseboxse, who completed the work while a PhD candidate at Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences. “It will never become a fossil, but similarly squishy animals from half a billion years ago did commonly get preserved.” 

Collagen is in all animal tissue, but without any enzymes to break it down, it will persist, like modern plastic. “You need an enzyme to break down a biopolymer, or else it will sit around for ages until something comes along that can actually eat it,” said Vixseboxse. 

Vixseboxse and his co-authors traced the evolution of collagenase genes in microbial organisms through 700 bacterial genomes, and compared them to a time-dated tree of life, to understand how microbes acquired the ability to break down collagen through time. 

The researchers found that collagenases are much older than animals. Initially, they existed only in anaerobic, or oxygen-intolerant, microbes. Dead organisms in the oxygenated waters of the Ediacaran would therefore have held on to their collagen until the oxygen in the sediments surrounding them was used up, giving the organisms much more time to fossilise. 

Around the transition between the Ediacaran Period and the Cambrian Period, however, collagenases began to spread among a greater range of microbial groups. They transferred into aerobic, or oxygen-using, bacteria, including the groups that cause modern decay. This shift coincides with a significant fall in the number of fossils of soft-bodied animals. 

“Around this critical time when these soft-bodied animals stopped fossilising, we start seeing the appearance of collagenases in aerobic bacteria, meaning the ability to break down collagen-bearing tissues could start to spread into new environments as animal diversity accelerated,” said Vixseboxse. “Now that collagen could be degraded, you needed ever-faster fossilisation processes to outpace decay, which is likely why we start to see a big drop in the abundance and quality of the fossil record, in terms of the preservation of soft tissue.” 

In some exceptional circumstances, soft tissues can be preserved in younger rocks, depending on how and where the animal died, and what happened after that. A dead animal buried beneath an avalanche of sediment soon after death, for instance, could be well-preserved and avoid decay, but these instances are rare. 

“These results suggest there may be an overarching biological mechanism that has shaped the fossil record of soft tissues across Earth’s history,” said co-author Professor Alex Liu, also in the Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences. “The acquisition of key enzymes by microbes to exploit a growing food resource may have decreased the preservation potential of soft tissues.”

Vixseboxse says in the far future, there may be similar echoes with modern plastic. Like ancient collagen, plastic fails to decay until there is something that can break it down. “Bacteria had no reason to efficiently degrade collagen when it didn’t exist,” said Vixseboxse. “But once collagen became more abundant, and provided a new food source for these microbes, collagenases proliferated. Perhaps someday, microbes will exploit similar enzymes to break down the increasing abundance of plastic polymers we are putting into the environment, but that will be long after we’re gone.” 

The research was supported in part by the Leverhulme Trust, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). 

Reference:
Philip B. Vixseboxse et al. ‘Temporal heterogeneity in the animal fossil record driven by proliferation of microbial collagenases.’ Current Biology (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.045

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Cambridge researchers have been awarded funding from the Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA) to use proteins as manufacturing tools to assemble advanced materials, including high-performance magnets that do not require costly rare-earth elements. 

The funding is part of ARIA’s Universal Fabricators Programme, a three-year, £50 million programme that will support 11 different research teams. The programme’s central bet is that proteins can act as a ‘universal fabricator’.

Professor Ronan Daly, from Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing, leads the ‘Protein SPARK’ project, which will use proteins like tiny Lego bricks to grow magnets without rare-earth elements and advanced electrodes for batteries that hold more charge and last longer. 

The team’s ‘Droplet Lego’ method takes its inspiration from the way proteins direct biomineralisation – the process by which living organisms build hard materials like bones and teeth – and runs it on a continuous production line. 

Microscopic droplets carrying the designed proteins and elements will be sprayed and printed into position, much like inkjet printing. The proteins grow, guide and shape the constituent material into nanocrystals, films and three-dimensional structures, giving the team control over both the shape and the function as the material forms.

“Magnets are all around us, from headphones and mobile phones to motors and wind turbines,” said Daly. “Almost all magnets include rare-earth materials, which are costly to extract, are a diminishing resource and lead to significant environmental challenges. Our project, which is at its heart a manufacturing project, will instead use proteins to drive growth of useful magnetic materials without using rare earth materials anywhere. We will then look at how to apply this to other products, like new batteries that charge quickly and last longer.”

In addition to Daly, the team includes Professor Michael De Volder, Professor John Durrell and Dr Sebastian Pattinson from the Department of Engineering; Professor Ljiljana Fruk from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology; and Professor Tuomas Knowles from the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry; as well as researchers from the University of Amsterdam and University of Liverpool. 

Cambridge researchers are also involved in two other projects in the Universal Fabricators Programme. 

Dr Shijing Sun and Dr Zuyang Ye from Cambridge’s Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy; and Professor Tuomas Knowles, Josie Forsythe, Hannah Han and Max Gao from the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, are part of the Protein Organised Engineered Materials (POEM) project, which is led by the University of Washington and also involves colleagues from the University of Leeds. 

The POEM team are developing a new way to make high-performance magnets by using specially designed proteins to control how magnetic crystals grow and arrange themselves. This approach could produce more powerful and reliable magnets for future technologies by giving scientists precise control over the crystals’ size, shape and spacing.

“Using proteins as templates to assemble inorganic materials could open up new processes for making a next generation of rare-earth-free magnets,” said Sun. “Our team in Cambridge brings high-throughput methods to that search, so that protein design, materials chemistry and automated experimentation work together as one.”

Professor Erwin Reisner from the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry is part of the S-LATTICE project, led by the University of Edinburgh. The S-LATTICE team are developing new materials by combining naturally self-assembling proteins with metals, creating large, highly ordered sheets that can be customised with properties not found in nature. These materials could be used for precise filtration, converting carbon dioxide into useful products, cleaner catalysis, and technologies that interact with light, all within a single platform.

The Universal Fabricators Programme is led by Ivan Jayapurna. 

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Text and photographs by Jacqueline Garget

Pollen-eating Heliconius butterflies have remarkable powers of learning and memory. Professor Steve Montgomery is investigating what this can tell us about the evolution of brains and behaviour.

Have you ever wondered how long a butterfly lives? For many species, it’s just a few short weeks. That’s because when the adult emerges from the chrysalis it has no means of eating anything nutritious; it instantly starts burning through the protein it stored as a caterpillar and when it’s gone, it’s gone.

“Nectar tends to be rich in sugar but very poor in protein,” says Professor Steve Montgomery in the Department of Zoology, “so most butterflies have to use what they ate as a caterpillar to repair their tissues and to reproduce. Once they run out of protein, they’re dead.”

Montgomery is studying butterflies that have found a way around that trap. Heliconius are a colourful butterfly group from the American tropics, and they’ve developed an unusual behaviour: they collect and eat pollen.

A butterfly’s proboscis – the long, tube-like mouthpart – is generally used like a drinking straw to suck nectar from flowers. Heliconius uses it like a sophisticated food processor.

“Heliconius have a long lifespan, especially when you consider that they don’t sleep over the winter in the tropics. Some can live for up to five to six months – and in a recent study we had one that almost made it to a year,” he says.

“They manage to live so long because they collect big clumps of pollen, and slowly digest them by releasing saliva and rolling them back and forth with the proboscis. That grinds up the pollen, everything goes into solution, and the butterflies can then suck it up.”

Being able to get protein as adults, and consequently live much longer, has transformed the biology of these butterflies – raising questions that keep Montgomery, who initially set out to study primates, absolutely fascinated.

Finding his wings

Montgomery was an undergraduate and PhD student at Cambridge, and has since worked at University College London, the University of Bristol, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. He returned to Cambridge this year to take up the Prince Philip Professorship of Ecology and Evolution.

“I was originally investigating brain evolution in primates,” he says, “and as an early-career researcher I was looking for a model species for my experiments, to try and understand how our brains evolve and how that impacts our behaviour.”

After learning about his colleague Professor Chris Jiggins’ work on butterfly wing patterns, Montgomery wondered whether Heliconius butterflies might be the answer. He found a research paper from the 1980s describing the ‘mushroom body’ of Heliconius as particularly large compared to three other species of butterflies. So-called because it looks like a tiny mushroom, this is the part of a butterfly’s brain where learning and memory occur.

With a promising model species identified, Montgomery set out to map the anatomy of the mushroom body to better understand Heliconius brain wiring and how it develops. At the other end of the scale he started looking at the insect’s behaviour, to see how the two might be connected.

“In butterfly terms Heliconius have massive brains, with around eight times more wiring in their mushroom bodies than their closest butterfly relatives,” says Montgomery.

“I want to understand how this expansion came about, and how the mushroom body has become specialised to process visual and spatial information.”

When a butterfly starts depending on pollen for survival, it needs to develop ways of remembering where the right plants are, and when they’ll be flowering. Montgomery thinks this new behaviour could help explain the extraordinary changes in the butterfly brain.

Working with collaborators at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, he and a talented team of postgraduate students and post-docs have carried out experiments comparing the cognitive abilities of various butterfly species. These showed that Heliconius outperform their closest relatives in specific learning and memory tasks, strengthening the idea that their unusual brain anatomy and pollen-feeding lifestyle evolved hand in hand.

Bringing the tropics to Cambridge

Joining the University of Cambridge brings Montgomery much closer to the broad range of expertise – in neuroscience, developmental biology, and more – he needs to progress his work. “There are things I hope to investigate in Cambridge that I just couldn’t do anywhere else,” he says.

Unlike in Panama, raising tropical butterflies and the plants their caterpillars eat in Cambridge depends on specialist facilities: large greenhouses kept at 28^oC, with high humidity and a lighting pattern to mimic tropical days and nights.

Already Montgomery is brimming with new research questions: what makes one butterfly species grow a bigger mushroom body than another? If he can change how that brain region develops, will it change what a butterfly can learn?

His ultimate aim is to understand how brains evolve and how that impacts behaviour, and how both of these factors can drive the evolution of new species. It’s a huge quest, rooted in a fundamental curiosity about life.

With so much butterfly biology to explore, will he go back to studying the primates one day? “No, it’s too restrictive!” he says. “Even though they’re tiny little butterflies, studying them makes it far easier to integrate the different questions I’m interested in. I’m going to stick with them.”

Published 5 October 2026

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The first material evidence of the Schola Saxonum suggests Anglo-Saxon expats received special treatment in Rome’s “Little England”

By Tom Almeroth-Williams

English expats avoided ‘travel money’ hassle, thanks to special treatment from the Pope in the early Middle Ages, new research suggests. The discovery of 20 coins alongside evidence of craftwork in Rome’s English quarter, provides the first material evidence of the Schola Saxonum, and suggests it was a thriving and valued expat community.

In 2020, archaeologists started excavating deep under the walled garden of the Palazzo della Rovere near the Vatican. These excavations were directed by the Soprintendenza Speciale Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio di Roma and carried out by MDM Archeologia srls under the supervision of Renato Sebastiani and Alessio De Cristofaro.

Three years later, the site made global news when the discovery of the ruins of Emperor Nero’s theatre was announced. Now, the site has led to a major medieval discovery which transforms our understanding of the Anglo-Saxons in Rome.

The archaeologists found twenty coins which have been identified as Anglo-Saxon – 19 silver pennies and one halfpenny – minted over a period of about 40 years in the names of Alfred the Great’s son, Edward the Elder (899–924); and his grandsons Æthelstan (924–39) and Eadred (946–55).

Fourteen of the coins were found in rubbish pits in two clusters of 6–8 coins, which are now fused together after a millennium underground. The rest were scattered nearby. The team also found ten coins from the Roman period and from tenth-century Italy, as well as evidence of craftwork involving leather, bone and metal.

Long-term collaborators Professors Francesca Tinti and Rory Naismith were invited to build on the initial research of the coins by Cecilia de Leone, by studying and interpreting the intriguing coins and interpreting their significance in light of what was already known about the history of this area. Their findings, presented in a chapter co-written with Marzia Di Mento, Valentina Pica and Filippo Salamone, have just been published in a new book (in Italian) entitled: Rome and the Others (300-1000): Foreigners in the city between conflicts and integration.                  

“The coins aren’t pretty but they have a lot to say,” says Rory Naismith, Professor of Early Medieval English History at Cambridge. “More Anglo-Saxon coins from this period have now been found in Rome than papal coins. This sounds bizarre, but it’s telling us that a very large amount of money was flowing in from England at this time.”

As well as dating the coins, Naismith and Tinti were able to identify which parts of England they came from: East Anglia, Kent, London and the West Midlands.

The halfpenny is a particularly rare find for this period and is important, the researchers argue, because this denomination is associated with trading hubs in which lots of lower value money was changing hands.

“Before this big discovery, we never had any material remains of the English quarter in Rome,” says Francesca Tinti, Professor of Medieval History at the University of the Basque Country, and a visiting research fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge (2025-6). “We’ve been hoping this moment might come for most of our careers.” 

What we knew before

Medieval texts refer to an Anglo-Saxon quarter in this area from the second half of the 8th century; two 9th-century fires were recorded; and it was known that these expats worshipped in a church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It was even said that Burgred, King of Mercia (the English Midlands) from 852 to 874, was buried in the church having been exiled from England by the Vikings.

The English quarter lay within the Leonine City, an area between the Vatican and the River Tiber protected by walls following a raid by pirates in the 840s. While still on the periphery of Rome in this period, it occupied a finger of land pointing directly to St Peter’s and benefited from nearby bridges making it convenient to cross the Tiber. We don’t know how big the entire Schola Saxonum was but the area of craft activity covered at least 3,000 square metres, approximately half a football pitch.

A few placenames in Rome still hint at this largely forgotten history. The embankment road between the Tiber and the Vatican – the Lungotevere in Sassia – takes its name from the Schola Saxonum. And the Santo Spirito in Sassia hospital continues the charitable function which the area once provided to Anglo-Saxon visitors.

Expats with privileges

Naismith and Tinti argue that because the coins were found individually or in small clusters, and scattered – rather than deliberately buried in a larger hoard – they provide clear evidence of trade. The archaeologists found no evidence of silver bullion being melted down on the site so the researchers are confident the coins were lost by craftspeople and shoppers, not in the context of being turned into local currency.

Together with the leather-, bone- and metal-working finds, the coins show that the Schola Saxonum was not just a place for pilgrims to rest and pray. It was a bustling hub of craft and trade.

Naismith says: “The Anglo-Saxons are there to visit the Pope and tour churches in Rome, but they’ve still got to feed themselves. So they’ve got to make things and trade. That’s what these finds tell us. This was a fairly big community, probably hundreds of people, living there on a permanent basis. So they’re keeping a miniature Anglo-Saxon town going. You can easily imagine craftsmen arriving from Winchester, London or York and setting up shop by the Tiber.”

Evidence of English coins changing hands in Rome challenges a long-held assumption that the papacy forbade the use of foreign currency in the city. Documents from Rome in this period generally only refer to papal coinage, and other texts record foreigners preparing to get their travel money. In a 9^th-century letter, we hear from a Frankish abbot fretting about the need to change currency as he plans a trip to Rome. This new discovery suggests that English visitors to Rome were given special treatment.

“You don’t find other foreign coins in Rome from this period,” Naismith says. “It seems to be very much an English thing. There are not many coins from the Frankish world or even northern Italy. It seems to be a very specific connection they’ve got with the English at this stage.”

One of the newly identified coins is Papal, suggesting that the two currencies were used side-by-side.

