Study involving 100 sitting MPs reveals gulf between perceptions of the political class and realities of public attitudes on environmental issues such as insulation and green taxes.

Our study found a systematic pessimism about the public appetite for climate action among the UK’s most influential decision-makersLisa-Maria Tanase

Members of Parliament from the UK’s three biggest political parties in the House of Commons significantly overestimate levels of public resistance to major policy proposals for tackling climate change, a University of Cambridge study suggests. 

Researchers say it may be the first data-led evidence for a “spiral of silence” in Westminster, where skewed perceptions of public sentiment among politicians can reduce political support for a policy.  

The study’s authors, from the University’s El-Erian Institute of Behavioural Economics and Policy and the Cambridge Political Psychology Lab, surveyed one hundred sitting MPs in early 2025 on how they think voters and other parliamentarians feel about carbon reduction policies, and compared their estimates with public polling from earlier that year.* 

On making grants or loans for improved insulation available to all households with an energy efficiency rating of C or below, MPs collectively estimated public opposition to the policy at around 18%, more than three times the actual level of just 6%. 

When asked about rejigging tax on products so that it varies according to environmental damage, MPs believed public opposition to be around 38%, almost double the 20% shown by polling the British people.  

“MPs across parties who both support and oppose climate policies consistently overestimate public opposition,” said study lead author Dr Lisa-Maria Tanase, who conducted the work for her PhD at Cambridge. “This is likely to limit the range of what they consider to be politically feasible options for taking action on climate change.”   

“Our findings cannot be explained away by wishful thinking of politicians or the projecting of their own worldview. On average, even MPs who support a climate policy think the public is more opposed to it than it really is,” said Tanase. 

“Politicians, like all of us, are often exposed to information environments that distort perceptions of public opinion. Social and traditional media can disproportionately reflect particularly vocal segments of society rather than the full distribution of opinion.” 

“We find a ‘funhouse mirror’ effect through which politicians see a distorted version of the public position on carbon reduction policies, associated with a lower willingness to promote these ideas,” said Tanase, now a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Cambridge’s El-Erian Institute of Behavioural Economics and Policy. 

False polarisation

MPs also believed the UK electorate to be far more politically polarised over carbon reduction – or “net zero” – policies than it is, according to the study published in the journal Communications Sustainability. 

Polling showed a 12-percentage point difference in support for the insulation and product tax policies between Labour and Conservative voters, but MPs estimated it at more than double that, at around 25 percentage points.

MPs predicted the difference between Lib Dem and Conservative voters on climate policies at 30 percentage points, when polling put it at just 14 points. Even the small two-point difference between Labour and Lib Dem voters was estimated at nearly five points by politicians. 

“A number of previous studies show that exaggerated perceptions of polarisation can reduce the willingness of politicians to engage in cross-party dialogue,” said Tanase.

This “false polarisation” was most evident for Conservative voters, who MPs considered to be far more sceptical of these climate policies than polling suggested. 

MPs overestimated the divide by about fivefold, believing Conservatives were on average 12.6 percentage points less supportive than the general public, when polling showed it to be just 2.5 percentage points.

“Environmentally supportive Conservative voters may end up feeling misrepresented if politicians consistently exaggerate how different their attitudes are from those of other voters,” Tanase said.

Spiral of silence

In fact, how MPs perceived public support for a green product tax predicted their willingness to advocate for it, even after accounting for each MP’s personal belief in the policy, the study found. Parliamentarians who thought support among the electorate was lower were, on average, less willing to speak up for the tax in public. 

Researchers also asked MPs to estimate how many other parliamentarians would back a green product tax. Again, believing it to have less support among colleagues across parties correlated, on average, with MPs saying they would be less willing to champion it in Westminster, regardless of whether they personally support the policy.

Tanase says the study provides some evidence of a “spiral of silence” among MPs, as perceptions of low support among the electorate or Parliament reduces their willingness to speak up for a policy – even if it’s one they support. This suppressive effect is policy-dependent, as it wasn’t detected for insulation subsidies.** 

Researchers found that parliamentarians not only overestimated opposition, but also markedly underestimated public support for the climate policies.  

MPs underestimated public backing for an environmental product tax by 14.9 percentage points and underestimated support for the energy efficiency policy by 7.1 percentage points. Overall, MPs underestimated public support for these climate policies by about 11 percentage points on average.

However, the study suggests MPs’ beliefs about public opposition to climate policies are more influential. “Overestimating opposition is likely to generate greater political risk aversion than assuming the public is merely ambivalent,” Tanase said. 

The researchers found all these misperceptions to be so potent that when they randomly assigned half the MPs to receive public polling results, then asked them to estimate support for another set of climate policies, it barely moved the dial in reducing inaccurate estimations.  

“Our study found a systematic pessimism about the public appetite for climate action among the UK’s most influential decision-makers, and evidence that it affects their intended behaviour on climate action,” added Tanase. 

“This may be contributing to a silencing effect in Parliament around one of the defining policy challenges of the 21st century.”  

_{* The surveying of sitting MPs took place during December 2024 and January 2025. The public polling benchmark was a nationally representative survey of 4,201 UK adults conducted by Ipsos UK between 18 and 24 April 2024. The polling asked people about the specific policies outlined in the study, such as the home insulation policy and green product tax.}

_{** The study’s authors write that: “No significant silencing effect was found for the energy efficiency subsidy policy, likely due to the broader expected popularity and relative lack of controversy of subsidy policies compared to tax-based measures.”}

_{The sample of MPs in the study consisted of sitting Labour (80), Conservative (16) and Liberal Democrat (4) parliamentarians. While it approaches representing the current composition of the Commons, there is an overrepresentation of Labour MPs and an underrepresentation of Liberal Democrat MPs.} 

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A UK-based consortium will conduct the world’s first airspace trial aimed at reducing condensation trails – known as contrails – that could greatly reduce aviation’s global warming impact. 

Backed by the UK Government, ‘Operation Blue Skies’ brings together partners, including the University of Cambridge, to evaluate AI-driven flight path adjustments across North Atlantic airspace.

Operation Blue Skies is a £5 million, 30-month programme, partly funded by £2.65 million from the Department for Transport. It includes two operational trials to be conducted during the winter months across NATS-controlled Shanwick oceanic airspace, the eastern half of the North Atlantic corridor. 

The programme will evaluate the operational feasibility and environmental benefits of adjusting commercial flights’ altitude to avoid the atmospheric conditions that contribute to the formation of persistent, warming contrails.

Contrails form when water vapour in jet-engine exhaust condenses and freezes around soot particles and other aerosols in the cold, humid air of the upper atmosphere. Persistent warming contrails trap outgoing heat, accounting for roughly one-third of aviation’s total climate impact.

Atmospheric modelling shows that the Shanwick airspace accounts for approximately 5% of global contrail warming. A significant part of this warming is concentrated in the winter season between November and February. Operation Blue Skies will target this specific high-impact window by using AI models to identify where and when interventions have the greatest potential to reduce contrail-related climate impact.

The trials will focus on minor altitude adjustments within standard flight operations, coordinated through established and standard Air Traffic Control (ATC) communication channels. Trial manoeuvres will take place primarily during winter testing windows in 2026-2027 and 2027-2028, with approximately 20 to 40 test days per winter. Testing will be conducted during periods of lower air traffic.

In addition to the University of Cambridge, the Operation Blue Skies consortium includes Google, the Department for Transport, the Met Office, NATS, Contrails.org, and Imperial College London.

The Cambridge and Imperial researchers will be evaluating trial outcomes and providing independent verification of climate impact.

“Contrail avoidance could drastically reduce the global climate impact of aviation, at minimal cost to passengers and companies,” said Professor Steven Barrett, Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. “Operation Blue Skies is a big step forward in this process, as it will test the ability of the UK to reduce contrail coverage at an airspace-wide scale and in a real-world setting. It’s an exciting step in building a more sustainable aviation industry.”

The trial sits alongside major UK Government investments in aviation decarbonisation projects, including £219 million to boost homegrown green fuel production to cut emissions from flying while boosting growth and creating green jobs.

“This is a world-first, and it’s British ingenuity leading the way,” said Keir Mather, Minister for Aviation, Maritime and Freight. “By testing small tweaks to flight paths over the Atlantic, we can cut the vapour trails left behind by planes. From £219 million for home-grown sustainable fuel to zero-emission aircraft, we’re backing innovation to make UK aviation cleaner, support thousands of skilled jobs, and drive growth in the sector.”

The Operation Blue Skies programme is co-funded by its industry partners and the Department for Transport (DfT) through the ATI Programme, a partnership between the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI), the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST) and Innovate UK. To ensure public funding directly advances sovereign scientific capabilities, 100% of the government grant funding is allocated directly to academic, non-profit, and aviation partners.

Google UK is contributing £1.4 million in-kind through AI research expertise, engineering time, and high-performance computing infrastructure to advance open climate science. 

Contrails.org is working alongside the consortium partners to connect the scientific and operational pieces of the trial — assessing and integrating forecasts, shaping trial parameters and supporting data analysis so Operation Blue Skies can test whether contrail avoidance is safe, measurable and practical across oceanic airspace.

“Contrail avoidance has reached a pivotal moment,” said Kemal Armada, Product Manager at Google. “The question is no longer whether we can mitigate contrails, but whether we can make that mitigation work at the scale of the global aviation system. This trial is an important step toward making that a reality, while demonstrating the strength of British research and innovation in developing practical solutions to one of aviation’s most important climate challenges.”

Steven Barrett is a Fellow of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. 

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A tiny UK-developed satellite, roughly the size of a small carry-on suitcase, could help answer one of the biggest questions in cosmology: what happened in the roughly 150 million years of cosmic dark ages, before the universe’s first stars appeared? 

An international team of scientists, led by the University of Cambridge, will use the dark side of the Moon as a ‘shield’ so that the satellite – called CosmoCube – can block out all the noise from Earth and listen for a faint whisper from the very early universe. 

This whisper, known as the 21-centimetre line, is a signal emitted by hydrogen atoms in the period between the afterglow of the Big Bang and Cosmic Dawn, when nuclear fusion lit up the first stars. No one has directly observed this era before. 

Detecting this signal from more than 13.5 billion years ago is extremely difficult with Earth-based telescopes, since the Earth’s ionosphere blocks the right frequencies, and interference from FM radio, satellites and telecommunications drowns it out.

However, the Moon provides a natural shield. As CosmoCube orbits the far side of the Moon, it will be shielded from all the noise of Earth for roughly 40 minutes of each two-hour orbit. Over an expected two-year mission, it will build up 1000 hours of data on one of the last unexplored periods of the universe, helping us understand how the universe transitioned from dark and nearly empty to the complexity we see today. 

The mission has received funding from the UK Space Agency, and the researchers hope CosmoCube can be launched within the next five years. Details are published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

In addition to exploring the universe in the period before the first stars, CosmoCube will also explore the role of dark matter – the mysterious force that holds galaxies together. 

“This emission from hydrogen after the Big Bang, but before the first stars, will hopefully allow us to understand the role of dark matter in the early universe, how it worked to pull together hydrogen into the first stars and galaxies,” said lead author Professor Eloy de Lera Acedo from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory.

To study this period, CosmoCube will operate at extremely low frequencies – between 10 and 50 MHz – far outside the range of ground-based telescopes, which is why the Moon will be used as CosmoCube’s ‘fortress of solitude’. 

“There’s no other place where you can get the sort of shielding you need to detect such a faint signal, while at the same time looking at the whole of space,” said de Lera Acedo, who is also affiliated with the Kavli Institute for Cosmology. “The far side of the Moon is really the only option: it solves multiple problems at once, opening a clear window to the very early universe.”

Once in orbit around the Moon, CosmoCube will unfold a long and lightweight radio antenna, sensitive enough to detect the 21-centimetre signal from hydrogen atoms in the early universe when the satellite is on the Moon’s far side. 

While in lunar orbit, CosmoCube will constantly check and correct its own electronics using a ‘Dicke-switched’ calibrator, which will flip between the sky and several built‑in reference sources. This will help cancel out tiny drifts and noise inside the satellite that could otherwise masquerade as cosmic signals.

Once CosmoCube’s data is back on Earth, the team will use advanced Bayesian statistical methods to remove foreground noise — mainly radio emissions from our own galaxy. They will also reconstruct how the antenna responds to different parts of the sky using computer simulations and in-flight measurements, allowing them to subtract any remaining distortions. 

“Aside from the science, what makes our mission unique is its size: we’re probing the earliest, deepest parts of the dark ages that others don’t reach, but with a compact, relatively low-cost platform,” said de Lera Acedo. 

However, the far side of the Moon may not stay quiet for long: other missions are being planned by the US, India and other countries to take advantage of the Moon’s silence. 

CosmoCube features a state-of-the-art fully integrated miniature radiometer, using the latest on analogue and digital technology, the so-called RF-Systems-on-Chip (RFSoCs). The CosmoCube space platform (‘SSTL-21’) is being developed in the UK by Surrey Space Technology Limited (SSTL), which specialises in the manufacturing of small satellites. Instrument development is well underway, with functioning lab prototypes and environmental testing taking place and key collaboration with industry partners. In the UK, academic partners include Portsmouth University and STFC RAL Space, and participation from EU countries such as Malta. The CosmoCube team recently participated in the ESA mini-Fast missions Call for Ideas, targeting a mission cost under 50 million Euros.

“CosmoCube is aiming to do some ambitious science from a very small satellite in a challenging environment, and to do that requires some clever design techniques,” said co-author Dr Will Grainger from STFC RAL Space. “We’ve worked with the project partners to develop representative models of the satellite and its payload. These have been tested in our facilities to ensure the thermal performance allows the payload to operate and perform the required sensitive measurements under the different temperature conditions it will experience whilst in orbit around the Moon. In the future, we hope to further develop the full payload in preparation for a full mission.”

“This could be a real UK success story: the hardware, the software, the implementation and the technology is all being developed here, and it could help us answer one of the most profound questions in the universe,” said de Lera Acedo. 

The work was supported in part by the UK Space Agency, the Kavli Foundation, and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Eloy de Lera Acedo is a Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge. 

Reference:
Eloy de lera Acedo et al. ‘The CosmoCube Lunar Mission for Probing the Dark Ages and Cosmic Dawn via 21-cm Cosmology.’ Nature Astronomy (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-026-02946-y

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The Medical Research Council (MRC) has announced a £20 million investment in a new Pre-clinical Translational Models Hub, led by Cambridge, which will transform the development and testing of new medicines using human-based models and artificial intelligence.

Over the past decade, we’ve seen the enormous potential of patient-derived organoids and other approaches that do not rely on the use of animals to transform the way we develop new medicines

Matthias Zilbauer

The Hub builds on the expertise of the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, in particular around advanced human in vitro models, including organoids and other stem cell-derived systems. It will combine this with AI-powered approaches, bioengineering and clinical research to create more accurate and predictive ways of studying human disease and testing potential treatments before they reach patients.

The Hub will be led by Professor Matthias Zilbauer and Professor Bertie Göttgens from the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute (CSCI).

Professor Matthias Zilbauer, Director of the UK Pre-clinical Translational Models Hub and Group Leader at the CSCI, said: “Over the past decade, we’ve seen the enormous potential of patient-derived organoids and other approaches that do not rely on the use of animals to transform the way we develop new medicines.

“Because these miniature human tissues retain many of the unique biological characteristics of the individual patient, they allow us to understand disease more accurately and test potential treatments before they ever reach the clinic. This has the potential to bring more effective, personalised treatments to patients while reducing the time and cost of developing new medicines and our reliance on animal models.”

Working with hospitals, research institutes and industry partners across Cambridge and the UK, the researchers will establish a national network dedicated to developing, validating and accelerating the adoption of next-generation preclinical models. The Hub will enable researchers, clinicians and companies across the UK to access human-based platforms that better reflect human biology and improve the development of new therapies.

Professor Bertie Göttgens, Co-Director of the UK Pre-clinical Translational Models Hub and Director of the CSCI, said: “By combining expertise in stem cell biology, organoid technology and artificial intelligence, the new UK Pre-clinical Translational Models Hub will accelerate the development of next-generation human disease models. Together with our academic, NHS and industry partners, we aim to deliver better treatments for patients while reinforcing the UK’s global leadership in this field.”

Every new medicine must undergo extensive testing for safety and effectiveness before it can reach patients. However, the process relies heavily on animal models, and many treatments that appear promising in animals ultimately fail when tested in humans. This can result in years of research, significant investment and potential treatments being lost before they reach patients.

Advanced human in vitro models and AI offer a new approach

By using human cells and tissues to recreate aspects of disease in the laboratory, researchers can study disease processes more accurately, identify potential treatments earlier and better predict how patients may respond to new therapies. These approaches include organoids – miniature, simplified versions of human tissues – alongside other engineered human systems and computational models.

While these technologies have already transformed many areas of biomedical research, their wider use in drug development requires robust validation, standardisation and benchmarking. Researchers, clinicians, regulators and industry partners need confidence that these models are reliable, reproducible and capable of improving decision-making in the development of new medicines.

The Pre-clinical Translational Models Hub will address this challenge by creating a national UK accelerator platform to develop promising human-based models into validated, scalable and industry-ready technologies. By integrating experimental models with AI and other computational approaches, the Hub will help establish a new generation of predictive tools for understanding disease and accelerating therapeutic discovery.

Cambridge’s expertise in organoid research

Organoids and other advanced human models have become a major focus of stem cell biology since the field emerged in 2009, and CSCI has played a leading role in developing this area. Researchers across the Institute have contributed to advances in organoid technology, stem cell biology and disease modelling.

Professor Zilbauer, for example, has built a biobank of more than 1,000 patient-derived organoid lines over the past decade. Through his clinical research into paediatric inflammatory bowel diseases at Cambridge University Hospitals, he works with children and their families to collect patient samples, generate organoid models and use these systems to understand disease mechanisms and test potential new treatments.

Professor Zilbauer said: “Patient-derived models have enormous potential to transform the way we understand disease and develop new medicines. By capturing important characteristics of individual patients, these human models allow us to study disease more accurately and test potential treatments before they reach the clinic. This could ultimately lead to more effective, personalised therapies while reducing the time and cost of drug development.”

To maximise the Hub’s reach and impact, CSCI will work with Affiliate Group Leaders and Hub co-leads Dr Mathew Garnett and Dr Mo Lotfollahi from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and Professor Madeline Lancaster at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, together with clinical partners at Cambridge University Hospitals and Royal Papworth Hospital.

Based at CSCI’s facilities in the Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, the Hub will benefit from close proximity to NHS partners, the MRC-LMB, AstraZeneca’s Discovery Centre, GSK’s Clinical Unit and other leading research and industry organisations. This unique environment will enable collaboration across disciplines and help accelerate the translation of scientific discoveries into real-world impact.

Science Minister Chris McDonald said: “Too many medicines that work in animals go on to fail in people. The Preclinical Translational Models Hub will allow scientists to test treatments on human tissue, grown from patients’ own cells, so we can tell much earlier what will genuinely work…By opening that technology up to researchers, the NHS and companies across the country (…) we are bringing the end of animal testing closer while creating the high-skilled jobs and growth that benefit people in every postcode.”

Adapted from a news story by the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute

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Communities living in Colombia thousands of years ago achieved an engineering wonder of the world based on cooperation among family groups without top-down government, a new study shows. Archaeologists argue that policymakers in Colombia should now adopt a similar strategy to solve the country’s current water management crisis.

Pre-Hispanic societies were inventive and cooperative, they worked with nature

Marcos Martinon-Torres

The pre-Hispanic field systems of La Mojana in the Colombian Caribbean are so vast you can see them from a plane at high altitude. Their canals and raised fields – in use from the first centuries BC until the 11th century AD – cover an astonishing 500,000 hectares, roughly the same size as the Grand Canyon National Park, or three times the size of London. 

It has traditionally been assumed that powerful rulers must have ordered and managed such an ambitious infrastructure project because of its complexity and the amount of work thought to be involved. In a study published today in Communications Sustainability, however, a University of Cambridge-led archaeological team argues that the work was most likely locally-led, cooperative, and much faster than previously assumed.

The findings are important historically but also offer hope to Colombians today who are suffering from a water management crisis linked to climate change, intensive farming and policy failure.

“These field systems are so impressive that people have assumed they were achieved by hierarchical chiefdoms. Our data tells a very different story,” said the study’s lead author, Dr Jasmine Vieri, from the University of Cambridge’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

“Our findings indicate that local communities were capable of building these systems in very short periods of time, and organising themselves rather than relying on a powerful external force.”

The societies responsible for these hydraulic systems in La Mojana were contemporary with the Maya, and with the broader Mesoamerican and Andean state-level societies, which culminated in the huge Aztec and Inca empires a few centuries later. The pre-Hispanic populations occupied an area where, the researchers point out, there is no evidence of state-level societies. It has been assumed – encouraged by evidence of elaborate gold work and ceramics – that they were hierarchical chiefdoms on their way to state formation. By contrast, the new findings support the idea that these people chose to organize themselves far more horizontally and were able to achieve great things.