The researchers point out that while other foreigners, including the Franks, Lombards and Frisians, were also cared for by dedicated institutions close to St Peter’s, the Anglo-Saxons left the most traces behind, and appear to have enjoyed special privileges.

Tinti says: “The English in Rome were quite unique. They made the greatest effort to get there. Their journey was really dangerous and many people died on the way. But once in Rome, they were special. We knew they had the privilege of being able to bury their dead in this area and now, it seems, they were permitted to use their own currency.”

For Anglo-Saxon kings, having their coins in use so close to St Peter’s brought significant prestige, the researchers argue. At the same time, the arrangement showed people back in England that their rulers could facilitate pilgrimages, bringing spiritual benefits to the king and his subjects.

A long special relationship

England’s special relationship with Rome was built on diplomatic ties going back to the late 6^th century, when Pope Gregory I arranged a mission to the English. “The Anglo-Saxons were very devoted to Rome from that point on”, says Naismith, a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

He points out that the relationship became increasingly formalised from the late 8^th century when Offa of Mercia (757–96) instituted an annual payment of 365 gold pieces to the papacy to keep the candles burning in Rome’s churches. In the late 9th century, Alfred the Great was sending frequent alms to Rome, and in 883 – according to Alfred’s biographer, Asser – Pope Marinus I generously freed the Schola Saxonum ‘from every tribute and toll’ at Alfred’s request. The researchers caution that this doesn’t prove that Alfred secured the currency deal, but it is a possibility, and we now know that his son’s coins were in use in Rome.

The 10th century witnessed the development of Peter’s Pence, which involved every household in England, at least notionally, giving a penny as alms for Rome. And in 1027, King Canute visited Rome, in part to continue the tradition of negotiating financial benefits for English pilgrims with the Pope.

“The English were particularly keen on consulting the papacy,” Tinti says. “Sometimes the Popes struggled to understand what was happening in their far-off land.”

“The Anglo-Saxons were very firmly a part of the European community,” Naismith says. “They kept these bonds with Rome going strong for hundreds of years, through thick and thin. These coins show us how deep that relationship went. It’s not just kings sending money and forgetting about it. It’s people going to Rome in large numbers and setting up a home away from home on the banks of the Tiber.”

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The excavation was directed by the Soprintendenza Speciale di Roma under the scientific supervision of Renato Sebastiani and Alessio De Cristofaro. Fieldwork was carried out by MDM Archeologia srls and coordinated by Marzia Di Mento, in collaboration with Filippo Salamone, Flavia Botrugno and Laura Stamerra. A preliminary study of the Anglo-Saxon coins found in the excavation was conducted by Cecilia de Leone.

Reference

M. Di Mento, R. Naismith, V. Pica, F. Salamone, F. Tinti, ‘Ricerche nell’area della schola Saxonum’, in Rome and the Others (300-1000). Foreigners in the city between conflicts and integration – Roma e gli altri (300-1000). Stranieri nella città tra conflitti e integrazione, Atti del Convegno Internazionale PRIN 2022 (Roma, Università RomaTre, Aula Magna, 11-12-13 dicembre 2025), ed. L. Spera, R. Santangeli Valenzani and R. Menna (Quingentole (Mantova): SAP Società archeologica, 2026), pp. 489-505.

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Published 1st October 2026

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Credits

_{The coins and other finds from this site are the property of the Italian state.}

Image Credits

_{Rory Naismith: The Palazzo della Rovere with St Peters Basilica in the background.
University of Cambridge: Professors Francesca Tinti and Rory Naismith.
Cecilia de Leone / courtesy of the Soprintendenza Speciale Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio di Roma: fused group of Anglo-Saxon coins found in the excavations of the Palazzo della Rovere.
The British Library: Edward the Elder depicted in MS Royal 14 B VI.
The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: Portrait of Æthelstan in CCCC MS 183.
Lalupa under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license Wikimedia Commons: Lungotevere in Sassia with the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia.
Labicanense under a CC BY 4.0 license Wikimedia commons: The church of Santo Spirito in Sassia.}

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The Boat Race 2027 season is officially underway, with the traditional Presidents’ Challenge taking place at London’s historic Somerset House.

This season has added significance as 2027 is the centenary of the Women’s Race. To mark the anniversary, two new trophies will be awarded to the victorious men’s and women’s crews. As well as this, the order of the races on Sunday 11 April 2027 will be reversed. The Men’s Boat Race will take place first at 15:40, followed by the Women’s Boat Race at 16:40.

At yesterday’s event, hosted by broadcaster Claire Balding, Cambridge Presidents Eloise Etherington (Natural Sciences, Gonville & Caius) and Simon Hatcher (Engineering, Peterhouse) challenged Oxford Presidents Kyra Delray and Alex Sullivan to the race on the Thames in April.

Paying tribute to The Boat Race student athletes past and present, Clare Balding said: “This is one of the true amateur sporting events in the world, where you are doing it for the love of it.

“There’s no financial reward and you are combining that with studying all sorts of subjects. The countdown might start here, but obviously your tutors will be telling you that essays still need to be handed in and exams still need to be prepared for!”

Siobhan Cassidy, Chair of The Boat Race Company Limited said the change in the order of the races would be a fitting way of marking the centenary.

“We know that will really put the focus on the young women who are the sporting heirs of the pioneers from 1927,” she said.

“I think we all recognise how participating in sport alongside education benefits the individual but also society as a whole and there is no doubt that the Women’s Boat Race has played a part in UK women’s progress towards equality of opportunity.”

Celebrations got underway in Cambridge last weekend to mark the centenary. The University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Boat Club brought together eight generations of Cambridge women to honour the past, celebrate the present, and look ahead to the next chapter in a remarkable story.

Other planned celebrations include a centenary re-enactment which will take place on the River Isis in Oxford where the first Women’s Boat Race took place on 15 March 1927. And a commemorative magazine, Against the Stream, has been produced which is available to view on the Cambridge University Boat Club website.

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Vice-Chancellor Professor Deborah Prentice’s annual address to the University of Cambridge – 2026

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Deborah Prentice, has delivered her annual address to the University as it commences a new academic year. 

Full speech transcript:

Good morning. A very warm welcome to the new academic year and special congratulations to the proctors for this year, newly elected.

I spent quite a while deciding on my topic for this year’s address. As I imagined standing here before you in my cassock, gown and bands, looking for all the world like a 19^th century parson delivering the weekly sermon, I wanted to choose a topic that was both timely and timeless: something that speaks to our moment but also to the current shape and direction of the University. 

It was a difficult summer for this University, one in which we lost Professor Jason Arday after a stormy and vitriolic public debate. I have spent the aftermath listening and speaking with colleagues and students, and I know it has been – and is – a very challenging time for many across the University. While this is not the time to go into details about the tragedy, as we launch independent reviews and await their recommendations, I know it is on many people’s minds, and in their hearts. So I needed a topic that would meet people where they are, and also capture where the University is right now, in its long evolution and current context.

The topic I landed on finally is change. We live in a time of the most profound transformation where – every day, it seems – we are told how AI, or perhaps some other technology, will forever change the direction of humanity. While Cambridge is, as always, right at the cutting edge of technological and societal change, thanks to our brilliant people and their research, that scale of global change is not my main focus today.

Instead, I want to ask, when and how does the University of Cambridge change? When do we collectively decide to do something different or new? This University has a complicated relationship to change, which I learned as soon as I was elected to the Office of Vice Chancellor. Even before I arrived, I began to receive advice on what I should and shouldn’t say at Cambridge and in particular words I should avoid using. “Executive” was one such word, especially preceded by “Chief.” “Strategy” – very bad word, referred to as the s-word, to be avoided at all costs. And “change”: People at Cambridge don’t like change, I was told. If you must discuss it, call it something else.

Cambridge does change, of course. It hasn’t survived for 817 years by staying the same.  Moreover, in many ways, the University is all about change. A Cambridge education changes lives. Research conducted at Cambridge changes the world. Cambridge innovation changes industries. We embrace change as a measure of our effectiveness and our success. And yet, it’s also true that change can be challenging and many are sceptical of it, even when it’s clearly warranted. 

There is an interesting psychology at work here, and in my former role as a psychology professor, I would have loved to spend the next 20 minutes unpacking it. But in my current role as Vice Chancellor, I am instead going to make the case for greater openness to change at Cambridge. I think there is much we can do to solve perennial problems, expand what the University can achieve, and make people’s lives at the University better.  

Before launching into the case for change at Cambridge, let me clarify what should and shouldn’t change in an organisation like this one. Cambridge is known the world over for the vitality and longevity of its mission. This will not change. Academic excellence is central to that mission, and we remain as committed to excellence as ever. What we value, what we study, the freedom academics have to choose their own path and follow it wherever it may lead, these things are sacrosanct. But how we do things — how we organise ourselves as a University, manage our staff, fund our operations, deploy new technologies – these things should change, as the world around us changes.

Change happens at Cambridge mainly in response to two conditions: opportunity and necessity. Opportunity and necessity are powerful narratives at this University because they are the two arguments everyone recognises as reasons for doing something different or new.

Necessity comes in many forms, and the most effective for producing change are those least open to argument. Regulatory and legal requirements are at the top of this list. Higher education is a highly regulated environment. The requirements of the Office for Students and employment law, as well as the organisations that accredit many of our courses, are constantly changing, and we must stay aligned with them to operate. These shifting external requirements have been responsible for a lot of the change seen at the University in recent decades. Legal and regulatory demands have influenced the size and shape of the administration and the growth and content of University policies. They have influenced what is taught and how it is taught in accredited courses. They have influenced the relationship between the University and the Colleges, as we both respond to the regulator. In an organisation in which many kinds of change are optional, time-insensitive, and contested, compliance demands have a significant impact on the direction of travel.

A second necessity is resources. The University operates at the edge of its resource envelope, and this makes us both vulnerable and responsive to changes in incentives. In the last few years, for example, we have seen major changes in government funding for research, with a marked shift away from funding for our PhD students and toward large grants, multi-institution grants, and grants aligned with the government’s industrial strategy.  The University has had to adapt quickly to these changes, supporting investigators to conceptualise and construct competitive proposals and seeking new funding streams, including College resources and philanthropy, to fund PhDs. This changing funding landscape is having a marked effect on the size and shape of our research enterprise.

A final necessity is organisational effectiveness, or more simply modernisation. The University needs to keep up with the times, which means modernising systems and processes, upskilling our workforce, and updating our estate. We virtually all agree on that. The challenge comes in agreeing the inevitable trade-offs that come with modernisation and then implementing the change across a complex, decentralised organisation.

On the heels of the pandemic, the University launched a suite of organisational change programmes that are now coming to fruition. The upgrade to our research operations delivered over a year ago, to positive reviews across the organisation. The upgrade to our financial systems will deliver this spring; this will be a major change, not just in how the systems work but in people’s understanding of how resources flow through the University. It will take several years to be fully implemented and longer than that to be fully absorbed. The upgrade to our HR system will follow on the financial system, and the programmes focused on professional services and the estate after that.

On the horizon, the Regent House will vote on the creation of a Chief Operating Officer position in Michaelmas term. This post has been seen as a necessity since before I came to the University, and it has taken this long to work through the governance channels. I am hopeful that we will have a COO in place by this time next year, which will enable us to move forward on other high-priority initiatives, including the creation of an environmental sustainability strategy which students and staff across the University have long asked for. The COO will also be key to the modernisation of our digital capabilities, another high-priority initiative for many in the community.

Let’s leave necessity for the moment and turn to opportunity. Opportunity at Cambridge is created by new resources and is the primary way innovative and impactful things happen. New resources come in a variety of forms:

One is philanthropy. Collegiate Cambridge has always relied heavily on philanthropy; I am reminded of that every November when I stand in Great Saint Mary’s Church and commemorate our benefactors. As University finances have become tighter, philanthropy has become ever-more important. 

Last year, the University had its best philanthropic fundraising year ever, with £300 million raised. This included some very big gifts that you probably heard about: for the new Rokos School of Government, a hugely exciting endeavour, now searching, I should say, for its inaugural Dean; for the Centre for Autism Research, which we just launched last week with donor Lisa Yang; and for the Precision Breast Cancer Institute, from Andrew Barnes, in honour of his partner Charlotte Lockhart. Those gifts made headlines. What you may not have heard as much about were all the gifts for professorships, studentships, research projects, collections, right across the University, enabling new professors, new students, new ideas, and new resources to flow into this amazing institution. The School of Arts and Humanities raised £14 million last year, their best year ever. Kettle’s Yard raised over a million through its Artists for Kettle’s Yard campaign. Across the University, we raised £29 million in student support alone. Add to that the £111 million raised by the Colleges and you get a sense of just how much philanthropy matters to the continued vitality of our academic mission.

Another source of opportunity for the University is partnerships. Cambridge is keen to partner, and many are keen to partner with us. This year, we established the single largest corporate partnership in our history: A partnership with IonQ, to create the IonQ Quantum Innovation Centre and bring the UK’s most powerful quantum computer to Cambridge. This is the best kind of partnership, an opportunity to create opportunity. Through the Quantum Innovation Centre, we will enable academics and students to work with industry partners, end-users, and policy experts to use quantum technology to create ultra-secure communication networks, super-powerful computers, and accelerated drug discovery, among other advances. Because this partnership includes a collaboration with the UKRI’s Quantum programme through Innovate UK, the Centre will be a national facility, enabling researchers and early-stage companies from across the UK to access the computer. Cambridge will reap enormous benefits from being at the centre of this collaborative effort.

Partnerships are at the heart of our recent efforts to secure funding for PhD students. As our traditional sources of PhD funding have declined, we have turned to partnerships – with corporates, with donors, with Colleges – to plug the gap. AstraZeneca, for example, funded nearly 100 PhD students in the first decade of our partnership with them. The University Contribution Scheme, a joint University-College initiative, generated over £205m in philanthropic income and supported 171 PhDs in perpetuity. Trinity College stepped up to partner with the University on the Trinity Cambridge Research Studentships programme, which will fully fund 300 PhD studentships over 10 years. In a changing funding landscape, these various partnerships are keeping opportunity alive for our talented PhD students.

The University’s relationship with government around research and innovation infrastructure has also shifted into partnership mode. Specifically, the UKRI’s new funding scheme both incentivises partnerships and bridges partnership arrangements as needed to make them whole. The University has successfully drawn on UKRI funds to close the deal on the IonQ quantum partnership and to upgrade our AI supercomputer earlier this year. The University also partnered with the UK Atomic Energy Authority to develop and deploy Sunrise, the world’s largest AI supercomputer dedicated exclusively to nuclear fusion power development. Other government commitments to Cambridge partnerships include £15 million toward the University’s planned Innovation Hub and start-up funding for the Manchester-Cambridge partnership through Research England.

I describe these projects in some detail because they reflect an important change, or at least evolution, in our ways of working. More than ever, we are partnering with funders, looking for alignment of goals and incentives, and being rewarded for thinking bigger and longer-term. This is what opportunity looks like in the current landscape, and the University is mastering these ways of working to continue to operate at the knowledge frontier.

In the year ahead, the University has many opportunities to pursue. We expect to reach our fundraising targets for the Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital and the Cambridge Children’s Hospital. That will be a joyous day indeed, for these are both hugely ambitious and innovative projects that have been many years in the works and will bring enormous benefit to the local and national community. In addition, in partnership with the Colleges, we will continue to work toward our next fundraising campaign, which is already surfacing exciting proposals right across the Collegiate University.