Their raised field system managed huge quantities of water during heavy rains, gradually redirected it in drier months, buffering against both drought and floods. The network of canals redistributed water from permanent bodies of water around raised areas of housing. The system provided more fertile soils for cultivation in dry seasons and may have helped locals to trap fish.

Using satellite imagery, the researchers mapped a 500-hectare portion (roughly 700 football pitches) of Pre-Hispanic field systems in the municipality of San Macros, Sucre. They studied the infrastructure at an unprecedented level of detail, recording the dimensions and volume of 1,600 ridges and 63 housing platforms. They worked out that when first constructed the formations were around 1.4 metres high from the top of the ridge to the lowest point of the canal.

The international team – including researchers from the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH), and University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain – then developed a new method to quantify the labour needed to build this system and considered the social and spatial organization most likely to have underpinned this work.

Dr Jasmine Vieri said: “We are confident that one of these canal-ridge systems could have been built in less than two months, around half of a dry season. That’s a far lower labour investment than has been previously assumed, and manageable through cooperation.”

The researchers factored in volumes of moved earth, as well as information about local geology, indigenous working practices, population density and available technology. Starting from an estimated population of 1,600 people in the study area, they based their calculations on a workforce of 800 people which, the researchers emphasise, represents a conservative estimate, given ethnographic evidence that men, women and probably children traditionally engage in subsistence farming.

Soils in the Colombian Caribbean are heavy clay which would have made the work harder and there were no metal shovels in the region in this period. The workers may have used wood tools but this remains unproven.

The study springs from Cambridge’s ERC-funded REVERSEACTION project, which investigates how technologies are sustained in stateless societies, and how collective action can achieve great things without coercion.

Professor Marcos Martinon-Torres, REVERSEACTION’s lead and senior author, said: “Arguments for centralised, top-down planning, unsupported by data, risk obscuring the agency of indigenous pre-Hispanic populations. Pre-Hispanic societies were inventive and cooperative, they worked with nature rather than trying to obstruct it. And we already know that recovering ancestral practices has positive societal impact today through local populations connecting with their heritage through technology.”

Evidence for the use of raised field systems in this region ends before the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century. It isn’t clear why they stopped being used but it has been suggested there was population movement from the lowlands towards mountainous areas.

The researchers argue that the pre-Hispanic sustainable solution to water management can be adopted by local populations without the need for state intervention. Instead of redistributing water flow, the Colombian government has often adopted the opposite strategy of attempting to block water flow to prevent flooding and adapt the land for agricultural and livestock activities based on models designed for non-flooding environments. But dykes have proven incapable of holding water back. Since 2021, the Caregato dyke has suffered multiple breaches, causing losses for local communities and ecosystem damage. At other times, the region suffers from severe droughts.

Study author Dr Fernando Montejo Gaitán, from the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH), said: “Policymakers have shown interest in these ancient systems, but lacked data. Our study is the first to show that these sustainable solutions can be organised locally and collectively. Local people may need resources from the state but not necessarily state intervention.”

The researchers have made their code open source to enable researchers to apply the same methods to data sets relating to other regions.

Reference

J Vieri, F Montejo Gaitán, M Carrero-Pazos, M Martinón-Torres, ‘Collective labour and sustainability of pre-Hispanic field systems in La Mojana’, Communications Sustainability (2026); DOI: 10.1038/s44458-026-00128-5

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The Medical Research Council (MRC) has announced a £50 million investment in the new MRC Centre of Research Excellence in Mitochondrial Genome Therapeutics, which aims to enable new treatments into potentially fatal mitochondrial DNA diseases.

Our goal is to create the scientific foundations that will enable entirely new ways of treating these diseases and offer renewed hope to affected patients and families

Michal Minczuk

The MRC Centre of Research Excellence (MRC CoRE) will be led by Professor Michal Minczuk of the University of Cambridge. It brings together leading experts from across disciplines to define how mutations in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) cause disease and translate that knowledge into therapies.

The new Centre builds on the University’s existing expertise in mitochondrial research at the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit.

No cure currently exists for mitochondrial diseases, a group of genetic disorders that affect around 1 in 5000 people, leaving patients and their families facing significant unmet medical needs.

Mitochondria are tiny ‘organelles’ that sit within our cells, where they act like batteries, providing energy in the form of the molecule ATP to power the cells. Each mitochondrion has its own DNA, distinct from the rest of the human genome, which is comprised of nuclear DNA. 

Beyond inherited conditions, mtDNA mutations are increasingly linked to neurodegeneration, metabolic disease, cardiovascular failure and age-related deterioration. In affected individuals, mitochondrial dysfunction can contribute to severe disability, progressive decline and premature death.

Professor Minczuk from the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit and Department of Clinical Neurosciences said: “Mitochondrial DNA diseases are devastating conditions that can have a huge impact on an individual’s life and on their families, and in many cases prove fatal. Our new Centre will provide pioneering approaches to understanding and treating these diseases.

“We will be building a long-term UK research platform with the scale, expertise and infrastructure needed to position the UK as a global leader in mitochondrial genome therapeutics.

“Our goal is to create the scientific foundations that will enable entirely new ways of treating these diseases and offer renewed hope to affected patients and families.”

The MRC CoRE will harness emerging technologies to engineer the mitochondrial genome, delivering advanced models for study common disease-causing mtDNA mutations.

Led by the University of Cambridge, it will partner with the University of Birmingham, University of Manchester, Heidelberg University and the University of Queensland, as well as the Imagine Institute in Paris, charities including the Lily Foundation, and industrial partners worldwide. 

Dr Ceri Williams, Executive Director of Challenge Led Themes at the MRC, said: “The UK has been at the helm of mitochondrial science, having led on the development of mitochondrial replacement therapy which prevents the inheritance of mtDNA mutations.

“We are delighted to announce this new MRC CoRE, which builds on these foundations to bring together expertise from around the world and across sectors to make real progress towards understanding the root causes of mtDNA mutations.

“Taking an interdisciplinary approach to tackle these challenges has the potential to radically transform health research in this field, improving prevention, detection and treatment, boosting outcomes for patients and protecting families affected by the disease.” 

Liz Curtis, CEO and founder the Lily Foundation, said: “We’re proud to be a named partner in this initiative, an ambitious and collaborative project that has the potential to transform our understanding of mitochondrial disease. 

“By bringing together world-leading expertise and embedding patient perspectives from the outset, this programme reflects exactly the kind of strategic, forward-looking research we want to support. 

“Our role as a patient charity partner is to help ensure that the priorities of families shape the research, while also investing directly into the next generation of scientists who will drive progress towards future treatments.”

Adapted from a press release from the Medical Research Council

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Cambridge researchers have shown how commonly-used sweeteners slow the growth of certain gut bacteria. Isosteviol – a compound derived from stevia (a common sweetener) – when combined with the anti-depressant duloxetine significantly impaired two important gut bacteria linked to regulating blood sugar and gut health and may affect the body’s immune responses.

Sweeteners are often marketed as metabolically neutral, but our study challenges this idea

Sonja Blasche

The scientists say more research is needed to understand the real-world health impacts of this laboratory study, one of the first to assess the direct impact of sweeteners on gut bacteria, particularly when they are combined with other substances.

Sweeteners are widely used in a range of food and drinks, including soft drinks, sweets, desserts, snacks and cereals. While marketed as healthier alternatives to sugar, there is increasing evidence of links to diseases such as type 2 diabetes, obesity and cancer.

Despite their pervasive use, there have been very few studies that look at the direct interactions between sweeteners and gut bacteria – the vast community of microorganisms that live in the digestive tract and play a crucial role in keeping our bodies healthy. 

Professor Kiran Patil from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Toxicology Unit at the University of Cambridge said: “Most of what we know about the potential impact of sweeteners on our health comes from animal research or from population studies. While these studies have indicated involvement of the microbiome in mediating the effect of sweeteners, it’s difficult to know how sweeteners act in the body – is it through direct interactions with our gut bacteria?”

“Answering this is further complicated by the fact that we rarely ever take sweeteners by themselves – we take them with drinks, in snacks, or even in medication to mask bitterness,” added Dr Sonja Blasche, a lead author of the study, also the MRC Toxicology Unit.

In research published in Molecular Systems Biology, Dr Blasche and colleagues looked at how artificial and low‑calorie sweeteners affect the bacteria living in our gut, and how these effects change when sweeteners are consumed together with other common substances such as caffeine, flavourings or medicines.

The researchers grew each of 25 gut bacterial species – including beneficial, neutral, and potentially harmful bacteria – in the lab. They then exposed each culture individually to 39 common, commercially-used sweeteners, some of which are artificial, others natural, and measured how well the bacteria multiplied.

Around three‑quarters of the sweeteners changed how at least one bacterial species grew. Some sweeteners slowed down or stopped the growth of certain bacteria linked to a healthy gut.

The researchers then tested each sweetener in combination with common compounds such as caffeine, vanillin (vanilla extract), advantame (an artificial sweetener) and eight commonly-used drugs to assess whether this had any impact on the gut bacteria. They found over 100 interactions where sweeteners acted differently when combined with other substances. In 34 cases, combinations made the effects stronger, while in 68 cases the effects were weaker.

Most striking was the combination of isosteviol (a compound derived from stevia, a sweetener widely used in the food and beverage industry) and the antidepressant duloxetine. This combination strongly suppressed Roseburia intestinalis and Parabacteroides merdae, two gut bacteria that play important roles in maintaining a healthy digestive system. In the US in 2023, over 4.2 million patients were prescribed duloxetine.

As no gut bacterium exists alone, but rather as part of a ‘community’ within the gut, the researchers created a synthetic community containing all 25 bacteria. After allowing it to grow over time, they tested the community against a variety of sweetener and drug combinations, looking at which species increased or decreased and whether the overall diversity changed.

By mimicking in this simplified way what might happen in the human gut, they showed that the combination of isosteviol and duloxetine reduced microbial diversity. A diverse microbiome is considered important for good gut health. The sweetener-drug combination also altered which bacterial species thrived or declined.

Further analysis showed that the effect of the isosteviol-duloxetine combination on the community increased toxicity towards certain host cells and interfered with other cells that play a role in the body’s inflammation and immune responses. 

Dr Blasche said: “Sweeteners are often marketed as metabolically neutral, but our study challenges this idea. We found that they can directly affect gut bacteria, particularly when mixed with other compounds such as medication and food additives. These common combinations could have unintended effects on our gut microbiome.”

The researchers stress that, as their experiments were carried out in the lab, not tested in humans, more research needs to be done before it is possible to conclude that there will be direct health effects in people. 