I have described how Cambridge changes in response to necessity and opportunity. But what about the changes people want, the ones that are generated from the ambitions within our community: a new building to house a growing institute, for example, or sustained funding for a PhD programme, new academic staff, a new course, a new research centre? Can we produce the change people want? 

Yes, we can, often. We have three approaches to supporting these kinds of projects.

One, we can make them into opportunities by raising gifts for them. There is a tier of our fundraising operation that focuses precisely on this work. Development staff are embedded within our academic schools, and their job is to understand the schools’ priorities and develop sources of support for them. This programme of work has really come on in recent years, and has expanded to include not just philanthropy but also support from corporates, foundations, and investors. 

Two, for capital projects, we now have a programme for funding capital improvements in our estate. This programme has grown out of several years of work cataloguing and assessing our buildings, and planning for the future. The estate is a great example of where the University’s orientation toward necessity and opportunity has shown its limits. We built new buildings and fixed the ones in need of repair, but for most of our history, we did not invest in the estate and did not have a long-term plan. The result is that the University now has more buildings than it needs, many of them not fit for purpose and certainly not fit for the future. Fortunately, we have started to address this situation with the University’s first capital plan and should see savings that partially offset the costs of an improved estate. We should also see marked improvements in the environmental footprint of our estate, another critical long-term goal.

Three, for projects like new courses that advance our mission and ultimately earn income, we invest in them. The University has an investment fund, supported primarily by income from our endowment and, most significantly, from Cambridge University Press and Assessment, that we use to invest in the growth and development of the University. As well as supporting capital projects, this fund enables us to pay the upfront costs of a new or renovated course or programme that will eventually pay for itself. The fund is responsible for huge amounts of innovation in our research and teaching across the University, supporting the hiring of new academic staff to teach and research in new fields and enabling centres and institutes to mount interdisciplinary courses that departments and faculties cannot fund. It has supported new and highly successful courses in Data-Intensive Science, Global Risk and Resilience, and Planetary Science and Life in the Universe, for example, with additional courses in development.

Having established these mechanisms to support innovation and change from within the academic university, we now deploy them flexibly and in combination to maximise how much activity we can support and to direct that support to the highest-priority needs. For example, we incentivise principal investigators to write large grants with a 10% match, prioritise building projects in the capital plan that improve efficiency and attract external funding, and match-fund gifts in high-priority areas through the investment fund. Let me pause here to note just how fortunate we are to have the capacity, from both within and outside the University, to grow, innovate, and change. In a very bleak financial landscape for the vast majority of universities in the UK, Cambridge occupies a privileged position. It is what enables us to attract the best academic talent and to remain at the forefront of knowledge creation globally.

Finally, I want to address what I see as the most difficult question about change at this and any university: How do we know when the University needs to change, when the old ways are no longer supporting our mission, but in fact are holding us back?

Universities are inherently conserving organisations. They are built to last, this University in particular. They take the long view. They provide stable ground on which students and staff can grow and change. They are makers of the future but keepers of the past, again this University in particular. Cambridge is both a potent symbol and a source of continuity in the academy, in the country, and in the world. For much of its history, continuity was served by holding fast to its principles and resisting calls for change. 

Cambridge today is very much a product of that history. Over a thousand pages of Statutes and Ordinances attest to the fact that the University is strongly rooted in its past. Most universities started later and changed more, sometimes by necessity and sometimes by choice. Not Cambridge. 

Instead, there have been periodic reforms to the University’s governance, the last major one in the late 1980s. Aside from a brief attempt at reform in the early 2000s, there has not been much appetite for it since. 

Does the University need to change? Is change perhaps overdue? The strongest signal that an organisation needs to change is when things go wrong, and therefore we must take the losses, the setbacks, and heaven knows the tragedies very, very seriously. Just as humans are equipped with a negativity bias in their emotional system, organisations need to pay more attention and react more strongly to the bad news than the good. The University is committed to learning from recent negative events, and we are bringing in independent experts to facilitate that learning. We are not marking our own homework here; we want the rigour and clarity that outside experts can provide. 

Ultimately, though, how Cambridge responds to these events, what we learn from them and how we change, is up to all of us. The University prides itself on being one of the very few largely democratic, self-governing universities remaining in the world. Given current challenges to both universities and democratic governance, I think the project of maintaining that status is more vital than ever. But with it comes two major responsibilities: (1) that we ensure that our governance is robust and in keeping with modern demands for transparency, legibility, timeliness, and accountability, and (2) that we all find ways to participate in this process, as democracy requires. Let’s work together to show that Cambridge can be not just a brilliant and innovative community, but also a learning and caring one.

In closing, let me offer my warmest wishes to all of you for a fulfilling year ahead. Thank you.

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Edinburgh-based writer Cherise Saywell and Birmingham sixth former Eloise Barrett have been announced as the winners of the 2026 BBC National Short Story Award (NSSA) and BBC Young Writers’ Award (YWA) with the University of Cambridge.

The awards were announced on Tuesday 29 September at a ceremony at BBC Broadcasting House and broadcast live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row. 

The National Short Story Award 2026

Cherise Saywell won the BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge for Ditto, a story about a child’s conflicting loyalties and moment of bravery when violence erupts in his house, which was described by judges as ‘assured’ and ‘beautifully crafted.’ 

Set in a small Australian town inspired by the place where Saywell grew up, the story explores masculinity, domestic abuse and its impact on children. Judges praised it for handling a child’s understanding of a complex adult world with ‘precision’ and ‘delicacy’.

Talking about her story, Saywell said: “I wanted to find a way to write about how children experience violence, when they have no words for the things they are experiencing….They feel love and fear and responsibility all at the same time, but have no name for what’s happening around them.”

Ditto is available to listen to on BBC Sounds, read by Richard Goulding.

Dr Yvonne Battle-Felton, Academic Director of Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Professional and Continuing Education, said:

“Full of vivid descriptions, mounting tensions, and a compelling character, ‘Ditto’ is a moving reminder of how much life a short story can hold, and what’s simmering beneath the surface. It really is beautifully told.” 

Saywell topped a shortlist that also included Caoilinn Hughes, Lucy Caldwell, Laura Beatty and Merryn Glover. The BBC National Short Story Award is one of the most prestigious for a single short story, with the winning author receiving £15,000, and shortlisted authors £600 each. Each of the five stories are available to listen to on BBC Sounds.

The Young Writers’ Award 2026

The winner of the BBC Young Writers’ Award with the University of Cambridge was announced alongside the NSSA. Eloise Barrett, a 17-year-old sixth former from Birmingham, received the award for Bloodshed in Rafah.

The story follows a young girl living in a refugee camp in Gaza as she grieves the loss of her mother and experiences her first period. Bloodshed in Rafah was described by the judges as ‘heartwrenching,’ ‘original’ and ‘nuanced’.

Eloise drew on research into the experiences of women in conflict who lack access to period products. She is studying English Literature, History and Sociology at A Level, with plans to study English at university. She is currently working on an anthology of feminist short stories as well as a horror novel.  

Dr Yvonne Battle-Felton said:

“A powerful example of how short stories can move the world. ‘Bloodshed in Rafah’ takes readers inside a geographical, psychological, emotional setting we may read about without seeing. It beautifully weaves love and loss with characters and scenes so gripping they will leave you breathless.” 

Barrett topped a shortlist that included Siddhi Garg, Solly Day-Stokoe, Tom Ixer and Nathan Karby. Her winning story is available to listen to via BBC National Short Story Award – BBC Young Writers’ Award Showcase 2026, read by Imi Hasna.

About the awards

The BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge was established in 2006 and awards £15,000 to the winning author. The BBC Young Writers’ Award, now in its twelfth year, is open to 14 to 18-year-olds across the UK and was created to discover and inspire the next generation of writers. 

Cambridge’s partnership with the awards is supported by the Schools of Arts and Humanities and Humanities and Social Sciences, the Faculties of English and Education, Downing and Robinson Colleges, Cambridge University Library, the Fitzwilliam Museum and the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Professional and Continuing Education. 

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Food in Senegal is mostly grown on small-scale, rain-dependent farms, leaving much of the population vulnerable to climate shocks, according to the World Food Programme. However, satellite crop-mapping technologies designed to monitor climate’s impact on farming are largely beyond the reach of the West African country.

A new analysis of Senegalese croplands using an artificial intelligence developed at the University of Cambridge shows how technological benefits enjoyed by industrial agriculture could be brought to smallholder farms in Senegal and other countries in the Global South.

Researchers used Cambridge’s Tessera, an open-source AI model trained on satellite images, to map crops in Senegal’s groundnut basin. They found that Tessera was more accurate than current methods, getting the right result 84% of the time in tests while using only a fraction of computational resources and pre-labelled data. In one scenario, it performed 28% better than the next-best model. 

This suggests that Tessera could become an important tool for governments and food security organisations, particularly in areas in the Global South where ground data is difficult or expensive to gather, said lead author Madeline Lisaius, who helped develop Tessera when she was a PhD student at Cambridge’s Department of Computer Science and Technology.

“Accurate and up-to-date crop statistics can guide food security planning and help decide where best to target support. But most local governments and bodies can only afford to collect ground data every few years,” Lisaius said. “With Tessera, you can train on the data you already have and extend it into the years in between, with more accurate crop information than baseline methods have ever been able to provide.”

Governments, NGOs and other food security organisations can begin using the technology to produce their own crop statistics now, she added.

The research is given added urgency by this year’s El Niño, which scientists say is the strongest ever recorded. The climate phenomenon is known to disrupt rainfall patterns in West Africa and past strong events have brought prolonged drought to the region.

“Reliable agricultural data is essential to anticipate food security and climate-related risks. In Senegal, WFP is working with national partners to explore how geospatial data and artificial intelligence can strengthen food security monitoring systems and support faster, more informed decision-making,” said Pierre Lucas, Representative and Country Director of the United Nations World Food Programme in Senegal.

The study, “Embedding-based Crop Type Classification in the Groundnut Basin of Senegal,” was published on 29 September in the journal Environmental Research: Food Systems. 

Like much of West Africa, Senegal’s agriculture is dominated by smallholder producers, who grow crops on plots not much larger than a football field. As the paper makes clear, knowing what’s grown where allows for “informed decision making at regional, national and global scales that can mean survival for vulnerable people.” 

Currently, when governments and food security organisations estimate crop production, they base their calculations on information either collected on the ground, which can be painstakingly slow and hard to gather, or derived from expensive computational analyses of satellite imagery.

Tessera offers an alternative way of mapping crops, a key step in estimating production. Its underlying model analyses a year’s worth of satellite images to compress each 10-metre point of land into a string of numbers, known as an embedding. That embedding carries information about how the land (and what grows on it) changes over time. A simple algorithm with a few calibration data points can then turn the embedding into a large-scale crop map.

In the study, the researchers compared Tessera with two satellite mapping methods widely used for monitoring agriculture, as well as Google DeepMind’s AlphaEarth, which is similar to Tessera but whose underlying model is not public. Each method was used to map crops for 2018, 2019 and 2021, then assessed according to accuracy, reliability, reusability and computational cost.

As well as outperforming the other methods, Tessera held up best when trained on one year’s data and applied to another. This suggests it can be used in later years without the need for new ground surveys every year.

The study has some limitations, in particular a drop in accuracy between 2018 and 2021 that the researchers think is linked to the quality of the ground survey data. It also did not test for secondary crops in fields where more than one crop is grown, which could change the overall accuracy in the most diverse locations.

Lisaius is keen to stress that Tessera’s biggest advantage is that it brings the power of sophisticated satellite analysis to the hands of those who don’t typically have access to it.

“One of the great contributions of this technology is not that it’s perfect, but that it’s incredibly accessible,” she said. “It’s a step towards greater geospatial data democratisation.”

The current study builds on previously published research which demonstrated Tessera’s ability to map small fields in Austria. The research was supported by UK Research and Innovation and Mantle Labs.
 

Reference:
M. Lisaius, S. Keshav, A. Blake and C. Atzberger, ‘Embedding-based Crop Type Classification in the Groundnut Basin of Senegal’, Environmental Research: Food Systems (2026). DOI: 10.1088/2976-601X/aea0b8

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Cambridge today announces a new institute focused on understanding and improving brain health across our lifespan, from early childhood through to old age. 

The Cambridge Mind and Brain Institute will unite world-class research, facilities and the lived experiences of patients and partners. By unlocking the mysteries of brain and mind health, it aims to transform how we understand and support individuals experiencing cognitive and emotional difficulties at every stage of life.Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge

The Cambridge Mind and Brain Institute brings together researchers from across the University to work alongside patients, carers, practitioners, policymakers and innovators to help understand and support individuals experiencing cognitive and emotional difficulties at every stage of life. 

Our brain health is at increasing risk from everything from digital lifestyles, diet, physical inactivity, acute or chronic illnesses, climate change, conflicts to social cohesion. Yet we don’t fully understand why or how these factors affect our cognitive and emotional well-being, and why each of us responds differently. As a result, current treatments for conditions affecting the brain and mind are often ineffective.

The Cambridge Mind and Brain Institute, announced today ahead of its official launch in in April 2027, brings together diverse expertise to tackle these challenges. Researchers will have access to cutting-edge on-site neuroimaging and brain stimulation techniques, supported by technical expertise, advanced methods advice and scientific computing. The facilities can also be used by members of the wider research community.

The institute will train tomorrow’s translational cognitive neuroscientists through its postgraduate research degrees, taught programmes, shorter courses and training workshops. This autumn, it will welcome its first cohorts of postgraduate students and researchers to the new MPhil in NeuroAI and Intelligent Systems and established MPhil in Cognitive Neurosciences. Both programmes provide exceptional foundation training in cutting-edge research topics and techniques.

Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, said: “The Cambridge Mind and Brain Institute will unite world-class research, facilities and the lived experiences of patients and partners. By unlocking the mysteries of brain and mind health, it aims to transform how we understand and support individuals experiencing cognitive and emotional difficulties at every stage of life.”

Founded by the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry as a cross-School hub for cognitive neuroscience with real-world relevance, the institute will build on the expertise established at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit.

The Cambridge Mind and Brain Institute will galvanise cognitive neuroscience activity across the University via a weekly headline lecture series and diverse academic events. Scheduled events during the Institute’s first term include a showcase for postdoctoral researchers, an EDI and wellbeing day, and research culture workshop. The Institute will also strengthen involvement of the general public and special interest groups in brain and mind research via participatory, outreach and engagement activities. 

Carly Hood, a postgraduate student, said: “It’s great to see the Cambridge Mind and Brain Institute encouraging an open, collaborative culture, where creative individuals with different expertise can work together towards shared questions around mental health and human cognition. I look forward to the opportunity to working with and learning from people who bring fresh perspectives from a wide variety of diverse disciplines.”

For more information about CMBI, and to find out how you can get involved, visit www.cmbi.cam.ac.uk

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Researchers have analysed aerial laser scans of huge areas across the Cairngorms Connect partnership in the Scottish Highlands, to produce incredibly detailed maps showing millions of young trees have naturally established following an increase in deer culling.

The ability to map regenerating trees so precisely, at such a huge scale, is a breakthrough for monitoring nature restoration…Aland Chan

A University of Cambridge-led team has used aerial surveys across a huge swathe of the Cairngorms National Park in Scotland to create detailed 3D maps that show the beginnings of large-scale recovery of native woodland.

The maps document a success-story for the Cairngorms Connect nature restoration partnership: young trees are spreading naturally into areas where woodlands have been missing for centuries, following a landscape-scale approach to deer management across the partnership’s 60,000 hectares. 

From a light aircraft flown 600m above the ground, a laser scanning technology known as LiDAR collected the data used by the Cambridge team. Their new, AI-supported method of analysing the data revealed over six million individual trees across the 569km² survey area, as well as the exact height of every tree. 

The results show that 2.65 million trees – just over 40% of those surveyed – were under five metres tall. These small, regenerating trees grow mostly near the edges of existing forests, where seeds are most likely to fall – but some new trees were found growing over half a kilometre from the forest edge. 

The maps also show that habitat type matters for tree regeneration: fewer new trees had established in boggy areas than in dry heathlands. 

“The ability to map regenerating trees so precisely, at such a huge scale, is a breakthrough for monitoring nature restoration at a landscape scale. It means we can effectively map young trees, assess whether restoration targets are being met, and inform future restoration work,” said Dr Aland Chan in the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Landscape Regeneration, who co-led the work.

“The new LiDAR-based method is excellent at tracking where new woodlands are establishing across the landscape, and also for tracking the impacts of fires – which are increasing in severity with climate change,” said Dr Pip Gullett from the Cairngorms Connect partnership, co-author of the study. 

She added: “This is going to be a great way to monitor large-scale woodland expansion going forward, as more and more landowners across Scotland are looking to re-establish native woodlands.” 

The study is published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

Airborne LiDAR shoots laser beams at high frequency from a light aircraft towards the ground, which bounce back when they hit trees or any other surface. By recording the time taken for each laser pulse to bounce back to the plane, the team could create a three-dimensional image of the landscape with vastly more detail than is possible to collect through ground-based surveys.

Point measurements on the ground validated the accuracy of the results, and comparison with field surveys conducted by Cairngorms Connect and RSPB Scotland proved that the team’s method can accurately assess forest expansion at a landscape scale. 

Airborne LiDAR has previously only been piloted for young-tree mapping, but this new study shows it can be used to survey millions of trees in 3D, and can accurately map natural woodland expansion.

The team says its approach has potential to complement, or partially replace, hundreds of hours of work by staff and volunteers to physically survey sites on the ground – and could be used around the world to monitor forest management and restoration.

A reversal of fortunes

Scotland’s only native coniferous forests have suffered centuries of decline through tree clearance for agriculture and hunting. Only 4% of the original native forests now remain and the landscape is extensively heath, bogs and grassland. 

The study assessed land within the Cairngorms Connect partnership, the largest contiguous nature restoration partnership in the UK, which aims to double the size of the existing forest – largely through natural regeneration. This aligns with the Scottish Government’s long-term strategy to capture more carbon by creating 3,000-5,000 hectares of native woodland across Scotland each year.

Until recently, deer browsing and the high cost of planting new trees within fenced areas has held back woodland expansion in Scotland. Now, a decade since the RSPB Scotland, Forestry and Land Scotland, NatureScot, and WildLand Ltd came together to form the Cairngorms Connect partnership, this study shows that over 5,235 hectares of previously open land supports young woodland – defined as land with over 100 trees per hectare. This has largely established naturally, with only small areas of planting where natural seed sources are not available. 

The ability to track the success of forest regeneration is vital for informing future land-management approaches. The Scottish Government is now funding a nationwide LiDAR survey, and the team is hopeful that its method will be used for monitoring nature recovery in Scotland and the rest of the UK. 

In addition to removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, more forested land is a boost for threatened species including Capercaillie and red squirrels, which are currently restricted to Scotland’s remaining forest fragments.

This research was undertaken by Cambridge’s Centre for Landscape Regeneration, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Endangered Landscapes and Seascapes Programme, in collaboration with Cairngorms Connect and RSPB Scotland. Tarides SAS also supported the work.

The data feeds into a wider University of Cambridge project called Tessera, an AI foundation model that has learnt patterns in data from European Space Agency satellites. Tessera makes it possible for non-experts to use satellite data to map changes in forests over time.

Reference

S.Thapa & A.Chan et al: ‘Tracking and modelling native woodland expansion in the Scottish Highlands using LiDAR.’ Journal of Applied Ecology, Sept 2026. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.70561

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Two Cambridge researchers have been named Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering in recognition of their exceptional contributions to their fields.

Professor Clemens Kaminski, Professor of Chemical Physics and Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology; and Professor Duncan McFarlane, Professor of Industrial Information Engineering in the Institute of Manufacturing, are among 75 leading figures in the field of engineering and technology elected to a Fellowship.

This year’s Fellows are making an impact across the engineering and technology sector with innovations in clean energy, AI, medicine and public health. They have influenced academia and business, worked to widen participation in engineering for people from underrepresented backgrounds, and provided expert policy advice to government.

Kaminski, who is also a Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge, has been recognised for his contributions to advanced optical imaging and sensor technologies, as well as his leadership in engineering research and education.

His research has pioneered the use of light to study chemical processes across a wide range of scales and systems. Methods developed by his research group, Laser Analytics, are used in applications ranging from clean energy technologies to pharmaceutical research, supported by close collaborations with scientists and clinicians across disciplines.

“It is wonderful to receive this recognition and, while I am extremely proud on a personal level, it is really a reflection of the hard work of the many outstanding students, researchers and collaborators I have had the privilege and joy of working with over the years,” he said. 

McFarlane, who is also a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, works on the development of manufacturing automation and control systems and more broadly, the use of digital systems across the industrial supply chain. His current research is mainly focused on distributed, intelligent industrial automation, low-cost approaches to digital industrial solutions, resilient and reconfigurable systems in manufacturing and logistics.

He is the lead on the Digital Manufacturing on a Shoestring programme which is investigating how low-cost, readily available digital technologies can be implemented to support growth and productivity in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The project addressed the common concern that many digital manufacturing solutions are designed for large companies and is now being applied in different regions in the UK and internationally.

In addition to Kaminski and McFarlane, Dr Loubna Bouarfa, Affiliated Lecturer at the Maxwell Centre, was among this year’s Fellows. 

Sir John Lazar CBE FREng, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said:

“Our Fellowship has been at the core of our work for the past 50 years, connecting the businesses leaders, entrepreneurs, researchers and policymakers who are at the heart of the UK’s technological progress. 

“This year’s cohort will be joining a community of over 1,700 top engineers and innovators in the UK and around the world. Together, we ensure that bright ideas are supported, scaled and shared, turning ambition into innovation and innovation into impact. We aim to strengthen education, skills and inclusion to inspire and equip the engineers of today and tomorrow.”

The new Fellows will be formally admitted to the Academy at a special ceremony in London on 19 October. 

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Cambridge scientists have shown that girls and boys show differences in what they pay attention to, even at birth. Since these differences are present so early, it is possible they emerge due to prenatal factors.

It’s nature and nurture, not nature or nurtureSimon Baron-Cohen

The findings suggest that some psychological differences between males and females (such the development of social skills) may be influenced by both prenatal biology as well as later experience.

The study, published today in Biology of Sex Differences, involved testing 130 newborn infants only hours after birth. It builds on previous research by the same lab and uses robust methods to demonstrate the differences.

For years, research has shown that girls, on average, learn to talk earlier and develop social skills faster than boys. Scientists have long debated whether these differences are due to culture or biology. One way to answer this question is to test if sex differences are present soon after birth, before society and culture have influenced a child’s development. 

A study from the University of Cambridge published in 2000 found girls at birth on average looked longer at faces, and boys on average looked longer at objects. Since then, scientists in the field called for a replication of this study. However, no research team has attempted this until now, since it is very challenging to carry out research on newborn infants.   

In this new study, infants were presented with side-by-side videos containing a social stimulus, namely a human face with natural movement, and a non-social object, namely a set of metallic balls swinging due to gravity and their mechanical properties (a Newton’s cradle). 

The team found that, regardless of sex, newborn infants generally preferred to look at the social stimulus. However, on average, female infants spent a greater proportion of the time looking at the social stimulus compared to male infants, while male infants spent a greater proportion of time looking at the non-social stimulus compared to female infants.

Since this is within hours of birth, before much postnatal experience (such as social expectations based on gender) has occurred, it is likely that prenatal biological factors that differ between the sexes during pregnancy (such as hormone levels and genetics) contribute to the observed on-average sex differences. 

Yumnah Khan, a PhD student at the Autism Research Centre, University of Cambridge and the lead researcher on the study, said: “Our recent research has also shown that on-average sex differences are present in brain structure at birth and emerge prenatally. This new study tells us that there are not only on-average sex differences in the brain but also in attention and behaviour.” 

Professor Sir Simon Baron Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre, University of Cambridge, who supervised the study, said: “This study addresses the age-old question of whether nature plays any role at all in shaping sex differences in the human mind and brain. The fact that we observe these differences within hours of birth, before extensive postnatal experience has occurred, suggests that prenatal factors play a role, and that these prenatal factors – sex hormones and/or genes – go on to interact with postnatal experience. In other words, it’s nature and nurture, not nature or nurture.”

The new study used more robust methods compared to the original 2000 study. In particular, it included more controlled experimental testing conditions as well as a more reliable method to monitor infant gaze. Crucially, the researchers who analysed the videos of the baby’s eyes were blind to the baby’s sex and whether the baby was looking at the social or the non-social stimulus, which ensured that they could not bias the results. 

Dr Alex Tsompanidis, Assistant Research Professor at the Autism Research Centre and a member of the research team, said: “Sex differences at birth are important as starting points, but we need to remember that they don’t fully determine how children learn and develop in later life. This is because biological and social factors always interact, contributing to the rich diversity of human societies.”

Professor Carrie Allison, Deputy Director of the Autism Research Centre and another member of the research team, said: “The differences we see don’t apply to all male or all female infants, and are only seen when you compare groups of male and female infants, on average. There’s a lot a variation within, and overlap between, each sex. Our future research needs to better understand that variation.” 

The team is now interested to find out if these early sex differences contribute to later differences in children’s minds, brains and behaviour. To test this requires a longitudinal (follow-up) study design, which is underway. The researchers hope that by understanding the origins of the earliest sex differences, scientists can better understand neurodiversity and conditions such as autism, which is diagnosed about twice as often in boys than in girls.

The babies for the study were recruited at The Rosie Hospital, part of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. This research was supported by the Wellcome Trust, the Simon Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI), and a PhD studentship from Trinity College, Cambridge and the Cambridge Trust. A follow-up study is funded by the K. Lisa Yang Centre for Autism Research at Cambridge, which is part of the Yang Tan Collective.

Reference

Khan, YT, Tsompanidis, A, Hymanson, E, Wickramanayake, S, APEX Consortium, Austin, T, Allison, C, & Baron-Cohen, S. Sex differences in social attention at birth. Biology of Sex Differences; 21 Sept 2026; DOI: 10.1186/s13293-026-00976-9

source: cam.ac.uk

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A global talent search is under way to recruit the inaugural Dean for the Rokos School of Government at the University of Cambridge, established by a record-breaking donation of £190 million from investor and philanthropist Chris Rokos.

The Rokos School of Government will be a place like no other, born out of a necessity to find innovative news ways to tackle the enormous challenges facing our world and to develop new models for future leadersDeborah Prentice

The School – announced in March this year – aims to prepare future leaders to be able to navigate the ever-more-challenging demands of both domestic and international politics in a new and complex world of great structural change.

Speaking at the time of the launch, Chris Rokos said that he wanted the School to be “a unique forum for radical and remarkable thinking, capturing the inspiration of the brightest minds from around the world and harnessing new technologies in order to meet the needs of modern government.”

The University today launches its search for an exceptional leader of international standing to become the Rokos Professor of Government and founding Dean of the Rokos School of Government. The position offers a rare opportunity to establish and shape a new type of school focused on addressing the challenges facing modern government, including technological change, geopolitics, defence, security and environmental crises.

The Dean will provide strategic and academic leadership, setting the School’s vision, research priorities, educational programmes, and external engagement. They will be responsible for building a faculty that brings together people from the arts, humanities and social sciences, science and technology, as well as with experience of government and public leadership.

The search for the Dean will be led by Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor of University of Cambridge.

Professor Prentice said: “The Rokos School of Government will be a place like no other, born out of a necessity to find innovative news ways to tackle the enormous challenges facing our world and to develop new models for future leaders.

“Today we are beginning our search to find an outstanding individual who can bring a radical vision, academic excellence and strong leadership skills. It’s an incredibly exciting opportunity to build and lead a new type of school of government that is not just globally competitive, but genuinely world-leading.”

The Rokos School of Government will be housed in a dedicated new building in the heart of the University’s Cambridge West Innovation District. This will become one of Europe’s strategic locations for science, technology and policy. It will host a growing cohort of PhD and Masters students both in the School and as joint appointments with departments across the University.

To support this teaching and research, the Rokos School of Government will grow a faculty from established academic disciplines – political scientists, economists, historians, scientists, engineers and statisticians, among others – in parallel with which it will recruit experts from government and from senior positions in business, finance and public service.

Further details, including how to apply, can be found on the University of Cambridge jobs website.

More information about the Rokos School of Government

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Scientists have discovered several 518-million-year-old fossils that reshape the origins of the group of animals that contains starfish, and found that they ate their food using tentacles, and not passively using their gills as previously thought. 

The fossilised animals, discovered in southwestern China and named Yujingia glutenotunica, are thought to be close to the last common ancestor of ambulacrarians, the modern group that includes starfish, sea stars, sea urchins and acorn worms. 

The international research team, including researchers from the University of Cambridge, say the fossils could also help us understand why two closely-related lineages – starfish and their relatives, and chordates, the phylum that includes humans – evolved wildly different body plans over millions of years. The results are reported in the journal Current Biology.

The fossilised animals date from a period of rapid evolutionary development known as the Cambrian explosion, when most major animal groups first appear in the fossil record. 

Most animal fossils from the Cambrian are of hard-shelled creatures, but, in a handful of locations around the world – such as the Maotianshan Shales in China’s Yunnan Province where Yujingia was found – conditions are such that softer body part could be preserved before they decayed. 

The Yujingia fossils measure between 8 and 22 millimetres in length, and preserve the body, gut and appendages, providing rare examples of ambulacrarians without a mineralised skeleton. The animals had two distinct sets of appendages: one set of feather-like feeding tentacles that captured organic particles from the water, and a second set thought to have temporarily anchored Yujingia to the seabed, although it was likely capable of some degree of movement.

“There has been a tendency to think of the last common ancestor of ambulacrarians as more closely resembling a worm living in its seafloor burrow, filtering food from the water,” said co-author Dr Giovanni Mussini, from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences. “This new fossil suggests instead that the common ancestor of the ambulacrarians might have actually fed with tentacles, and may have been more like starfish and their relatives.”

Ambulacraria is one of the two major branches of deuterostome animals, and was first classified in the 1880s. Ambulacarians include echinoderms (such as starfish) and hemichordates (such as acorn worms), two groups with strikingly different body forms. However, fossil evidence of the origins of this group has remained scarce. 

“The fivefold radial symmetry of starfish and their relatives, and the bilaterally symmetrical, worm-like bodies of acorn worms and their relatives has been a bit of a mystery until now,” said Mussini. 