Professor Patil, the study’s senior author, added: “Our study suggests that artificial sweeteners don’t just pass through the body passively — they can interact with gut microbes, and these effects can be amplified or altered by other substances like medications. These findings can help guide new studies towards understanding how sweeteners might influence health in unexpected ways.”

The research was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme and the UK Medical Research Council.

Reference

Blasche, S. et al. Common xenobiotics modulate gut microbial responses to low‑calorie sweeteners in vitro. MSB; 25 Jun 2026; DOI: 10.1038/s44320-026-00225-6

Updated 20/7/26 to clarify that isosteviol is a compound derived from a common sweetener (stevia)

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By Stephen Bevan and Sarah Collins
Published 20 July 2026

The University of Cambridge’s strength in bringing together research, business, and investment to inspire innovation and accelerate UK economic growth was showcased at the New Whittle Laboratory’s Frank Whittle Summit. 

On the same day His Majesty King Charles attended the new £58 million facility’s official opening, the event welcomed major industrial businesses and tech giants to reignite Britain’s industrial engine in aerospace, energy and defence. 

Executives from companies including Rolls-Royce, Boeing, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Siemens Energy, along with leading AI firms, senior government officials, and top researchers, gathered to kickstart a series of missions to pioneer new technologies and industries in the UK.  

These missions will transform and accelerate the UK’s approach to innovation in hardware development and manufacturing across aerospace, energy and defence, harnessing AI and autonomous laboratories to shrink today’s multi-year technology development cycles from years to months.  

Over the coming decade, it is estimated that technologies developed through the New Whittle Laboratory could contribute up to £30 billion in economic value to the UK and create as many as 10,000 new skilled jobs.  

Professor Rob Miller, Chair in Aerothermal Technology and Director of the Whittle Laboratory at Cambridge, said the Summit also aimed to mobilise capital to support UK projects and engineering talent, turning scientific advantage into industrial strength. 

He said: “AI is dramatically accelerating hardware innovation across the aerospace, energy and defence sectors. Britain has the capacity and the audacity to compete and win in a global race.  

“What’s missing is a bold new approach that champions rapid iteration over incremental improvement. That’s why we’ve established the Bennett Innovation Lab — a sovereign capability designed to launch transformative new missions, each of which is designed to build or transform a UK industry.” 

The New Whittle Laboratory encompasses two elements: the Bennett Innovation Lab: designed to launch 20-30 missions over a decade, each building a new industry in the UK; and the National Centre for Propulsion and Power: a rapid test facility designed to cut the time between ideas and testing from years to weeks.  

Missions will involve small teams of elite engineering talent, operating in a culture which promotes risk and provides access to Formula 1-style rapid fabrication and testing.  

An initial proof-of-concept mission, made possible by philanthropic gifts from Lord Sainsbury of Turville and Peter Bennett, with support from Rolls-Royce, has demonstrated these capabilities. This has resulted in the development of a prototype cryogenic jet engine that burns supercooled liquid hydrogen, representing the biggest shift in jet engine design since Frank Whittle’s original design. Nine new patents have been filed by the project team, and Rolls-Royce plans to use the results to accelerate technology development for its future narrowbody engine. 

Representatives from the UK’s world-leading innovation clusters and labs, including the Henry Royce Institute, the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, the Harwell Campus, the Silverstone Technology Cluster, and the Manufacturing Technology Centre, were also present at the Summit.  

Lord Vallance, Minister for Science, Innovation, Research and Nuclear, said: “The UK’s universities are among the best in the world, driving breakthroughs that will shape the future and transform lives. The New Whittle Laboratory is an excellent example of how we can turn world-class research into innovation and growth, and I look forward to seeing the pioneering technologies that will be developed here.” 

Professor Julia Sutcliffe, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Business and Trade, said: “To remain internationally competitive and at the forefront of critical industries for the UK economy – including aerospace, energy and defence – we must find new models to move much faster. We need to ensure that our great ideas support the growth of businesses in this country, and we believe the mission-led approach being pioneered through the New Whittle Laboratory and our other leading research clusters will be transformative in delivering this.” 

Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, said: “We need to speed up innovation in the UK’s engineering sector. The Bennett Innovation Lab offers the incredible opportunity for the UK to build a mission capability which can deliver the UK’s leading science into new industries at an unparalleled pace. This will be a partnership between Cambridge and the other leading technology clusters and institutes across the UK. It’s only by building a partnership of the UKs leading clusters that we deliver the speed of technology development and deployment that the UK needs.” 

The Summit was hosted in partnership with the Sustainable Markets Initiative, founded in 2020 by the King – then the Prince of Wales – to help convene global business leaders, investors and innovators to accelerate the deployment of breakthrough technologies and strengthen collaboration between industry, academia and government. 

World-leading innovation must be in harmony with our planet, and the new Hatton Professorship of Sustainability at Cambridge was also celebrated at the Summit. Established to mark the coronation of the King – an alumnus of Trinity College – and his championing of sustainability, the Professorship is funded through a £7 million endowment, made up of £5 million from Trinity College and the Hatton Trust, and matched by £2 million from the University.  

As well as accelerating both innovation and economic impact, the mission of the New Whittle Laboratory, along with that of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, of which the King has been the Royal Founding Patron for more than 30 years, reflects His Majesty’s longstanding interest in how innovation, business leadership, and sustainability can work together to create prosperity and resilience. 

The New Whittle Laboratory is the latest evolution of the Whittle Lab, which was opened in 1973 to place the UK at the forefront of the jet age. It was named for Sir Frank Whittle (1907-1996), the Cambridge alumnus and RAF officer who is known as the creator of the jet engine.  

Today, the Whittle Lab is the world’s leading research centre for jet engines and power generation, developing hundreds of technologies for companies including Rolls-Royce, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Siemens Energy, and generating around 10 per cent of the University’s industrial research income. The Whittle Lab has won the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ highest honour in the field – the Gas Turbine Award – a record 15 times. 

The Whittle Laboratory received £14.6 million in grant funding for the National Centre for Propulsion and Power from the ATI Programme, a partnership between Aerospace Technology Institute, Department for Business and Trade and Innovate UK. Collaborative industry projects advancing aerospace capability at the Whittle Laboratory have also been supported by funding from the ATI Programme. 

The formal opening of the New Whittle Laboratory marks another significant milestone in the development of the Cambridge West Innovation District, home to the University’s world-leading research in science and technology. 

Rob Miller is a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.  

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Photography:
_{Natalie Hall/SDC
Hufton+Crow
Ian Jones}

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His Majesty The King was in Cambridge today (20 July) to officially open Cambridge’s New Whittle Laboratory, a £58 million facility designed to be the world’s leading research centre for jet engines and power generation. 

He met with researchers, government representatives, and industry leaders from the aviation and energy sectors to find out more about the Laboratory’s mission to shrink the time it takes to develop key technologies in aerospace, energy and defence from years to weeks, in order to accelerate UK growth.

The King last visited the Whittle Laboratory in 2023 – in his first engagement following the Coronation – to break ground on the New Whittle Laboratory. As The Prince of Wales, His Majesty previously visited the Whittle Laboratory in January 2020 and March 2022, as well as hosting an industry roundtable in February 2020 in London with the Sustainable Markets Initiative and World Economic Forum.

The New Whittle Laboratory encompasses two elements: the Bennett Innovation Lab: designed to launch 20-30 missions over a decade, each building a new industry in the UK; and the National Centre for Propulsion and Power: a rapid test facility designed to cut the time between ideas and testing from years to weeks.

Missions will involve small teams of elite engineering talent, operating in a culture which promotes risk and provides access to Formula 1-style rapid fabrication and testing.

Alongside Monday’s official opening, the Frank Whittle Summit brought together major industrial businesses and tech giants to reignite Britain’s industrial engine in aerospace, energy and defence. 

The Summit was hosted in partnership with the Sustainable Markets Initiative, founded in 2020 by the King – then the Prince of Wales – to help convene global business leaders, investors and innovators to accelerate the deployment of breakthrough technologies and strengthen collaboration between industry, academia and government. 

The Summit brought together executives from companies including Rolls-Royce, Boeing, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Siemens Energy, along with leading AI firms, senior government officials, and top researchers, to kickstart a series of missions to pioneer new technologies and industries in the UK.

These missions will transform and accelerate the UK’s approach to innovation in hardware development and manufacturing across aerospace, energy and defence, harnessing AI and autonomous laboratories to shrink today’s multi-year technology development cycles from years to months. 

World-leading innovation must be in harmony with our planet, and the new Hatton Professorship of Sustainability at Cambridge was also celebrated at the Summit. Established to mark the coronation of the King – an alumnus of Trinity College – and his championing of sustainability, the Professorship is funded through a £7 million endowment, made up of £5 million from Trinity College and the Hatton Trust, and matched by £2 million from the University. 

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Six academics from the University of Cambridge have been made Fellows of the prestigious British Academy for the humanities and social sciences.

I am immensely grateful to Cambridge for enabling me and colleagues…to build interdisciplinary initiatives

Anna Korhonen

They are among 92 distinguished scholars to be elected to the fellowship in recognition of their work in fields ranging from the history of race, to bringing human insight into the study and development of AI.

The Cambridge academics made Fellows of the Academy this year are:

Professor John Arnold (Faculty of History; King’s College)

Professor Mia Bay (Faculty of History; Jesus College)

Professor Rebecca Cassidy (Department of Social Anthropology; King’s College) 

Professor Anna Korhonen (Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics; Churchill College)

Professor Joel Robbins (Department of Social Anthropology; Trinity College)

Professor James Warren (Faculty of Classics; Corpus Christi College)

Founded in 1902, the British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. It is a Fellowship consisting of over 1800 of the leading minds in these subjects from the UK and overseas.

Current British Academy Fellows include classicist Professor Dame Mary Beard, the historian and expert on China Professor Rana Mitter and philosopher Professor Baroness Onora O’Neill. Professor David Olusoga, Baroness Brenda Hale, and Professor Gary Younge are also among its Honorary Fellows. Previous Fellows include Dame Frances Yates, Sir Winston Churchill, Seamus Heaney and Beatrice Webb. 

The Academy is a funder of both national and international research, as well as a forum for debate and public engagement.

In 2026, a total of 58 UK Fellows, 32 International Fellows and 2 Honorary Fellows have been elected to the British Academy Fellowship.

Newly elected fellow, Professor Anna Korhonen (Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics; Churchill College), said:

“I am delighted and deeply honoured to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy. My work is about bringing human insight into the science and technology of Artificial Intelligence, so there is something particularly meaningful about this recognition coming from the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. 