Chordates, echinoderms and hemichordates make up the principal branches of deuterostome evolution, yet differ profoundly in body organisation and feeding. Reconstructing the ambulacrarian ancestor is central to understanding how these lineages diverged. A longstanding hypothesis proposes that this ancestor was a tentacle-free worm that filtered food through its pharynx, resembling a modern acorn worm. Detailed anatomical study and phylogenetic analysis of Yujingia now challenge that view with direct fossil evidence.

“The animal has an elongated, bottle-like form, with tentacles spreading above a rounded lower body,” said lead author Kaiyue He from Northwest University in China. “Its outline closely resembles the ritual vase, or yujingping, in traditional Chinese culture, which inspired the genus name Yujingia. All the specimens clearly preserve a pale, original membrane enclosing the visceral mass. Its soft, gelatinous appearance is the species’ most immediately recognisable feature and inspired the species name.”

To establish the evolutionary position of Yujingia, Mussini and He assembled a large dataset comprising 505 morphological characters across 100 living and extinct taxa and analysed it using Bayesian phylogenetic reconstruction. The results place Yujingia closer to the last common ancestor of living ambulacrarians than previously described fossils, making it a key transitional form linking early Cambrian tentacled animals with hemichordates and echinoderms.

Although it lacked a hard skeleton, Yujingia possessed a complex tentacle-based feeding system, suggesting that sophisticated feeding structures evolved early, while echinoderm skeletons and other specialised features appeared later.

“It tells us how ecology can drive different lineages onto very different evolutionary paths, and very different morphological specialisations,” said Mussini. “The chordates became reliant on movement for finding their food, so they streamlined their bodies and developed their brains, while members of the starfish lineage remained relatively anchored to the seafloor and specialised on this particle-feeding lifestyle.” 

“How the major deuterostome groups diverged during the Cambrian explosion is one of the central questions in animal evolution,” said co-author Degan Shu, also from Northwest University. “Yujingia helps connect primitive, tentacle-bearing animals living on the seafloor with modern echinoderms and hemichordates. It offers a new way to understand the profound transition from bilateral symmetry to the fivefold radial body plan of echinoderms, and adds an important fossil to a crucial gap in the early animal tree of life.”

The research team included scientists from Northwest University, the University of Cambridge, the State Natural History Museum Braunschweig in Germany, Georg-August University, palaeon Research Museum, and the China University of Geosciences. 

The research was supported in part by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Giovanni Mussini is a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. 

Reference:
Kaiyue He et al. ‘Cambrian fossils illuminate the ambulacrarian common ancestor.’ Current Biology (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2026.08.053

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Future phases will deliver affordable homes for University key workers and student accommodation, relieving pressure on the city’s wider housing market. They will also create employment space and more than 50 hectares of green and open space.

Eddington has already demonstrated how sustainable, well-planned development can create a thriving and inclusive community.Professor Anna Philpott, Pro-Vice-Chancellor

The University of Cambridge has welcomed the approval of its outline planning application for the future phases of Eddington, paving the way for thousands of new homes and the continued, sustainable growth of the established North West Cambridge neighbourhood.

The Joint Development Management Committee of the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service gave the proposals the green light at its meeting on 16 September, following a recommendation for approval from planning officers, subject to the signing of the Section 106 agreement.

Professor Anna Philpott, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Resources and Operations at the University of Cambridge, said: “I am delighted to welcome this decision, which represents an important milestone for Eddington and for the long-term future of Cambridge. Eddington has already demonstrated how sustainable, well-planned development can create a thriving and inclusive community. These future phases will build on that success, delivering much-needed homes for University staff and students, alongside employment space, community facilities and green spaces that will benefit the whole city.”

The future phases will deliver up to 3,800 new homes, bringing the total number of homes across Eddington to approximately 5,650. 50% of the new homes will be affordable housing for University key workers, helping to address housing pressures in Cambridge and reducing demand within the wider private rental market.

The approved masterplan also provides accommodation for up to 1,675 students, bringing total student accommodation at Eddington to 2,000 homes, as well as up to 100,000m² of employment space supporting research, innovation and mid-tech businesses.

More than one third of the development will be retained as green and open space. The plans include more than 50 hectares of informal open space, over 15 hectares of sports pitches and 3.5 hectares of play space, alongside new community facilities and pedestrian and cycle connections linking Eddington with the wider city.

At the heart of the plans is a commitment to addressing one of Cambridge’s most pressing challenges: the availability and affordability of housing. The future phases will provide more opportunities for University key workers and students to live close to where they work and study, supporting the University’s ability to attract and retain the talent that drives one of the world’s leading centres of education, research and discovery, while helping to reduce pressure on the wider housing market.

The approval marks the next chapter in the evolution of Eddington. The first phase has established a thriving neighbourhood with homes, a primary school and nursery, Storey’s Field Centre, sports pitches, shops and extensive public open spaces. The future phases will build on these foundations, creating a well-connected, active travel first, and low-car neighbourhood where homes, workplaces, community facilities and green spaces are planned together.

Matt Johnson, Head of Development, North West Cambridge at the University of Cambridge, said:
“Today’s decision allows us to move forward with a practical response to one of Cambridge’s most pressing challenges. The success of the University and the city depend on people being able to find suitable and affordable places to live. By providing more homes for University key workers, people working in the knowledge-intensive industries, and the wider community, the future phases will support the talent behind Cambridge’s research, teaching and innovation, while helping to reduce pressure on the wider housing market.

“These plans are about much more than new homes. The University has already created a vibrant neighbourhood at Eddington that is fostering a strong sense of community through investment in placemaking and has become an integral part of the City. The future phases will build on these strong foundations, creating new opportunities for people to live, work and thrive in a sustainable location. We look forward to continuing to work with the local community and our partners as the detailed plans are brought forward.”

The Outline Planning Application establishes the overall framework for the future development of Eddington. Detailed proposals for individual parts of the development are expected to be brought forward through Reserved Matters Applications from early 2027.

The plans have been shaped through a comprehensive programme of consultation and engagement with over 1,500 members of the community taking part, helping ensure the future phases respond to community priorities while supporting the long-term needs of Cambridge.

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Freelance platforms don’t recognise credentials built up over decades by skilled workers.

Many skilled older workers seek to transition from full-time stressful jobs to more flexible work, but freelance employment platforms don’t adequately recognise their credentials so there is a mismatch, finds a new study published in the journal Administrative Science Quarterly.

Internet technology and the advent of the gig economy have given hope to many highly skilled workers that their reputations built up over many years can help them transition from a traditional office-based job (with associated pressures) to freelancing work in which they provide clients with similar services but gain more control over their lives.

Yet when it comes to such transition by older workers late in their careers, there is “reputation system misalignment” between the historic system they relied upon to evaluate their value and the way that online platforms operate based on the work actually arranged on that platform, finds the study by academics at Cambridge Judge Business School and the University of California, Santa Barbara.

“We call this a ‘cold start’ problem and it’s especially acute for late-career workers seeking to change their working pattern,” said study co-author Sienna Helena Parker of Cambridge Judge Business School. “We find that these late-career workers who make a change to freelance work often need to recalibrate not only their professional worth but also their motivations for making such a move that is more challenging than it might look before they take the plunge.”

The misalignment particularly affects late-career workers for a key reason: people at an early stage in their career are more likely to accept a temporary loss of status through a freelance portfolio because they see it as leading to future rewards, whereas late-career workers often make the change to freelance work in the expectation that this will enable work and career to become less central to their lives – “placing greater value on finding immediate satisfaction in what they do rather than striving for professional advancement”, says the study.

These findings matter, given the changing demographics of the labour market, including longer life expectancy and overstretched, less-generous pension systems. Workers aged 55 and older are the fastest-growing workforces in many countries, so it’s important to understand how such older workers can effectively transition – or not – into platform work. The US Labor Department says the share of workers age 55 or older is expected to climb to 23.8% by 2033, compared to 15.1% in 2003.

A longer version of this piece is available on the Cambridge Judge Business School website.

Reference:
Sienna Helena Parker-Waldern and Paul M Leonardi. ‘Cold Starts and Burning Desires: Reputation System Misalignment and Late-Career Transitions to Platform Work.’ Administrative Science Quarterly (2026). DOI: 10.1177/00018392261464889

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One of the oldest known 3D fossils of an animal has been discovered in a sheep field in the Norwegian Arctic, the first new major site of its kind found in Europe in decades. 

The fossil dates from around 560 million years ago, during the Ediacaran Period, when complex forms of life first appeared on Earth. The fossil, known as Charnia, looks more like a fern than anything we would recognise as an animal today.

Charnia did not have a mouth, organs, or any visible means of movement, and was essentially a ‘goo-filled bag’ – like a sedentary jellyfish – however, it is thought to be one of the earliest animals to exist.

Many fossils dating from this period in the Earth’s history are found as flat impressions, like a flower pressed between the pages of a book. However, the new fossil – the first confirmed Charnia find in Scandinavia – is preserved in three-dimensional detail, which is incredibly rare for soft-bodied organisms, especially of this age.

The creature was swept up in an ancient underwater avalanche and quickly buried in the seabed. This filled its body with sediment, while preserving its three-dimensional form. This extraordinary preservation allowed researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, to study it in detail. Their results are reported in the journal Palaeontology.

Thanks to the high-quality preservation, the fossil was found to contain subtle ridges, known as ‘keels’, along each of its branches – a feature that had not been detected in other, flatter fossils.

“When you see the same species preserved in a different way, you start noticing properties you hadn’t seen before,” said lead author Dr Yorick Veenma, from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences. 

While Ediacaran fossils have been found in different places worldwide, the discovery of a new location in Finnmark, Norway, suggests that the earliest animals may have been far more widely spread than was previously known, and that other unexplored areas could hold similar surprises.

“As scientists, we tend to go to the same well-known sites again and again to look for fossils like these,” said Veenma. “This find shows that there is still potential for discoveries in less familiar places.”

The area of Norway where the fossils were found is near an outcrop where hints of Ediacaran life had been seen before, like strange anchoring structures made by organisms as they attached themselves to the ancient seafloor. However, fossils of the organisms themselves had never been found – until a chance find in a sheep field revealed a rich new seam of fossils. Some rocks had fallen off a cliff, split open, and revealed the Charnia fossil within.

“As a fossil record, the Ediacaran has several things working against it, primarily that most organisms were soft-bodied and skeletons hadn’t evolved yet, so that they are harder to preserve,” said co-author Professor Neil Davies from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences. “A lot of fossils from the period occur as impressions where they’ve been squashed down under layers of rock.”

“This time period also does not have a widespread rock record,” said Veenma. “Fossils need to be embedded within sedimentary rocks to be found, so if the rocks themselves are less common, then that makes the fossils harder to find. Most Ediacaran fossils come from just a handful of locations, which makes it exciting to find them somewhere new.”

In addition to the exquisitely preserved Charnia fossil, the researchers identified several other parts of the fossil ecosystem, and they hope that more will continue to turn up. “There may be a whole undiscovered community of these very early organisms preserved up there,” said Davies. “Weird little umbrella-shaped blobs, things that don’t fit with what people know from elsewhere. There are a whole host of different things that were not known before.”

The researchers say that similar Ediacaran fossils may continue to turn up in unexpected places, and that it’s important to keep searching for new sites, even in areas where no fossils have been found before.

The research was supported in part by the Leverhulme Trust, and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Yorick Veenma is a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. Neil Davies is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.

Reference:
Yorick P Veenma et al. ‘Charnia and other late Ediacaran macrofossils preserved in turbiditic deposits of the Indreelva Member (Finnmark, Norway).’ Palaeontology (2026). DOI: 10.1111/pala.70082

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A new programme for all postgrads and innovators

By Molly Tooher-Rudd

The highly popular i-Teams innovation programme at the University of Cambridge is calling on Postgraduate students and early career researchers to join its first climate-focused projects.

Climate i-Teams will explore three emerging technologies focused on Electric Vehicle (EV) batteries, heat storage and UV light.

The hands-on i-Teams programme invites multidisciplinary student teams to assess the commercial potential of real University inventions. It puts bright students and ground-breaking university research together to develop commercially viable ideas.

As the impacts of climate change become increasingly visible there is an urgent need to understand the challenges we face, but also to develop practical solutions to them.

This is the driving force behind the new Climate i-Teams programme, addressing the need for innovation focused specifically on climate change and sustainability.

Adam Wurr, an i-Teams Inventor from the 2025 programme, said it was a great opportunity for students to gain experience in solving climate challenges.

“It is hugely timely that climate has been given its own space in the programme, especially after the summer of wildfires and drought we have just had,” said Wurr, who is Programme Leader for Geopolitics and Government at the Cambridge Centre for Geopolitics.

Climate i-Teams will launch on the 5th October, with workshops taking place every Monday evening throughout Michaelmas term before teams present their final findings on the 10th December.

The three projects in this years Climate i-Teams, span energy storage, EV battery recycling and the use of light to improve agricultural and solar efficiency.  

Esther Gray from the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy is returning as an inventor after participating in i-Teams two years ago.

“I really looked forward to Monday evenings, the sessions were so engaging, and the other participants were passionate and enthusiastic about the projects,” she said.

Gray, alongside co-inventors Dr Javier Rubio Garcia and Professor Manish Chhowalla from the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy, have developed a novel method for recycling spent Lithium-ion (Li-ion) EV batteries, which is faster, cheaper and less energy intensive than existing approaches and results in far less hazardous waste.

The key task for the i-Team is to help the inventors navigate the complex industry of recycling, to interview experts, gather feedback and make recommendations on the best route to market.

Gray said she enjoyed the varied outlooks that came out of an i-Teams project which combined people from different backgrounds with different types of thinking.

“It meant we were able to discover things that the start-up hadn’t considered,” Gray said.

The second project looks at developing a solution for long-duration seasonal heat storage, by inventors Luc Liedtke, Juan-Luis Pinzón Ramírez, Collin Smith, Laura Torrente-Murciano.

Their technology combines a reversible chemical reaction with proprietary materials, with the aim of storing renewable energy generated in the summer for heating in the winter.

The technology is targeted at consumers of energy for domestic heat networks and data centres as possible markets.

The challenge for the i-Team is to investigate these markets and any others, as well as the impacts of current and upcoming legislative frameworks on the timing and need for long-duration energy storage systems.

Inventors of the third project, Dr Monica Saavedra & Dr Boris Breiner from Lambda agri, have developed an active additive that converts UV light into a red light that can increase plant yields by around 20% and reduce energy requirements of heating and CO₂ emissions. The additive is very efficient at this energy conversion, and is non-toxic, bio-degradable and low-cost.

The first commercial applications are to incorporate it in paint for greenhouse coating and within polytunnel sheeting.

The i-Team will investigate the use of the technology to improve greenhouse production and to explore other possible uses, for example in solar energy systems, or medical devices.

Wurr’s 2025 i-Teams project looked at KairoSim, which grew out of work at Cambridge’s Centre for Geopolitics. He and colleagues developed strategic simulations that place participants in realistic hypothetical crises to explore how governments and businesses make decisions and navigate competing pressures. Working with the i-Team helped the company really focus on the benefits they could offer as a company.

Recent simulations have explored climate based scenarios, such as the impact of melting ice caps on the geopolitics of the Arctic and catastrophic wildfire scenarios that bring awareness of the vulnerable position climate change leaves us in.