“It comes at a time when the biggest questions about AI are fundamentally human – and no single discipline can answer them alone. I am immensely grateful to Cambridge for enabling me and colleagues across the Schools to build interdisciplinary initiatives that can address these questions.”

President of the British Academy Professor Susan J. Smith, formerly Mistress of Girton College and now Life Fellow, said:

“I am delighted to welcome our newest Fellows to the British Academy. Each has made an outstanding contribution to their field, and together they reflect the remarkable breadth and depth of scholarship across our disciplines. 

 “At a time when society is grappling with radical uncertainty in the face of technological, economic and environmental change, the humanities and social sciences have never been more important. Insights from economics, geography and political studies help us navigate geopolitical tensions, while literature, history and philosophy – to name a few of the disciplines the Academy represents – fuel our creative industries and help people to better understand themselves and each other.

“Our new fellows join a community of scholars with unparalleled expertise, dedicated to advancing research, fostering collaboration across disciplines and demonstrating the value of the humanities and social sciences. I am proud to give my warmest congratulations to them all on their election today.”

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Scientists have painted the most detailed portrait yet of the planetary system orbiting Barnard’s Star – the Sun’s closest neighbour after Alpha Centauri, just under six light-years from Earth.

Discovered in 2025, the four planets orbiting Barnard’s Star are all smaller than Earth and Venus, but larger than Mars – a type of planet not found anywhere in our own Solar System. 

By analysing the chemical make-up of the star, the researchers, from the University of Cambridge, found that its planets are rich in a rare mineral called periclase, which on Earth is only found hundreds of kilometres below the surface.

“Barnard’s Star has an enormous amount of the element magnesium compared to other stars, so its planets are likely to be rich in magnesium too,” said lead author Xander Byrne from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy. “On Earth, that magnesium goes into making minerals called olivines, which are really important for storing water within the planet.” 

On the Barnard’s Star planets, however, the researchers found that the abundance of magnesium creates huge quantities of periclase, which does not store water as well. To make matters worse, they found the chances of Bernard’s Star’s planets having atmospheres to be unlikely. 

“These planets were always going to be hostile, because they’re really close to their star” said Byrne, “Even the outermost planet orbits ten times closer than Mercury orbits the Sun. When you’re that close to your star, and have such little gravity, your atmosphere just gets blown off.” 

The researchers say that the planets could have held on to their atmospheres for at most two billion years – much shorter than the system’s 10-billion-year age. Their results are reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Being so close to the star has another consequence for the planets: the researchers found that the planets are all tidally locked. In the same way that the Moon only shows one face to the Earth, the Barnard’s Star planets each only show one face to their star. As a result, each planet has one hemisphere locked in eternal daylight; the other, eternal night.

Planetary systems as compact as the one around Barnard’s Star are often unstable, with gravitational interactions between the planets sometimes leading to them colliding, falling into the star, or being ejected from the system. 

However, the researchers found that a phenomenon called orbital resonance might be helping to stabilise the Barnard’s Star system. The lengths of the ‘years’ of the inner three planets are in a 9:12:16 ratio: musically, this is equivalent to two consecutive perfect fourths. These orbital harmonies are responsible for stabilising the orbits of the moons of Jupiter, and may be protecting the Barnard’s Star system from gravitational disarray.

Upcoming missions, such as the European Space Agency’s Plato mission, may find many more small planets like those around Barnard’s Star.

“Larger planets are much easier to detect than small ones, so we know about very few sub-Earth planets like the ones in this system,” said Byrne. “But the sensitivity of these new missions will help to reduce this bias, allowing us to discover more and more planets that are small and rocky, like Earth.” 

Although the Barnard’s Star planets are extremely uninhabitable, the team say that their analysis linking the compositions of the star and planets could be an important consideration in determining whether other planets could support life.
 

Reference:
Xander Byrne et al. ‘The Barnard’s Star Planetary System: Stability, Composition, and Evolution of Four Sub-Earth Exoplanets.’ Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2026). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stag1207

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Cambridge student cracks formula for Guinness World Record-breaking fidget spinner

A Cambridge University student and spinning top hobbyist has used physics and precision engineering to design a ‘next-level’ fidget spinner and set a new Guinness World Record for the longest ever spin.

James Goh, 23 – whose fascination with gyroscopes began when he saw the iconic spinning top in Christopher Nolan’s 2010 sci-fi film Inception – spun the device for 30 minutes 34.54 seconds, almost five minutes longer than the previous record for ‘the longest duration spinning a fidget spinner on one finger’, and around 20 times longer than a standard spinner bought in a shop.

He said: “This has been a hobby of mine since I was a kid, so I’m delighted to get the record – although my finger did ache a little bit after holding it in the same position for so long. I suppose in a way I’ve taken the fidget out of fidget spinning!”

As part of their degree, Cambridge engineering students study the physics of gyroscopes, which are critical components used in everything from smart phones to spacecraft navigation systems. And so James has been able to draw on his learning, specifically in aerodynamics, and tribology – the science of friction – to boost his hobby.

The Queens’ College student – who has also engineered spinning tops which spin for almost two hours, and has his sights set on more Guinness World Records – was at school when fidget spinners took the planet by storm in 2017, and when he first challenged himself to create the ultimate spinner.

“Like most kids my age, I loved fidget spinners and was swept up in the craze back then,” he said. “I probably spent more money than I should have buying them, and I always thought, ‘one day I’ll do this myself, but I’ll do it better…’”

James’ passion for fidget spinners – which are designed to spin with little effort, and are marketed as relieving stress – grew out of his original interest in designing spinning tops, which share many of the same scientific principles.

“Inception was a big inspiration – when I saw the spinning top something clicked with me; I started looking into the physics of tops and I never really stopped. The top in the film is visually iconic, but from an engineering perspective it’s actually a bad design!”

His hobby even led him to ask for a metal-working lathe for Christmas, which he kept in his bedroom.

“People do often ask me why I’m so interested in spinning tops and fidget spinners. There’s definitely something hypnotic about them, and their mechanical efficiency is pretty remarkable. I also think it’s got a lot to do with being competitive; it’s a very interesting optimisation problem because the goal keeps shifting. There are always new materials or techniques to use to tweak the design – there are always improvements that can be made.”

James – who is currently studying on the Manufacturing Engineering Tripos, an option for the final two years of a Cambridge Engineering degree – used academic papers to inform his experiments and help figure out the Guinness World Record-breaking formula. He originally devised his formula for spinning tops, but then used it to engineer his ‘Pulsar’ fidget spinner and set the new record. As far as he is aware, the formula did not previously exist.

“It involves a lot of data collection to come up with 3D models, which I then make in the workshop. Differential equations have helped me a lot to refine the formula, although there is no actual analytical solution, because technically it’s unsolvable. There’s no magical, optimal spinning time, but you can get close to it.”

The core of James’s Pulsar spinner is made from lightweight hollow aluminium, while tungsten – an extremely dense metal – is concentrated around the edges to store kinetic energy. It means all the weight is on the outside – creating a ‘high moment of inertia’ – and helping it spin for longer.

He said: “Designing a spinner is basically about three things: maximising the energy you start with, minimising the energy you end with, and transitioning between those two states as slowly as possible, so you’re losing energy as slowly as possible. The tricky thing is that these factors are all in conflict with each other, and in a really complicated way.”

As well as being high performance, James’ tops and fidget spinners – which he promotes on his HiPer Tops platform – are aesthetically striking, with the finished products often resembling objets d’art. However, according to James, this is more of a happy accident.

“I do get a lot of nice comments about how they look, but it’s a by-product of the engineering, really. Polishing them helps with aerodynamics, but I’m much more focused on function than form. Form is a small consideration.”

Words: Stephen Bevan
Images: James Goh
Published: 18th May, 2026

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WHO? Dr Chris Macdonald, a multi-award-winning scientist, serial inventor and Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge.

WHAT? Using emerging technology for education and healthcare. He is best known for harnessing AI, VR and neuroscience to create a new treatment for speech anxiety.

WHAT ELSE? Founding the Better Protein Institute to help the world switch to optimal sources of dietary protein.

WHY? “My mission is to do everything in my power to make people’s lives better and the planet a better place for us all to live. Whatever it takes.”

Where does your entrepreneurial spirit come from? Did you have people around you doing enterprising things when you were growing up? Not at all. I’m not a conventional ‘Cambridge person’. I didn’t know anyone who got into Oxbridge. I knew people who ‘got into’ prison.

I grew up in a single-parent, non-working household. I was a state-school-educated, ‘free-school-meals kid’. I remember when I was young, going to primary school in dirty clothes with my shoes falling apart and being called poor by both fellow students and even their parents.    

Home life was tough for various reasons so I would try to stay outside and away from the house as much as possible.

I was significantly injured one summer, and it was harder to stay out. I remember thinking that I needed to turn it into a positive so I decided to bunker in my room and use the time to read every book I could get my hands on.

I ended up giving myself an accelerated education in multiple subjects. I also remember thinking, it would be more efficient if I learned how best to acquire and store information, so I also read various books on neuroscience and memory championships.

I was flying through books and retaining the information. It was definitely a turning point.

I became very passionate about various environmental and social injustices, and I explored ways I could be of service. As a teenager, I created a short documentary using equipment borrowed from my college and it ended up being screened at a local cinema.

I remember thinking how inefficient the various leaflets I had made previously were. By contrast, in the cinema, there was a packed room of people focused on the information. It was an early insight into the power of leveraging technology to achieve impact on a larger scale.

I was determined not to use the fact that I didn’t have certain resources as an excuse not to start. My philosophy was to start however I could, even with a ‘rubbish version’, and then build from there.

I had some difficult early years, but they made me resilient, independent, and committed to making a positive contribution. I didn’t want to just talk about problems. I wanted to build solutions.

Before coming to Cambridge, you were working in tech in London, and then in North America. What was that experience like? I was very eager to get stuck into full-time work and push myself in high stakes situations.

I targeted innovative companies who were attempting complicated world-firsts. I worked every day, and I continued to study hard; I read more than 1,000 books and took more than 100 online courses. I loved the ‘missions’. The ambitious deadlines. The all-nighters. The sleeping on a sofa in the office. The challenge of finding a way forward despite the odds.

I ended up becoming manager of a company in Vancouver. We were doing complex and varied work for a range of high-profile clients, including some pioneering visual effects for Hollywood films.

Working for a company that was genuinely ground-breaking was really exciting. It was a nimble team, able to secure and deliver on massive deals. What I learnt was that everyone needed to be really great at what they did: there was no room for inefficiencies or people being off their game. I loved it.