‘I’m still in touch with my team, some have even volunteered to intern for the business next summer,” Wurr said, highlighting the opportunities the programme can lead to.

Gray said the programme really helped her understand that entrepreneurship was something she wanted to pursue in her career.

“It’s a great gateway course to test the waters and see if you enjoy that way of thinking.”

Applications to take part are open until 28th September.

“If you’re a curious person and you want to learn about something new, then this is the perfect course,’ Gray said.

source: cam.ac.uk

Nazir Afzal OBE launches part one of independent review

Mr Afzal has produced a video message which explains, in his words, the purpose of part one and how he intends to carry out his work. 

On Friday 4 September, the University announced in broad terms how the review process following the death of Professor Jason Arday will work. A statement was also published on the University website.

We explained that part one will examine the support, interventions and protections available to Professor Jason Arday, and that the University Council had agreed to appoint Nazir Afzal OBE to serve as the independent lead of this part. 

The University Council has now agreed Mr Afzal’s terms of reference for part one of the review.

Anyone who wishes to provide evidence for part one can do so by emailing him directly at cambridge@riseassociates.co.uk.

Part One

Support, interventions and welfare protections

Terms of Reference

A note from Nazir Afzal OBE leading the Review

I have agreed to lead the first part of the University’s review. These are the terms I intend to work to. I have written them in ordinary English, because terms of reference shape the character of a review more than any other single thing and I would rather be held to my own words.

Four things need saying before the formal text begins.

What this review cannot do

It cannot say why Professor Arday died. That question belongs to the Coroner, who can compel evidence, who sits in public, and who will reach conclusions I have no business anticipating. Anyone reading this in the hope that I will supply that answer should stop now and wait for the inquest.

What I can do is narrower and still worth doing. I can establish what the University knew about his circumstances, when it knew it, what it did, and whether what it did was reasonable on the information in front of it at the time.

Hindsight

Reviews like this one carry a standing temptation. You know the ending, so you read the file backwards, and every missed signal looks obvious because you already know what it was a signal of. Findings produced that way feel satisfying and teach an organisation nothing, because no institution can act on the instruction to have known in March what became clear in August.

So, I will test decisions against what was known and knowable when they were taken. Where the University fell short of that standard I will say so, in plain terms, naming the decision and the point at which it could have gone differently. Where people did what they reasonably could with what they had, I will say that too, and I expect that to be an unpopular sentence in some quarters. I would rather write it than write something more comfortable that happens not to be true.

The people I will be speaking to

Some of them will be frightened. Colleagues who made decisions in July and August are living with the outcome, and a number will be worried about their jobs, their reputations and what the Coroner may ask them later. That fear is understandable and it is corrosive to a review, because frightened people give careful evidence rather than truthful evidence.

I will do what I can about this. Nobody who gives evidence candidly will be criticised by me for having given it. Where I have to criticise a decision I will criticise the decision, but I will not treat honesty in the review room as an aggravating factor. I have asked the University to say the same in writing, and section 12 records that undertaking.

Beyond that, one further point. Professor Arday was autistic, he was Black, and he was under a sustained public attack that included ridicule of his personal history. Any competent review of how an employer supported him has to engage with all three of those facts rather than treating them as context. I have said so explicitly in the scope, because in my experience things that are not written down do not get examined.

Nazir Afzal OBE
Leading Part One

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1. What this document is

1.1 These are the terms of reference for Part One of the independent review established by the University Council following the death of Professor Jason Arday on 14 August 2026. They sit within the Council-approved framework and under the overarching terms that apply to both Parts. Where anything here appears to conflict with the overarching terms, the overarching terms win, and the Review Lead will ask the Council  to resolve the discrepancy under section 20.

1.2  The Review Lead’s note above is not an operative provision. It explains how he intends to approach the work. Sections 1 to 20 are the operative terms themselves.

1.3  Part Two is a separate exercise with a separate chair, a panel and a longer timetable. Section 9 explains how the two fit together.

2. What Part One is for

2.1  Part One exists to examine the support, interventions and welfare protections available to Professor Arday in the period before his death, and to say whether the University’s decisions, actions, communications and systems were reasonable and appropriate given what it knew or ought to have known at the time.

2.2  It is a learning exercise. Its purpose is to produce findings the University can act on quickly, and recommendations specific enough that somebody can be held to delivering them.

2.3  Where the review finds that something went wrong, it will say what, when, and who was responsible for it. Learning reviews that decline to identify anything or anyone tend to produce recommendations addressed to nobody in particular, which is how institutions absorb criticism without changing.

3. What Part One is not for

3.1  It will not investigate Professor Arday. The allegations about his thesis, his qualifications, his honorary appointments and his account of his own life are not for this review to determine, and it will not reach a view on whether any of them were true.

3.2  It will not determine legal liability, whether the University’s or anyone else’s, and it is not a disciplinary, grievance, capability, research-misconduct or employment process. If the findings suggest that some separate process is warranted, the review will say so and stop there.

3.3  It will not duplicate or pre-empt the Coroner. See section 8.

3.4  It will not adjudicate the conduct of third parties. Journalists, publications, individual critics and campaigning organisations are outside the remit. They enter the review only as part of the environment the University was responding to, and the question asked about them is what the University knew of the pressure he was under, not whether that pressure was fair.

3.5  It is not a disclosure exercise. Material gathered is gathered for the review.

4. The question

4.1  Everything below is in service of a single question:
On the information reasonably available to the University at each relevant stage, were there reasonably practicable steps it could and should have taken, and did not?

4.2  The review will answer it in four parts, and the report will be structured the same way:

• what the University did;
• what the University could have done;
• how much the gap between those two matters;
• what needs to change.

4.3  The third of those is the one reviews usually skip. A departure from policy that made no practical difference is worth a sentence. A departure that removed the last realistic opportunity to intervene is worth a chapter. The review intends to distinguish between them rather than presenting every finding at the same volume.

5. The period under review

5.1  The main period runs from the point at which the University first received, or otherwise became aware of, any complaint, allegation or press enquiry concerning Professor Arday’s scholarship, qualifications or personal account, through to his death on 14 August 2026.

5.2  No start date is fixed in these terms, because it is not yet known. The University’s own records will establish when the first complaint or enquiry landed and with whom, and that date becomes the start of the period. The working assumption, on what is publicly known, is that it falls somewhere in 2025. If the records show it was earlier, the period is earlier.

5.3  Two extensions apply.

5.4  First, the review will look at the nine days between his resignation on 5 August 2026 and his death on 14 August. Those days sit inside the period and are regarded as central rather than peripheral, for the reasons set out at 6.5.

5.5  Second, the review will look at the University’s conduct in the weeks after his death, to the end of September 2026, covering its contact with the family, its support of staff and students, its public statements, and whether it took immediate protective steps for anyone else it knew to be at risk. Postvention is part of welfare practice and belongs in a welfare review.

5.6  The review may reach further back where an earlier event is necessary to understand the support arrangements he had. It will not use that latitude to stray into the appointment process itself, which belongs to Part Two.

6. What the review will examine

6.1  The headings below are the areas the review will cover. They are not a closed list, and the review is not obliged to give each of them equal weight.

6.2  What the University knew, and when

This is the spine of the review. It will establish:

• what information the University held about Professor Arday’s health, wellbeing or distress, and in what form;
• when each piece of information arrived, from whom, and who received it;
• whether he asked for help himself, of whom, and what happened next;
• whether colleagues, friends, his College, his union, his lawyers, his family, or anyone else raised concerns, and what was done with them;
• whether clinicians or occupational health were involved at any stage, and on whose initiative;
• how concerns were recorded, or whether they were recorded at all;
• whether information moved between the parts of the institution that needed it, or stopped at departmental, collegiate or professional boundaries;
• whether anyone carried out a risk assessment, at any point, in any form;
• whether the University recognised that risk was rising, and what it did when it did.

The review will pay particular attention to the last three. In reviews of this kind the failure is rarely that nobody knew anything. It is that several people each knew a fragment and no mechanism existed to assemble them.

6.3  The support that was offered

The review will take support in three categories and assess each separately, because they fail in different ways.

Employment and workplace support: line management, workload, leave, adjustments, sickness absence, flexibility, HR involvement, occupational health, counselling and employee assistance, and practical help with the media and reputational pressure he was under.

Mental health and wellbeing: identification of risk, referral, escalation, emergency arrangements, involvement of appropriate professionals, and communication between the services that held relevant information.

Professional support: mentoring, the response of his department and faculty, help in answering criticism of his work, clarity about the processes he was subject to, and access to representation and advice.

For each, the question is not whether provision existed. Almost every university can produce a list of services. The question is whether the support was appropriate, timely, accessible and proportionate to what was happening to him, and whether anyone checked that it had actually reached him.

6.4  The decision to investigate, and how it was handled

The University opened a new investigation into Professor Arday’s qualifications and honorary appointments in early August 2026, and made that fact public. He appears to have resigned within hours. The review will examine:

• how that decision was reached, by whom, and on what advice;
• whether anyone assessed the likely effect on him before it was taken, and if so how;
• whether his known disability and his known circumstances were factored into the decision, its timing, or the way it was communicated;
• what alternatives were considered, including a private process, a paused process, or a differently worded announcement;
• who decided to announce it publicly and what the reasoning was;
• any link between the announcement and the resignation;
• what welfare provision was put in place alongside it, before rather than after.

The review does not start from the position that the investigation should not have happened. A university that receives credible allegations about a professor’s credentials has to act, and there are obvious dangers in an institution that softens its processes according to how fragile a subject appears. That is a real tension and the review will treat it as one. But an employer that opens a process against someone it knows to be under sustained public attack has to think about the welfare consequences at the same time as the governance ones, and the question here is whether anyone did.

6.5  The nine days

Professor Arday resigned on 5 August. He died on 14 August. In between he was no longer an employee of the University or a fellow of his College.

The review will examine what the University did during that period, what it thought it still owed him, and who if anyone believed themselves responsible for him once he had gone. It will also examine whether his resignation was treated as the closing of a file.

To what extent, if any, did the university’s duty of care continue following the resignation, having regard to the circumstances in which the resignation was made and to what the University knew, or ought reasonably to have known, about the individual’s state of distress? Did the University recognise any significance in the resignation in that context and, if not, could it have done so? The review will also consider whether, had the circumstances been understood differently at the time, any different steps could or should reasonably have been taken.

6.6  Disability, race and reasonable adjustments

Professor Arday was autistic and had spoken publicly about it. He was a Black academic, he had said that the campaign against him was racially motivated, and the University was aware that he had said so. The review will examine:

• what the University knew about his disability, and how that knowledge was held and shared;
• whether reasonable adjustments were considered or made, in his employment generally and in the investigatory processes he faced;
• whether the University’s engagement with him was culturally competent and informed by his neurodivergence, or merely procedurally correct;
• how it responded to his allegation of racial motivation, and whether that response was adequate;
• whether the University discharged its obligations under the Equality Act 2010, including the anticipatory duty and the public sector equality duty.

Resistance to the framing of that last set of questions is anticipated, from people who consider them a distraction from the substance of the misconduct allegations. That objection is not accepted. An employer’s duties under the Equality Act do not lapse because the employee is the subject of a serious complaint.

6.7  Ownership, escalation and coordination

For every significant decision in the period the review will establish who took it, what they knew, what advice they had, what alternatives they weighed, whether risk was identified, whether the decision was written down, and whether anybody revisited it as things changed.

Running underneath that is the one question the review regards as the most important: was there anyone whose job it was to hold the whole picture? Not a committee. A person. If the answer is no, then a great many individual decisions may each have been defensible while the overall response was not, and that is a finding about the institution rather than about any of the people in it.

6.8  Media, communications and reputation

The review will look at how the University handled the press interest, what it said publicly and when, how those statements were cleared, whether anyone considered their effect on him, and what practical help he was offered in dealing with coverage that had moved well beyond his academic work into his personal history.

Where the University’s communications strategy and his welfare pulled in different directions, the review will establish how that was resolved and who resolved it.

6.9  Policies and standards

The review will test the University’s conduct against its own policies as they stood at the time, and against what could reasonably be expected of a comparable institution. That includes staff wellbeing and mental health policies, occupational health arrangements, HR and investigatory procedures, safeguarding and risk management, media policy, academic freedom and free speech policy, equality and reasonable adjustment obligations, and health and safety duties.

Universities UK guidance is relevant background rather than a legal standard. Its suicide-prevention guidance argues for a whole-university approach; its postvention guidance presses institutions to conduct serious-incident reviews and to learn from deaths. The review will use both as reference points and say plainly where the University fell short of them, if at all.

Where a policy was followed and the outcome was still poor, that will be treated as a finding about the policy.

7. Causation

7.1  This review does not proceed on any assumption that an act or omission of the University caused or contributed to Professor Arday’s death. The framework governs the work:

The review shall not proceed on the assumption that any act or omission by the University caused or contributed to the death. It shall examine whether, and to what extent, the University’s actions and omissions were reasonable and appropriate in light of the information available to it at the relevant time. Any conclusions concerning causation shall be reached only if specifically within the review’s remit and supported by appropriate evidence.

7.2  The review can make findings that the University did not do something it could have done. That is not the same as finding that the failure caused a death, and the report will be careful to keep the two apart, including in its language and its summary.

7.3  That distinction, however carefully drawn, may be lost the moment the report is reported on. That is not a reason to blur it.

8. The Coroner

8.1  An inquest has been opened. The Coroner’s investigation takes precedence over this review in every respect.

8.2  The review will establish contact with the Coroner’s office at the outset, explain its scope and timetable, and invite any observations. If the Coroner indicates that a line of inquiry risks prejudicing the inquest, it will not be pursued, and the report will record that it was not, and why.

8.3  The review will not seek to determine matters reserved to the Coroner, and will avoid any language that reads as a conclusion on those matters.

8.4  Nothing here prevents the University from taking immediate protective action at any point. If the review finds something during its work that suggests a present risk to a living person, it will be raised with the University at once and will not wait for the report.

9. The boundary with Part Two and with other processes

9.1  Part Two covers recruitment and appointment of senior academic staff, mentoring and support arrangements, institutional oversight, the University’s handling of research misconduct allegations, and support for academics under public scrutiny. Where those subjects arise in the course of Part One they will be examined only so far as necessary to understand the support he received, and the wider material will be handed to the Part Two chair.

9.2  The Review Lead will liaise with the Part Two chair so that the two exercises are complementary, that witnesses are not asked the same questions twice by different people, and that Part Two can build on what Part One establishes rather than starting again. Information may pass between the Parts where relevant and lawful.

9.3  A practical risk is recorded here. Part One reports in three months; Part Two in six from a later start. Whichever reports first will frame the public understanding of both. This report will be written so that it stands on its own without prejudging Part Two’s territory, and the University is encouraged to resist any temptation to treat it as the whole answer.

9.4  Any live disciplinary, misconduct or employment process is separate from this review, and the review will not interfere with it.

10. Jesus College and other bodies

10.1  Professor Arday held a fellowship at Jesus College. The College is a separate legal entity and is not within the University’s control, so the review cannot direct it and these terms do not bind it. However, Jesus College has been invited to cooperate and has agreed to be part of the process.

10.2  The same approach applies to his trade union, to any external adviser or clinician, and to any other body holding relevant information. The review has no power to compel any of them.