You were also pursuing your ambition to help people at the same time? I was in a deep personal and professional exploration phase. For example, for one project, on weekends, I would wake up, leave my apartment, and try to help the first person I saw who looked like they could do with some assistance. This resulted in all sorts of adventures.

One day, I left my apartment, and it was pouring with rain. Walking through an underpass, I came across a homeless gentleman with three trolleys of belongings. I asked if there was anything I could do to help.

He yelled at me. I asked him what his name was, and he swore at me. I bought him lunch, and he yelled at me again. This pattern continued for weeks.

One day, he let me sit quite near him without yelling. We were both eating the food I had bought in silence. Rain pouring down again either side of the underpass. We were both staring straight ahead. He didn’t like eye contact.

Finally, he revealed his name: Jimmy. He explained that he didn’t like to share his name as it was given to him by his family and they had been killed. He shared his heartbreaking story with me.

The next day, I said: “Jimmy, I would love to help you. Is there anything I can do?”

After long discussions, he eventually revealed that the thing he most wanted to do is to wash his clothes. However, there was a catch: he said he must come to my apartment to do it.

Unfortunately, my landlord had already banned me from bringing home homeless individuals. And Jimmy had three trolleys with him. Sneaking him in was not an option.

I asked him why he needed to come into my apartment with me. He eventually explained that he only had one set of clothes, and he was wearing them.

Once I understood the situation, I was able to help. I bought him some more clothes, and some credit for the laundrette. Now he had a sustainable solution. He seemed a different person, much more confident and approachable. He was standing tall and smiling.

Jimmy was just one of the people I worked with. Each mini adventure was unique. It was humbling to see that seemingly simple things like having lunch, washing your clothes, or even saying your name, could be challenging.

I learned a lot from helping people like Jimmy. However, it often felt like a drop in the ocean. I started to think about how I could scale my efforts to help more people.

“I learned a lot from helping people like Jimmy. However, it often felt like a drop in the ocean.

I started to think about how I could scale my efforts to help more people.”

Chris Macdonald TED talk, image

You also managed to fit in a PhD? While I was working, alongside other projects, I had been conducting and publishing self-funded primarily behavioural research in the evenings.

Ultimately, I wanted to get better at accelerating positive changes by better understanding the barriers and levers. This ended up evolving into a self-funded PhD, completed in the evenings and weekends.

How did you find your way to Cambridge? Although I was learning a lot working in tech and I loved the problem-solving, I wanted to come back to England and find a way to focus solely on projects that help people and planet.

You very quickly established a multi-award-winning lab? By the time I arrived at the College, I was already using ‘tech for good’. The President at the time, Professor Dame Madeleine Atkins, was a big supporter and helped me secure some funding which led to the creation of my lab. Since then, it has gone from strength to strength.

I am now very fortunate that the lab has lots of advocates within and beyond the broader University community.

How would you describe what you do? Currently there are two main areas: ‘tech for good’ and ‘better protein’. The innovation that has gained the most traction is my treatment for speech anxiety; it has appeared in hundreds of news stories and my recent TED Talk has gained millions of views on social media.

How do you choose which problems you want to solve? I target unmet needs, and I calibrate for impact at speed and at scale.

Speech anxiety, for example, is a problem for around 80% of UK university students. It affects academic attainment, career progression, physical and mental health. Ultimately, it limits people’s ability to speak up during difficult moments and their capacity to drive positive change.

The project started with me trying to help one of my nephews. He was really struggling with his education and was on the brink of dropping out. I was determined to help him.

While there were already some solutions out there, they were not accessible. If you are to pursue private treatment, then the financial cost is, to be frank, exclusionary. And in some areas the waiting lists for free treatment are over a year long. Such barriers help to explain the current situation: where most students suffer from some form of speech anxiety and yet very few access treatment. The principal student strategy is avoidance.

To address this, I created an online platform where tailored course material develops core skills and virtual reality training environments build confidence. I made it instantly and freely available to all. No more fees. No more waiting lists.

Although that was a solid start, the treatment wouldn’t truly be free if it relied on people having to buy expensive VR headsets, so I made sure it works on any device including laptops for instant access. I programmed the associated phone app in such a way that it displays in full virtual reality, using the phone’s inbuilt sensors to know where you are looking in 3D space.

In addition to increasing accessibility, I also explored ways to make the treatment more effective. I added the latest advancements from neuroscience, tools that help people slow their heart rate quicker, or quieten activity in the amygdala to help suppress the fear response. I created custom smart features too to provide feedback mechanisms, to analyse scripts, speech, and performances.

I also developed something I call ‘overexposure therapy’ where users can train in hyper extreme scenarios that they are unlikely to encounter within their lifetimes. For example, you can train in a stadium with 10,000 animated spectators. It creates the psychological equivalent of weightlifting, building additional confidence, adaptability and resilience.

The results have been amazing. In the first trial, I found that a single, half-hour session significantly reduces anxiety. In the most recent trial, I found a week-long programme was effective for 100% of students.

“For example, you can train in a stadium with 10,000 animated spectators.

It creates the psychological equivalent of weightlifting, building additional confidence, adaptability and resilience.”

Chris Macdonald TED talk, image

What about your nephew? He loves public speaking now. He stayed in college. In fact, he recently graduated from university. The platform has evolved a lot, and it is now being used in more than 100 countries and it is on track to deliver a million free treatments this year. What started as helping one person is becoming a system that can help millions.

Dietary protein is another area you are focusing on. What prompted your interest in that? As with speech anxiety, it’s the potential scale of the impact and the potential positive ripple effects that excite me.

Some of the most popular sources of protein are incredibly inefficient, especially with regard to land use. Many people are concerned when they see images of, for instance, deforestation in the Amazon. However, few people realise that the vast majority of that is due to inefficient protein production.

To the extent that, if we were to transition to more efficient sources of protein, we could free up an area of land the size of Brazil, the US and Canada combined. Few areas have such untapped potential for positive impact.

I learned a lot more about the subject when writing my last book, Operation Sustainable Human. However, it became apparent that there were many gaps in the research which led me to create the Better Protein Institute to address fundamental questions such as how much protein is required for optimal health outcomes, what are the best sources of protein currently available, how can we increase consumption of them and what future protein sources should we be investing in now?

It’s such a dynamic field. I’m making meaningful breakthroughs almost every month, which makes it incredibly exciting.

What’s next? My current funding expires next year. Therefore, the immediate goal is to secure more funding. With the right mission-aligned philanthropist, we can achieve transformational impact at speed and at scale.

Quick fire

Optimist or pessimist? Definitely an optimist, a proactive optimist. It’s no use just believing things will get better: you have to take action.

People or ideas? People. My ideas are centred around how best to help others.

On time or running late? Ahead of time. I’m a ‘front loader’.

The journey or the destination? The destination. First, I create a vision of a brighter future. Then, I commit to making that a reality. The destination pulls me forward.

Team player or lone wolf? The deep research phase, the coding, the building, the writing, that’s lone-wolf time.

But for scaling, I want a super-specialist, lean team. The ideal is being part of a small pack of mission aligned, high performing wolves.

Novelty or routine? Novelty. It’s vital to challenge norms. But if you are truly disruptive, people won’t understand what you are doing. You’ve got to be prepared to be laughed at and misunderstood if you want transformation over incrementalism.

Risk-taker or risk-averse? Calculated risks with a lot of micro testing up front to find out what isn’t working.

Lots of irons in the fire or all your eggs in one basket? A selection of high-impact irons ready for the fire.

Do you need to be lucky or make your own luck? I don’t ever assume I’m going to be lucky so I put a huge amount of work into everything I do. I set the stage for success and create my own luck as much as possible.

Work, work, work, or work-life balance? I admit to working all the time, but it doesn’t really feel like work. It is such a privilege to be able to make a difference.

Enterprising Minds has been developed with the help of Bruno Cotta, Fellow & Mentor-in-Residence, Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.

Published May 2026

_{All photography: Chris Macdonald}

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Researchers have developed a technique to analyse how black holes ‘ring’ when they collide and merge: one of the universe’s most dramatic events.

When black holes merge, the collision produces a new, larger black hole that ‘rings’ like a plucked guitar string or a bell while it settles into its final, stable shape. But instead of sound waves, the new black hole rings with gravitational waves: ripples in spacetime first predicted by Albert Einstein.

The new black hole vibrates at a specific set of frequencies, depending on its mass and spin, which helps scientists learn about the object formed in the collision.

These vibrations, known as quasinormal modes, are the fingerprint of a black hole. Detecting them is central to testing Einstein’s general theory of relativity in the most extreme gravitational environments in the universe.

Now, researchers from the University of Cambridge have developed a method to identify and catalogue these modes with greater accuracy than before. Writing in the journal Physical Review Letters, they outline how they sifted through computer simulations of black hole mergers and identified not just the fundamental ‘note’ the black hole rings at, but also the ‘overtones’, the fainter harmonics that fade away more quickly.

“While the loudest mode is routinely observed in gravitational wave data, many quieter modes are much more difficult to detect, and there has been ongoing debate about which modes are present and when they appear,” said Richard Dyer from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, the study’s first author. “Our method provides a systematic, data-driven way to resolve this uncertainty, and our results provide a reference for both theoretical studies and real observations.”

The researchers based their method on Bayesian analysis, a statistical technique that systematically weighs evidence to determine the most probable explanation for a given dataset.

In addition to the fundamental ‘notes’ and ‘overtones’, the researchers also found unusual ‘nonlinear modes’ in the data: vibrations produced when two or more of the fundamental frequencies interact with one another. These are analogous to the complex tones an electric guitar can produce when played with heavy distortion. Detecting these modes requires high-quality data and careful analysis to distinguish them from noise.

“The ringdown is one of the most direct probes of black holes we have,” said Dyer. “But extracting all the information it contains is hard. We wanted a principled, data-driven way to do that.”

Dyer and his co-author Dr Christopher Moore applied their method to a publicly available catalogue of highly accurate simulations that model gravitational waves to the theoretical boundary where they can be cleanly measured. They recorded which modes were detectable, and when, across a wide range of simulated black hole collisions with different mass ratios and spin configurations.

The researchers say their results will be useful for interpreting data from current gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO and Virgo, and for next-generation detectors. Knowing which frequencies to search for in a given collision could allow researchers to perform even more precise tests of general relativity: for example, checking that the properties of the final black hole are consistent with what Einstein’s equations predict.

Reference:
Richard Dyer and Christopher J. Moore. ‘Quasinormal mode content of binary black hole ringdowns.’ Physical Review Letters (2026). DOI: 10.1103/ptmd-rz1t

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TV nutrition and health experts will take centre stage alongside astronomers, neuroscientists and AI experts at the annual Pint of Science festival next week, with public talks in the unlikeliest of ‘lecture theatres’ – local Cambridge pubs.