11. Evidence and access

11.1  The University has undertaken to give the review prompt and unrestricted access to the records it needs, including email and messaging records, HR files, occupational health material, meeting minutes and notes, communications and press material, legal and governance papers, and calendar and telephone records, subject to the requirements noted in the framework.

11.2  Where a document is withheld, the University will tell the review that it is being withheld, on what ground, and in enough detail for the review to decide whether to contest it.

11.3  Disputes about disclosure go first to the Director of Governance and Compliance  and then, if unresolved within five working days, to the Vice-Chancellor. If a dispute remains unresolved after that, the report will record that material was withheld, the ground relied on, and the effect on the conclusions.

11.4  Legal professional privilege is a genuine right, and the review does not ask the University to waive it lightly. It does ask the University to consider limited waiver where advice bears directly on a welfare decision, and to understand that a report noting the absence of privileged material at a critical juncture may be read in ways the University would not welcome.

11.5  The University has confirmed that all relevant material is preserved and that a document preservation notice has been issued to those who are likely to hold relevant material. The review will ask for written confirmation of the date that suspension took effect.

12. Interviews and cooperation

12.1  The review will decide who to interview. Categories will include the family, colleagues and friends, line managers, heads of department and faculty, HR, occupational health, wellbeing and mental health staff, senior officers of the University, communications staff, those involved in the qualifications and misconduct processes, and relevant external advisers.

12.2  Participation by current staff is expected. The University has confirmed that it will say so in writing and will also confirm that no member of staff will be disadvantaged for giving frank evidence to this review.

12.3  Anyone interviewed may be accompanied by a colleague. Interviews will be recorded and transcribed for minute taking purposes, and the recording will be retained in accordance with the University’s document preservation notice after that has been done.

12.4  Evidence to this review is confidential to the review. An interviewee’s evidence will not be passed to the University for employment purposes. The review cannot promise that material will never be disclosable to the Coroner or a court, and will not pretend otherwise; anyone worried about that should take their own advice, and section 15 sets out how the material will be held.

12.5  The review may anonymise individuals in the report where naming them is unnecessary for accountability or public understanding. Senior officers should expect that the more significant the decision, the harder it is to justify anonymity.

13. Fairness to individuals

13.1  Where the review intends to criticise a person or an identifiable role, the substance of the proposed criticism will be put to them in writing, with the evidence relied on, and they will be given a reasonable opportunity to respond before the report is finalised.

13.2  Responses will be considered properly, and the report will be changed where a response shows the review was wrong.

13.3  This process covers criticism of individuals. It is not an opportunity for the University to comment on findings about the institution, and the draft report will not be circulated for institutional comment beyond what factual accuracy checking requires.

13.4  Ten days is allowed for responses in the timetable at section 18. That is short. It is short because the timetable is short, and it is better to say so than to pretend the compression is costless.

14. Professor Arday’s family

14.1  The family will be approached early and given a genuine opportunity to say what they believe this review should look at. Their questions will shape the scope, and where the review decides not to pursue something they have raised, the reasons will be explained to them before the report is published.

14.2  They will be offered a private meeting with the Review Lead, at a time and place of their choosing, and a named point of contact throughout.

14.3  They will see the report before it goes to Council, in confidence and with time to absorb it. No family should learn what an institution has concluded about the last months of a relative’s life from a press release.

14.4  If they would prefer no involvement, that will be respected without pressure, and the offer will remain open.

14.5  There may be other people close to him, including his children’s mother and his friends and colleagues, for whom the loss is severe and who are not next of kin. The review will take a broad view of who counts as bereaved here.

15. Looking after the people who take part

15.1  Some of what this review examines is distressing, and some of the people interviewed will be grieving, frightened, or both.

15.2  Interviewees will be told in advance what will be covered, offered breaks, and given details of support before and after. The University will make independent support available to anyone who takes part, meaning support that does not report back to their line management.

15.3  The review team will be briefed on safe messaging around suicide, and the report will be written in accordance with the Samaritans media guidelines. That constrains how certain matters can be described, and the constraint is accepted.

16. My independence, and who supports me

16.1  I am appointed by the Council. I decide the lines of inquiry, the witnesses, the findings and the wording of the report. Nobody in the University sees my conclusions before they are settled, and nobody has a veto over them.

16.2  I may obtain specialist advice where I need it, including clinical and occupational health expertise.

16.3  As Review Lead, my preference is that I proceed as I have done on previous reviews, without any input from lawyers unless we have to instruct our own for specific advice. I will be using my own team for support.  

16.4  On funding: if insurers meet any part of the cost, that will be stated in the report. Insurer involvement is not improper, but it is the sort of fact that damages a review when it emerges afterwards and barely registers when it is disclosed at the outset.

16.5  My team and I have no connection with the University of Cambridge, with Professor Arday, with his family, or with any of the individuals or organisations involved in the allegations against him. I am Chancellor of the University of Manchester, which gives me a working knowledge of the sector and no interest in this institution. If any conflict emerges during the review I will disclose it to the Vice-Chancellor immediately.

17. Confidentiality and data

17.1  The review will handle a substantial amount of personal and special category data, including health data relating to a person who has died and to living third parties. It will comply with UK data protection law throughout.

17.2  Material will be held on secure systems under the review’s control, access restricted to my team, and a record kept of what was received and from whom. My team and I are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office under the Data Protection Register and are required to maintain secure systems to protect information.

17.3  At the end, the review’s material will be dealt with as the University directs, subject to any requirement of the Coroner and to the retention obligations that apply. Nothing will be destroyed while the university’s document preservation notice is live.

18. Timetable

18.1  The report is due within three months of these Terms of Reference being agreed. The indicative shape is:

• Weeks 1 to 2: Terms published, first document request issued, contact made with the family and the Coroner, contact made with Jesus College.
• Weeks 2 to 4: document review and construction of the chronology.
• Weeks 3 to 8: interviews.
• Week 8: short written note of emerging findings to the Vice-Chancellor (as Chair of Council), so that anything urgent can be acted on immediately rather than waiting for the report.
• Weeks 9 to 10: fairness process under section 13.
• Weeks 11 to 12: final drafting; report to Council.

18.2  Three months is tight and it is deliberate. A welfare review that reports in a year produces recommendations for an institution that has already moved on, and leaves colleagues in limbo for months. The price of speed is that this review goes deep on a narrow question rather than broad on all of them, which is precisely why Part Two exists.

18.3  If disclosure is slow, the clock stops and the review will say so publicly rather than deliver a thin report on time and let the deadline take the blame.

18.4  If the evidence turns out to require more time, the review will ask for it, explain why, and expect the request to be granted.

19. The report, and publication

19.1  The report goes to Council. It will set out the chronology, the findings, and recommendations that name an owner and a deadline. Recommendations without either are decoration.

19.2  It will follow the four-part structure at 4.2: what happened, what could have happened, where practice diverged and why, and what must change.

19.3  Subject to law, privacy, privilege and the welfare of living people, a summary of the findings, the recommendations and the University’s response will be published. The review understands that the University intends to publish this summary.

19.4  Where material is withheld from publication, the report will say that material has been withheld and on what ground. Redaction that leaves no trace of itself is not redaction, it is editing.

19.5 The Council is encouraged to publish the report in full, or as close to full as the law permits. Institutions that publish summaries of critical reports invariably find themselves answering questions about what the summary left out.

20. Changing these terms

20.1  The Review Lead may ask the Council to amend these terms where it is necessary for the effective operation of Part One, and the Council may approve amendments within the agreed framework.

20.2  Any amendment will be recorded, dated, and set out in the report. Terms of reference that change quietly during a review are a familiar way of narrowing an inquiry, and it is better to foreclose the suspicion than to have to answer it.

Nazir Afzal OBE
 

Framework for Part One and Part Two of the Review

1. The proposed Review framework is intended to examine institutional decision-making and organisational processes; identify lessons for the University; as necessary, support the strengthening of welfare and wellbeing; and provide assurance regarding future practice. 
2. Critically, the Review is intended to contribute to healing, trust-building and reconciliation with affected communities and fulfil the University’s commitment to openness, learning and change.
3. The Review should be open and frank. It is intended to identify areas for improvement and support institutional change and learning. It is not intended to investigate Jason Arday nor determine liability, replicate the functions of the Coroner, or act as a disclosure exercise.  
4. The Review will be established in two distinct but co-ordinated parts, overseen by an independent lead (Part One) and an independent Chair (Part Two).

Part One

5. Part One of the Review will be asked to examine the support, interventions and welfare protections available to Jason Arday during the relevant period prior to his death, and to consider the decision-making, actions and communications by the University, along with its relevant systems and processes. It will be asked to identify any lessons to be learned and make recommendations as appropriate for further action. 
6. Part One will be undertaken by an external, independent individual such as a King’s Counsel of relevant specialism or similar person of appropriate qualification with substantial experience of complex investigations, inquiries or reviews. Part One is intended to be conducted at pace, with a report anticipated within three months of the appointment of the independent lead.

Part Two

7. Part Two of the Review will address the broader context of Jason Arday’s time at the University, considering the University’s recruitment and appointment processes for senior academic staff; mentoring and support arrangements for such staff once appointed; arrangements for institutional oversight; University responses to allegations of research misconduct (to include relevant policies and procedures alongside sector practice); and support provided to academics under public and media scrutiny. In doing so, the Review will examine the relevance of, and Professor Arday’s interaction with, these processes and arrangements throughout his time at the University. It will be asked to make recommendations as appropriate for potential improvements.
8. Part Two will be chaired by an external, independent individual such as a King’s Counsel of relevant specialism or similar person of appropriate qualification with significant relevant expertise and experience of leading major reviews or investigations, supported by a Panel of six to eight members with relevant expertise drawn from outside the University. Part Two is anticipated to report within six months of its Panel being constituted.
9. Collectively, the Panel’s composition should ensure credibility, independence and diversity of expertise. The Panel should include expertise relevant to the issues under examination, anticipated to include (without limitation) higher education leadership; equality matters (particularly those relating to the protected characteristics of race and disability); the experience of Black academics and those with a disability or who are neurodivergent within the University community; governance and institutional decision-making; and relevant academic norms, policies and procedures.

Liaison and reporting

10. It is envisaged that the lead for Part One and the chair for Part Two will liaise, share relevant information as appropriate, and cooperate to ensure that their work is complementary, avoiding duplication or conflict.
11. Subject to applicable legal, privilege, privacy, welfare and confidentiality requirements, the Review will be authorised to seek relevant University records and evidence, and University bodies and officers will be expected to provide reasonable co-operation within their respective powers and responsibilities.
12. Both Parts of the Review will report to Council for further discussion. Part Two will also report to the General Board. The Council (and as appropriate, the General Board) will determine such further action as it deems necessary.
13. It is anticipated that, subject to applicable legal, privilege, privacy, welfare and confidentiality considerations, a summary of the reports received by Council and actions arising will be shared both within the University community and with the general public.

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source: cam.ac.uk

By Molly Tooher-Rudd

Talking zoology specimens powered by AI and early warning systems to protect wheat crops in sub-Saharan Africa are just two examples of the outstanding project winners in the Climate and Nature category of the 2026 Cambridge Awards for Research Impact and Engagement.

The awards recognise outstanding achievement, innovation and creativity in devising and implementing ambitious engagement and impact plans that have the potential to create significant economic, social and cultural effects. The awards are run by the Engagement, Knowledge Exchange and Impact team in the University of Cambridge Research Strategy Office.

“Cambridge has many of the building blocks required to address climate change, not just through advancing knowledge, but in connecting discovery, education, innovation, policy and societal engagement,” said Professor Bhaskar Vira, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education and Environmental Sustainability.

University of Cambridge Head of Public Engagement Dr Lucinda Spokes handed out the awards at the Cambridge Climate and Nature Showcase in June, where 10 winners also presented their projects.

Chloe King, a PhD student from the Department of Geography, School of Physical Sciences, was named Early Career Research Winner for her work to shape a more sustainable approach to tourism in the Galápagos Islands (Ecuador).

Over the past two years, King’s collaborative research with authorities, NGOs, academic institutions, and local communities has enhanced inter-institutional governance of tourism in the Galápagos Islands. It is the first comprehensive tourism strategy to include regenerative and conservation principles that align with national and local policies.

“It is really wonderful to see this type of collaborative, impact-focused research recognised, hopefully providing an example to future researchers on how success in academia can be defined and celebrated differently,” King said.

Also from the Department of Geography in the School of Physical Sciences, Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Shashi Ratnaker Singh was recognised for his work on delivering a just energy transition in India. His project brought together Members of Parliament, state legislators, public sector companies, and the Chief Minister’s Office to shape an India-specific energy transition pathway that reflects the country’s socio-economic and federal realities.

The work has already led to an invitation from the Government of Indian state Madhya Pradesh to co-develop a Just Transition Policy for coal-dependent regions.

Dr Kamiar Mohaddes, Affiliated Professor and Associate Professor in Economics & Policy, from the Cambridge Judge Business School, was recognised for research that challenges conventional estimates of the economic costs of climate change. His work quantifies how rising global temperatures are likely to affect economic growth across 174 countries, showing that all countries – rich or poor, hot or cold – would suffer economically under the current emissions trajectory. 

“Everyone will suffer from climate change. It will be very costly to deal with the consequences if we don’t act now,” Dr Mohaddes said at the showcase.

Dr Curie Park, research associate from the Institute for Manufacturing, Department of Engineering, School of Technology, took the prize for Collaboration for the Plastic to Ghar (P2G) initiative in Nepal. Project P2G pioneered Nepal’s first local circular innovation ecosystems to transform Himalayan plastic waste.

Led by the Centre for Industrial Sustainability, the initiative engaged 70+ innovators, villagers, and students, creating a localised circular economy resulting in three start-ups and five plastic hubs across rural and urban areas. The project empowered the isolated village communities, creating jobs and reducing open burning and dumping of plastic waste. 

Also among this year’s winners was Jack Ashby, Assistant Director of the University Museum of Zoology in the Faculty of Biology, School of Biological Sciences, with a project transforming the way visitors interact with museum collections.

Ashby created a wildly popular series of AI-powered conversations with specimens at the University Museum of Zoology. The conversations conveyed recent discoveries about the species and engaged more than 6,000 people.  

“We are absolutely thrilled our project was recognised through an Impact Award. It’s a real honour that something that was both a research project and an exciting opportunity for our visitors to test emerging technology was chosen for these awards,” Ashby said.

Another project amplifies the unheard voices of young people in search of green jobs in Africa, led by Dr Garima Sahai, research associate from the Department of Geography, School of Physical Sciences. The multi-country collaborative project seeks to understand the aspirations and barriers young people face with work.

The project had a strong focus on engagement with policymakers and stakeholders, to inform national and regional initiatives to support youth employment in the green economy transition. 

Bloomberg Cambridge University Corporate Indices

Dr Jacob Smith, Postdoctoral Research Associate and Dr Tamas Mona, Research Associate, from the Department of Plant Sciences, School of the Biological Sciences, received the Early Career Research runner-up award for developing early warning forecasting systems for major wheat diseases affecting crops in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The team developed models for risk assessment and advisory services, giving wheat farmers valuable time to act when the risk of outbreak is high.

Professor Ellen Quigley, Co-Director of Finance for Systemic Change at the Department of Land Economy, School of Humanities and Social Sciences was recognised for developing the Bloomberg Cambridge University Corporate Indices, a framework that maps out a method for evaluating corporate climate action. It focuses on diverting new capital away from fossil fuel expansion through debt markets.