This year’s festival (18-20 May) will see twice as many events taking place across the city as last year and will be the largest edition of the festival since the pandemic.

Included in the festival is a special one-off, sold-out event – A Conversation on Nutrition and Health (7:30pm, 3 June, Cambridge Junction). There, broadcasters Professor Chris van Tulleken (author of Ultra-Processed People) and Professor Giles Yeo (author of Why Calories Don’t Count) join Dr Saliha Mahmood-Ahmed (2017 winner of the BBC’s MasterChef, author of The 20-Minute Gut Health Fix) to talk ultra-processed foods, weight management injections, nutrition and health.

One of the coordinators for this year’s festival is Dr Chris Bannon from the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Metabolic Science, which is heavily involved in the three events at Calverley’s Brewery & Taproom. He will be speaking at Gut Feelings (7pm, 19 May, Calverley’s Brewery) – which will include a guest appearance from his life-size knitted gut, which he uses to demonstrate how foods pass through (and out of!) our digestive systems.

Chris said: “Pint of Science is a fantastic event where scientists present their work to the public in creative ways. From Francis Crick and James Watson announcing at The Eagle that they’d discovered ‘the secret of life’ to David Klenerman and Shankar Balasubramanian working out in The Panton Arms how to sequence our DNA faster than ever, pubs have played an important role in Cambridge’s scientific discovery. So, it’s fitting that pubs across the city are hosting Pint of Science, with established and student scientists sharing their findings with the public.

“This year we’ve been very ambitious, with our one-off event at the Junction and a greater number of venues than last year. We’ll be looking at everything from the hunt for life beyond our Solar System to extreme weather events to how to map the brain. Whatever you’re interested in, there’s bound to be something here that will make you think – and possibly even make you laugh.”

Among the highlights this year are:

• All Molecules Great and Small: Life at the Molecular Level (7pm, 18 May, Cambridge Brew House) – An introduction to the tiny molecules that shape our health and wellbeing, help our bodies function, communicate and fight disease.
• What Our Stuff is Made of and Why it Matters (7pm, 18 May, Sir Isaac Newton) – A look at how everyday products shape our health, our environment, and our future.
• Feeding the Future, Fighting Infection (7.15pm, 19 May, Thirsty Cambridge) – From the hidden biology of breastmilk to tools borrowed from dangerous bacteria, this event explores how microscopic interactions shape lifelong health.
• Hidden Histories, Unseen Heroes: Through Time & Science (7pm, 20 May, The Tivoli) – A world of hidden stories and unexpected discoveries, exploring our planet from its deep past to its uncertain future.
• Health and wellbeing! (7pm, 20 May, Sir Isaac Newton) – A look at how scientists are reshaping the future of transplantation, from universal donor blood to improving how hearts are assessed, transported, and ultimately saved.

The talks run from 18-20 May 2026. Tickets are available on the Pint of Science website, but are selling out fast.

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Achieving an international conservation target to protect almost a third of the world’s land and sea in the next four years could directly affect the lives of almost half the people on the planet, finds a new report.

Planning land-use change to achieve national and global conservation targets must consider the impacts on local people.Chris Sandbrook

For better or worse, a huge number of people will be affected by efforts to achieve ‘30×30’ – the internationally-agreed conservation goal to protect and conserve at least 30% of the world’s land and seas by 2030. How many people, and who they are, will depend on which aspects of nature are prioritised for protection – but in all scenarios this human context must be a key consideration if plans are to succeed for both people and nature.

That’s the message of a new report published in the journal Nature Communications, led by researchers at the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute and involving a diverse international team of researchers and practitioners.

The team considered three approaches to conservation that would enable the world to reach 30×30, with the aim of reversing the decline of nature and boosting our resilience to climate change.

In an approach designed to protect as many different species and ecosystems as possible, they found that 46% of all people worldwide would live inside or within 10 kilometres of a conservation area.

Other approaches would affect fewer people overall, but a higher proportion would be socially vulnerable, showing that implementation choices profoundly shape both the number and social profile of people affected.

Living in or close to conservation areas can have positive, negative or neutral implications for livelihoods and wellbeing. Potential benefits include securing a sustainable supply of clean water or access to cultural sites, whereas costs can include people being prevented from living in an area or using it to collect resources.

The final impacts of new conservation areas will depend on how they are designed and managed. For example, there is a major difference between a strict national park and an Indigenous protected area. Whichever approach is taken, making sure that local people do not lose out will require substantial investment, and processes to give local people a voice in decision-making, says the team.

“If you look at where new conservation sites might be located, these are not empty landscapes – often a lot of people live there, especially in countries like the UK. Planning land-use change to achieve national and global conservation targets must consider the impacts on local people,” said Professor Chris Sandbrook, Director of the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute and senior author of the report.

He added: “As an example, recent debates about whether to establish a new National Park in Wales highlight the balance that needs to be struck. While supporters say it could reduce flooding, lock up carbon and improve access to nature, critics fear tourism will overload local infrastructure, loss of farmland, and potential impacts on future housing availability.”

Protected natural spaces, when properly implemented, can benefit local people. For example, forests can prevent flooding, wildflowers can support insects that pollinate crops, wild harvesting can sustain local livelihoods, and access to natural spaces is important for human wellbeing.

“In addition to local benefits, protected natural areas can take carbon out of the atmosphere and help mitigate climate change, which at a grand scale is hugely important for us all. In many cases, however, it’s the people who live closest to conservation areas who tend to experience the downsides,” said Dr Javier Fajardo, a researcher in the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute and first author of the report.

He added: “If the global conservation target is achieved in the right way it could be really beneficial for people as well as nature. It’s an ambitious target, and to get there we need an equally ambitious commitment to supporting local people who are central to achieving it.”

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework sets out an ambitious pathway to achieving the vision of a world living in harmony with nature by 2050. The 30×30 goal is part of this Framework. 196 countries, including the UK, made formal commitments to reach this target during the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in 2022.

With only four years left to go and less than 20% of global land and sea protected, the team expects efforts to achieve the 30×30 target will now ramp up significantly. There are ongoing debates about which areas of land and sea should be conserved, and how to ensure successful implementation across the world.

Alternative approaches

The team also considered two other theoretical approaches to achieving 30×30, to explore how different priorities might shape social outcomes. The second focuses on protecting large areas of habitat – mainly in the Amazon and the Congo – that provide natural ‘services’ for people around the world, like nutrient cycling and carbon capture. The third prioritises areas with important conservation value that are governed and managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

While these alternative approaches would affect significantly fewer people than one focused on protecting the most species, a higher proportion of the people impacted would be very poor, and vulnerable in various ways.

The team says there is no ‘socially optimal’ approach to conserving nature – the impact on people will vary wildly depending on the priorities by which land is chosen for protection and how the selected sites are governed and managed.

Reference: Fajardo, J et al: ‘Social implications of the 30×30 global conservation target.’ Nature Communications, May 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-71860-8

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University, football club and city leaders unite to celebrate Cambridge’s football heritage with new partnerships and a new brand identity.

This partnership is built around a shared belief in the power of sport to bring people together to benefit the wider city community.Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor

Cambridge University, United Football Club and City Council have come together at the University’s Grange Road sports ground to celebrate Cambridge as the birthplace of modern football and to look ahead to a future of greater community engagement, inclusion and participation in sport across the city.

In 1848 a group of students from Cambridge University wrote down a set of 11 rules for football and nailed these ‘Cambridge Rules’ to the trees surrounding Parker’s Piece. This was the first time that football, as we know it today, had any formalised laws. In 1863 the Football Association of England adopted many of these rules and added three more, helping to shape the modern game. 

Honouring the city’s rich sporting history, the University of Cambridge and Cambridge United Football Club established a strategic partnership in October 2023 aimed at boosting community engagement and sport across Cambridge. In March 2025, Cambridge University Association Football Club (CUAFC) and Cambridge United FC announced a formal partnership. Cambridge United Women have since made CUAFC’s Grange Road ground their home for training and matches.

On Friday 1 May, a celebration marked both this historic legacy and the city’s modern-day partnerships. The event featured a match between the Cambridge University women’s team and Cambridge United Women at Grange Road, followed by a dinner at Selwyn College attended by students and alumni, alongside senior figures from the partner organisations and the wider Cambridge community. Guests included Daniel Zeichner MP, Julie Spence, the Lord-Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire, and Bridget Smith, Leader of South Cambridgeshire District Council.

To further celebrate Cambridge’s place in football history, Cambridge University, Cambridge United and Cambridge City Council, have jointly launched a new brand visual identity and logo, recognising the city as the birthplace of modern football. The initiative aims to help raise awareness of, and pride in, Cambridge’s role in shaping the modern game and support future activity celebrating this shared heritage.

Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor, Cambridge University said: “This event is the latest step in a growing partnership between the University and Cambridge United, built around a shared belief in the power of sport to bring people together to benefit the wider city community. It is especially fitting that this celebration comes at a time when we can also congratulate Cambridge United on their fantastic promotion success.”

Daniel Zeichner MP for Cambridge said: “Cambridge is the city of discovery and one its best is the DNA of the greatest game in the world. We have collectively not done enough to celebrate and mark this extraordinary legacy and I am very pleased that there is a renewed determination to address this, starting this month with a new brand identity and a fantastic celebration. Together with United’s promotion on Saturday it has made it a memorable week for football in the City that is the birthplace of the modern game”

Godric Smith, Director of Cambridge United and Chair of the Foundation said: “We are very pleased that the Club, University and City have all come together to look at how we can do more to mark Cambridge’s place in history as the birthplace of modern football. This week is the start and we look forward to working together over the coming months to see where we can take this. Cambridge is a football city and football is an important part of its past, present and future.”

Professor David Cardwell, President CUAFC said: “This celebration was a landmark moment to partner with CUFC so successfully in celebrating the 1848 origins of the modern game here in Cambridge. The success of this event marks not just a reflection on our shared history, but the continuation of a meaningful and lasting partnership between our clubs of which were immensely proud.”

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Children who need life‑saving emergency surgery after a serious injury are almost six times more likely to die if in poorer countries than in wealthier ones, according to an international study led by the University of Cambridge.

The research, published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, analysed 237 children aged 18 and under who underwent trauma laparotomy – emergency surgery for severe abdominal injuries – in 85 hospitals across 32 countries. This is one of the largest international studies to date to examine this type of emergency surgery in children.