Another award celebrated the work of Dr Mayumi Sato, PhD student from the Department of Sociology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, who works alongside environmental defenders in the Global South. Working on the frontlines to protect ecosystems and communities, they often face criminalisation and misrepresentation in mainstream media. This project seeks to re-shape how environmental defenders are understood and support practical creative action that safeguards communities and biodiversity.

Holly Clothier, Cambridge University Botanic Garden, Dr Debbie Yeboah, Faculty of Biology and Louise Campbell, School of Biological Sciences, worked together on their project Belonging: Creating a Shared Vision of the Botanic Garden. The project placed community voices at the heart of future planning.

Creative workshops identified five key themes: social relevance and connection, communication, accessibility and inclusivity, wellbeing and creativity. The project marks a transformative step towards genuine co-creation, ensuring the Garden continues to be welcoming and inspiring for all. 

Applications for the 2026 Impact Awards will open later this year, celebrating impactful long-term collaborations and imaginative new approaches.

source: cam.ac.uk

Cambridge’s Professor of Literature and the Environmental Humanities, Robert Macfarlane, will contribute to BBC Radio 4’s highly prestigious series of public lectures in late 2026. He will argue for the urgent need to re-imagine humanity’s relationship with the living world, in order to shape a more hopeful future on Earth.

The solutions to the crisis we find ourselves in lie in imagination as well as legislationRobert Macfarlane

Making the announcement on 9 September, the BBC said: “At a time of ecological crisis, extreme weather events and a rapidly heating climate, Robert Macfarlane’s Reith Lectures will examine what is in his view one of the most consequential stories humans tell themselves: that our species stands above and apart from the rest of nature.”

Throughout the series, titled The Human Superiority Complex, Professor Macfarlane will argue that this belief has become deeply rooted in Western thought, and has helped bring the planet to the brink of catastrophe.

Macfarlane, a Fellow of Emmanuel College, said: “It feels both a great honour and a big responsibility to be this year’s Reith Lecturer, at a time when what is at stake in our relations with the larger living world is nothing less than everything. In my view, the solutions to the crisis we find ourselves in lie in imagination as well as legislation; in stories as well as science. I want these lectures to be urgent, hopeful, vivid and surprising; I hope they will spark debate, touch hearts and open minds.”

Macfarlane will bring more than two decades of acclaimed work on landscape, language and the living world to the lectures. His bestselling books have reached readers around the world, while his collaborations across art, film, music and performance connect ideas from literature, science, culture and public life.

Drawing on inspiring examples from around the world, Macfarlane’s four lectures will highlight the scientists, artists, activists, lawmakers and communities who are challenging this worldview and opening the possibility of different, more just futures for life on Earth.

The lectures will be recorded in front of live audiences in London, Bangor, Aberdeen and Amsterdam; and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service by the end of 2026, and will be available to listen to on BBC Sounds. Audiences can apply for free tickets to the recordings from late September, via the BBC website.

Each lecture will take one of the four classical elements as its focus:

• The first lecture, Earth: The Ladder and the Web, traces the rise and consolidation of the ‘human superiority complex’ –– the belief we are perched atop a ladder of life, rather than entangled in a web –– beginning with one of the earliest works of world literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh.
• The second lecture, Air: The Great Thinning, uses birds to examine some of the consequences of human exceptionalism, and shows how recent scientific breakthroughs are disclosing the superpowers of other life-forms, thereby challenging the paradigm of our uniqueness.
• The third lecture, Fire: Deep-Time Thinking, argues for ‘deep-time’ perspectives in both our politics and our story-telling, such that we can become better ancestors to future generations.
• The final lecture, Water: The Geography of Hope, takes rivers and water as its focus, exploring some of the extraordinary ways in which law and democratic structures are being radically re-imagined in order to give voices, votes and even rights to rivers, oceans, whales and mountains.

Mohit Bakaya, Radio 4 Controller, says: “Few writers have done more than Robert Macfarlane to transform the way we think about nature and our place within it. At a time when humanity’s relationship with the living world has never been more consequential, he will bring urgency, imagination and hope to one of the defining questions of our age. These Reith Lectures promise to challenge assumptions, provoke debate and inspire audiences around the world.”

The Reith Lectures were inaugurated in 1948 by the BBC to mark the historic contribution made to public service broadcasting by Sir John (later Lord) Reith, the corporation’s first director-general.

Each year, the BBC invites a leading figure to deliver a series of lectures on radio to advance public understanding and debate about significant issues of contemporary interest. The very first Reith lecturer was the philosopher, Bertrand Russell. His successors have included Robert Oppenheimer (1953), JK Galbraith (1966), and Stephen Hawking (2016). The 2025 lecturer was Rutger Bregman.

Robert Macfarlane’s books include Underland, Landmarks, The Old Ways, Landmarks, The Wild Places and Mountains of the Mind, as well as a book-length prose-poem, Ness and, most recently, Is a River Alive? His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, won prizes around the world, and been widely adapted for film, music, theatre, radio and dance.

He has also written operas, plays, choral works, and films including River and Mountain, both narrated by Willem Dafoe. With the artist Jackie Morris he co-created the internationally bestselling books of nature-poetry and art, The Lost Words and The Lost Spells, as well as The Book of Birds.

He has written albums and songs with musicians including Johnny Flynn, Cosmo Sheldrake, Hayden Thorpe and Julie Fowlis, and collaborated with artists including Olafur Eliasson and Stanley Donwood. In 2017, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the E.M. Forster Prize for Literature, and in 2022 in Toronto he was the inaugural winner of the Weston International Award for a body of work in the field of non-fiction.

Read the BBC’s full announcement

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source: cam.ac.uk

source: www.cam.ac.uk

University of Cambridge launches independent review following the death of Professor Jason Arday

The University of Cambridge is launching an independent review following the death of Professor Jason Arday. It will examine the University’s decision-making, policies and organisational processes, with a focus on identifying lessons and opportunities for improvement.

The review will comprise two parts: Part One, to be led by Nazir Afzal OBE, will examine the University’s support of Professor Arday; Part Two will comprise a broader review of institutional processes and practice related to his appointment and time at Cambridge. The reviews will not seek to investigate areas which are the subject of the inquest process.

The findings of the review will inform actions to strengthen wellbeing and support across the University and, where necessary, lead to changes in policies, procedures and practice.

Announcing the review, Vice-Chancellor Professor Deborah Prentice said: “The time since the tragic death of Professor Jason Arday has been a period of profound sadness and reflection for the University.

“We worked very hard to support Professor Arday during an appalling period of external criticism and focus, but given the devastating outcome, we are all asking ourselves whether we could have and should have done more. This review will answer that question.

“We are committed to ensuring that any recommendations arising from the review are addressed and adopted with clear accountability for delivering necessary changes.”

Subject to legal and privacy considerations, a summary of the review’s findings, recommendations and resulting actions will be shared with the University community and the wider public.

Further details about the review

Part One

Part One will examine the support, interventions and protections available to Professor Arday during the period prior to his death. This work will proceed on an expedited basis and will report within three months, enabling recommendations for urgent action to be considered and implemented without delay.

Nazir Afzal OBE, former Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England, has agreed to lead Part One. He brings extensive experience leading complex independent reviews, as well as a deep understanding of the higher education sector through his role as Chancellor of The University of Manchester.

Mr Afzal said: “I am honoured to have been asked to lead Part One of this important independent review. At its heart is a person, a family and a community who have been profoundly affected by Professor Arday’s death. It is important that we approach this work with both rigour and humanity.

“My responsibility will be to listen carefully, examine the evidence thoroughly and understand what support, interventions and protections were available to Professor Arday in the period before his death. We must be willing to ask difficult questions, including whether more could and should have been done.

“This work will be conducted independently and with urgency.” 

Professor Prentice added: “I am very grateful to Nazir for agreeing to lead this part of the review. He is a highly respected legal professional who will ask challenging questions about the support that was offered to Professor Arday during his time at Cambridge.”

Part Two

Part Two will comprise a broader review of institutional processes and practice. The University is currently appointing an independent external chair to lead this work and will establish an expert panel, including individuals with lived experience, to advise the review.

This part will consider the wider context of Professor Arday’s time at the University, including the recruitment of senior academic staff, mentoring and support arrangements, the University’s response to allegations of research misconduct, and the support available to academics who are subject to extraordinary public and media scrutiny.

It is anticipated that it will conclude within six months of the establishment of the panel.

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Molecules called reactive oxygen species, which include so-called ‘free radicals’, have long been viewed as damaging byproducts of our body’s metabolism – a reason why antioxidant supplements have been considered as a potential way of reducing cancer risk.

We’ve found a new way by which cancers shut down the immune system. When we block this process, tumours that don’t respond to some immunotherapies start responding to treatmentRahul Roychoudhuri

Now, scientists have discovered that certain immune cells depend on these very molecules to activate and destroy cancer cells, and that tumours exploit this dependency by releasing natural antioxidants to shut down the immune attack.

The findings, published today in Science, could help improve the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapies. 

Our immune system keeps us healthy by hunting down and destroying harmful material, including invading bacteria and viruses, but also cancer cells. It does so by deploying a number of different types of immune cells, including specialised cells known as T cells. These T cells hunt down and destroy tumour cells, but T cells need small amounts of reactive oxygen species to activate and switch on their killing ability.

A team at the University of Cambridge, UK, and Oregon Health & Science University, USA, analysed the fluid surrounding cells within tumours grown in mice and found that cancers chemically ‘smother’ T cells, stopping their activation and preventing them from destroying cancer cells. Tumours do this by releasing large amounts of a protein that is a natural antioxidant, Peroxiredoxin 1 (PRDX1), which mops up reactive oxygen species and deprives T cells of the activating signals they need to perform cancer killing. 

Next, the team used CRISPR gene-editing technology to create mouse cancer cells that could no longer make the antioxidant protein. They found that removing the capacity for the cancer cells to produce the antioxidant promoted immune-cell activity and limited tumour growth.

Finally, the team looked for the same mechanism in people. They analysed published data on the proteins released by human cancer cell lines, examined gene activity across thousands of human tumours, and isolated the fluid surrounding tumours removed from patients. All three approaches pointed the same way: human cancers also release PRDX1 into their surroundings, where it can strip away the reactive oxygen species that T cells depend on.

Dr Xan Wesolowski from the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge, one of the lead authors, said: “We tend to think of reactive oxygen species purely as damaging byproducts of metabolism. But we are increasingly understanding they have important functions within cells, and T cells need them to activate. Our study develops this picture, revealing that tumours can exploit this very dependency to evade elimination.”

The treatment of cancer is increasingly moving towards leveraging the immune system to eradicate the disease. However, while immunotherapies can be incredibly effective, they are only effective in some patients. Removing the ability of cancer cells to produce PRDX1 enhanced the cancer’s response to immunotherapy.

Professor Rahul Roychoudhuri, also from Cambridge’s Department of Pathology, said: “We’ve found a new way by which cancers shut down the immune system. When we block this process, tumours that don’t respond to some immunotherapies start responding to treatment. That tells us this is a pathway worth targeting therapeutically, and there are several ways we might be able to achieve this.”

Dr Robert Eil from the School of Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University said: “Our study suggests a possible way to boost T cell immunotherapies. Rather than using antioxidants, it could be that prooxidants can kickstart the T cells into action against tumour cells.”

The findings also carry broader implications. Several large randomised clinical trials have found that antioxidant supplements fail to reduce cancer risk, and in some cases worsen outcomes. The discovery that T cells depend on reactive oxygen species to fight tumours may help to explain why: antioxidants could inadvertently blunt the immune system’s ability to attack cancer. However, the team stresses that as its findings are in preclinical laboratory models, and people living with cancer should not change their treatment or diet without medical advice.

The research was largely funded by the Medical Research Council, European Research Council, Wellcome and the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute.

Reference

Wesolowski, AJ, et al. Tumor-derived antioxidants suppress immunity by depriving T cells of reactive oxygen species. Science; 3 Sept 2026; DOI: 10.1126/science.adz8203

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Scientists have produced the first full scale wiring map of a male adult animal’s brain and nerve cord, enabling unprecedented insights into how the brain works and controls behaviour.

This full wiring diagram has massive potential – we’ve produced data that will enable all sorts of new studies into how the brain works and controls behaviours.Philipp Schlegel

An international team co-led by the University of Cambridge has mapped every neuron in the male Drosophila fly’s brain and nerve cord, to produce a wiring map of the 166,700 neurons and the millions of connections between them.

Known in scientific terms as a ‘connectome’, this is allowing unprecedented insights into how the brain turns sensory input into sophisticated behaviour by allowing researchers to identify the chains of connected neurons deep into the brain.

Since the female Drosophila fly brain has previously been mapped, involving the same group, this new work allowed the researchers to directly compare male and female connectomes and pinpoint differences between them.

This revealed that neurons can reroute sensory information into sex-specific behavioural circuits to drive different male and female responses to the same stimuli. For example, male flies detect the smell of another male fly and respond with aggressive behaviour, whereas female flies respond to the same smell with courtship behaviour.

Understanding how a healthy brain works will also help researchers to better understand what goes wrong in a diseased brain.

This is the first full-scale connectome of an adult animal’s brain and nerve cord ever produced. The entire dataset now exists as a public resource, openly available as a reference and tool for other researchers.

The study, co-led by Dr Greg Jefferis’s group at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology and MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, is published today in the journal Cell.

“This work is revealing how brains take the same sensory input and turn it into different behaviours depending on their sex. Seeing those differences is finally helping us to understand how sensory inputs drive behaviour – and to better understand the black box we call the brain,” said Dr Isabella Beckett, a researcher at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, one of the lead authors on the study.

“This full wiring diagram has massive potential – we’ve produced data that will enable all sorts of new studies into how the brain works and controls behaviours,” said Dr Philipp Schlegel, a researcher at the University of Cambridge and MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology who was also involved in the work.

“This work has given us a blueprint that pinpoints the location of changes in male and female fly brains, and what types of cells are involved. It’s the first step in understanding the evolutionary processes that have led to these changes,” said Dr Marta Costa, a researcher at the University of Cambridge who was also involved in the work.

To generate the new connectome, collaborators at Janelia Research Campus sliced the nervous system of a male Drosophila fly into incredibly thin slices, then scanned these using high-resolution electron microscopy to produce millions of images depicting individual nerve cells and their connections. AI was used to build these images into a 3D map – reconstructing each neuron and identifying the synapses where they communicate. Human checks on the results required the equivalent of 44 years of human labour.

This work was carried out with collaborators at Janelia Research Campus, the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Google Research. It was funded primarily by UKRI MRC and the Wellcome Trust.

References

Berg, S et al: ‘Sexual dimorphism in the complete connectome of the Drosophila male central nervous system.’ Cell, Sept 2026.

Three related papers are published concurrently by the team:

Tastekin et al: ‘From Sensory Detection to Motor Action: The Comprehensive Drosophila Taste-Feeding Connectome.” Cell, Sept 2026.

Hoeller et al. ‘The organization of visual pathways in the Drosophila brain.’ Cell, Sept 2026.

Rubin et al. ‘Networks of sexually dimorphic neurons that regulate social behaviors in Drosophila.’ Current Biology, Sept 2026. 

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