Traumatic injuries, including those caused by road traffic accidents and violence, are among the leading causes of death and disability in children and adolescents worldwide. This study looked at children who needed emergency surgery for severe abdominal injuries, comparing their care and outcomes across hospitals around the world.

Large differences in care and outcomes

Overall, 8% of children in the study died within 30 days of surgery. After taking account of differences between patients and settings, children treated in countries with lower levels of development were almost six times more likely to die than those treated in countries with higher levels of development.

The study found major differences in the care children received, which are likely to be important in understanding why outcomes were worse in poorer countries. Children often faced longer delays before reaching hospital and before receiving surgery. They were also less likely to receive a blood transfusion, have a CT scan, receive medicine used to reduce bleeding, or be operated on by a consultant surgeon.

Children also made up a larger share of these cases in poorer countries than in wealthier ones. This suggests that poorer countries may face a double challenge: more children needing emergency surgery after trauma, and less access to the care needed to treat them.

“Children who need emergency surgery after trauma are far more likely to die in less developed countries,” said co-author Professor Timothy Hardcastle from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. “This reflects challenges across the trauma pathway, from delays in reaching care to limited access to blood transfusion and intensive care.”

These findings also point to a wider issue: many trauma systems have been designed around adults, even though children have different clinical needs.

“Children are not just small adults,” said senior author Dr Michael Bath from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “They need different equipment, different expertise and fast access to specialist care. Our findings show that, in many parts of the world, trauma systems are not yet set up to meet children’s needs.

“There is no single fix, but improving survival will require trauma care to be designed with children in mind — from the moment an injury happens, through transport to hospital, emergency surgery, intensive care and recovery.”

Designing trauma care around children

Adult trauma systems cannot simply be copied across to children. Children have different physical needs, injury patterns and recovery needs, meaning that best-practice trauma care for adults may not always translate into the best care for injured children.

The authors call for governments, health ministries and international organisations to prioritise child-specific trauma care. This includes age-specific equipment, referral pathways designed for children, staff training, and better access to blood transfusion, CT imaging, organ support, senior clinical care and rehabilitation. Strengthening these systems could help reduce avoidable deaths and improve recovery for injured children worldwide.
 

Reference

Riaz Aziz, Michael F. Bath et al. ‘Understanding Paediatric Trauma Laparotomy Pathways Worldwide: Analysis of a Global Dataset.’ The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health (2026). DOI: 10.1016/S2352-4642(26)00069-6

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First major RCT on evolutionary psychiatry finds mental health clinicians are far more likely to say describing anxiety as an evolved survival response will help patients, compared to genetic ideas taught in training.

If GPs are swamped by anxiety-related appointments, evolutionary ideas may help treat people concerned for their wellbeing who don’t necessarily need medicalisation.Dr Adam Hunt

Mental health clinicians are over five times more likely to see evolutionary explanations of anxiety as helpful for their patients, rather than the genetic approaches currently taught to trainee doctors and psychiatrists in the UK and US, a new study shows.^*

Research led by the University of Cambridge also found that clinicians across the UK and Ireland are three times more likely to rate a human evolution perspective on anxiety as useful for their own practice and understanding, compared to hereditary accounts.

Explaining how anxiety helped our species to survive and thrive – essentially, a naturally evolved defensive response that can get triggered too easily – provides vital context and a more positive outlook than describing anxiety as possibly “hardwired” into a person’s DNA, argue researchers.

They say that anxiety is linked to “ancestral threats”: from running out of food to social rejection from early hunter-gatherer tribes. Aspects of the modern world, such as online socialising and constant exposure to news, can “amplify the worry response and push some individuals into the pathological range.”

“Anxiety and fear are adaptive responses that evolved to help organisms, including humans, detect and avoid potential threats,” said Dr Adam Hunt, a researcher in evolution from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology who led the study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

“Understanding anxiety as a deeply rooted survival function that has overshot the mark helps patients see their symptoms as exaggerated versions of a positive mechanism, and not evidence of a broken or abnormal brain.”

In an accompanying report by the Foundation for Evolution and Mental Health, chaired by Hunt, experts call for a few hours of evolutionary teaching to be added to psychiatric and mental health training, along with public resources that outline the evolutionary usefulness of anxiety.

“With the growth of mental health diagnoses in recent years, the question becomes ever more pressing as to why these conditions exist,” said Hunt, from the Evolution, Mental Health and Behaviour Lab. 

“Neuroscientists spend billions of dollars zooming in on genes and rat brains. The assumption that the right level of magnification will provide answers hasn’t been working out. Evolution, the fundamental theory which explains all biology, is an obvious place to look.”

“If GPs are swamped by anxiety-related appointments, evolutionary ideas may help treat people concerned for their wellbeing who don’t necessarily need medicalisation.”

According to the World Health Organisation, 359 million people worldwide lived with an anxiety disorder in 2021, a rise of more than 55% since 1990. A quarter of 16–24-year-olds in England report having a common mental health condition such as anxiety.

For the latest study, an international team of anthropologists and psychiatrists randomly assigned 171 practising mental health clinicians from across the UK and Ireland a 30-minute session on either an evolutionary explanation for anxiety or a genetic one, based on the latest scientific thinking in both fields.^**

Pre- and post-session questionnaires assessed clinicians’ optimism for how effective they thought each “psychoeducation” intervention was likely to be, and the expected patient willingness to seek help as a result.

Clinicians overwhelmingly favoured evolutionary explanations. They were over five times more likely to find evolution rather than genetics useful for patients, and over three times more likely to believe it would improve their treatment approach.

The clinicians also believed that people would be much more willing to seek psychiatric help if evolutionary explanations were widely known (around 80% higher than for genetic explanations), and were about 60% more likely to think that patients with anxiety could recover when helped by an evolutionary perspective.

“We found a lot of enthusiasm among psychiatrists for the potential of evolutionary ideas to promote more hopeful and therapeutically empowering attitudes,” said study co-author Dr Tom Carpenter, a registrar in psychiatry at NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde.

Importantly, differences between the two groups of clinicians were driven by both positive effects of evolutionary education and negative effects of genetic education.

The genetic presentation highlights studies showing anxiety disorders are moderately heritable (by approximately 20–60%), which may help explain familial patterns of anxiety, and how “polygenic scores” – risk factors arising from thousands of tiny genetic differences – may eventually help identify and guide prevention strategies.^***

“The genetic framing actively worsened some clinician attitudes, increasing their belief that it would make patients pessimistic about recovery,” said Hunt.

The evolutionary presentation uses the “Smoke Detector Principle” to explain why anxiety evolved to be biased toward false alarms: existential threats from predators, starvation or ostracisation in the deep history of our species made it safer to respond too often than miss a genuine danger.^****

Hunt points out that different types of anxiety evolved to address certain ancestral threats, producing clear physiological and behavioural responses.

For example, anxiety related to predators and life‑threatening danger helps explain the sensitivity seen in panic disorders and agoraphobia, where open spaces or situations in which escape may be difficult signal vulnerability.

Specific phobias reflect exaggerated fear responses to stimuli such as animals, heights, or confined spaces. Social anxiety can be understood in relation to the risk of status loss or being abandoned by the group, which carried serious consequences for survival and reproductive success – and still does.

“Social anxiety evolved as a tool for inclusion. Having people who are highly neurotic in a tribe makes a lot of sense. We see it in our friend and family groups, where anxious people are often those thinking ahead or picking up on social cues to prevent disharmony,” said Hunt.

“But now, when people spend long hours and days alone, or with just the internet, they lack the consistent feedback of acceptance. It’s instinctive for some to catastrophise.”

Hunt says he hears from psychiatrists who find that young people are leaning into an anxiety diagnosis as a reason to stop interacting with people, whereas they should be aiming for the complete opposite.

“Every organism must learn which parts of its environment are dangerous and which are not. It is among the most ancient learning mechanisms in biology and a success story of adaptation,” said Hunt.

“Exposure therapy targets these evolved learning systems by using repeated safe experiences to teach the brain that a stimulus is not a threat. Being in a tribe is a kind of constant exposure therapy for social anxiety. Humans and our lineage have spent millions of years in each other’s company,” he said. 

“The goal is not to replace existing psychiatry with slogans about evolution. It is to enrich frontline mental health work with a deeper understanding of human nature.”

He points out that Charles Darwin – a University of Cambridge alumnus – predicted his work on evolution would eventually help us understand the spectrums of neurodiversity that underpin human communities.^*****

_{* Evolutionary science is absent from the UK’s MRCPsych (Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists) syllabus, the US’s ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education) psychiatry requirements, and the clinical psychology curricula of every country, say researchers.}

_{** The majority of clinicians were psychiatrists at various training grades, with a minority of psychologists and other mental health professionals. Teaching sessions were delivered within routine psychiatry teaching programmes between 2023 and 2024. Sessions took place across 17 UK NHS trusts and two Irish healthcare organisations, with wide geographic coverage across England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Sessions were conducted in person (15 sessions) and online (6 sessions). Randomisation occurred at the session level (cluster‑randomised by teaching session) rather than at the individual clinician level.}

_{*** Polygenic risk scores are currently clinically non-actionable for any psychiatric disorder, according to the report ‘Before Evolution: The State of Mental Health’.}

_{**** Parts of the presentation on evolution, including the Smoke Detector Principle, were adapted from the work of Randolph Nesse: the US psychiatrist and emeritus professor at the University of Michigan, who is considered one of the founders of evolutionary psychiatry.}

_{***** In the conclusion of his defining work, On the Origin of Species, Darwin wrote: “In the distant future I see open fields for more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation.”}

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Janine Roebuck, a formerly deaf opera singer who regained her hearing thanks to cochlear implants, has described as ‘life changing’ an upcoming Cambridge-led trial in hearing loss.

We know from giving bilateral implants to children that it can have a transformative effect on their quality of life and interactions with other people. Through this study, we can offer the same opportunity to adultsMatthew Smith

The UK trial will provide bilateral cochlear implants (cochlear implants on both sides) to some profoundly deaf adults. The results will be used to review NHS guidance for the provision of implants to adults.

Each year over 1,000 adults in the UK receive cochlear implants to restore their hearing. Under NHS guidance, adults currently only receive a single (unilateral) implant, yet evidence suggests having two could offer significant improvements in prospects and quality of life and may now be cost effective.

Janine said: “With bilateral implants, I no longer consider myself to be deaf. They have been utterly life changing and, for me, have broken a generational curse. I am excited that this trial will offer the same opportunity to others.”

Funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the trial is being co-led from Addenbrooke’s Hospital and the University of Cambridge. It will run in 14 hospitals and include over 250 adult participants, who will either receive one (unilateral) or two (bilateral) implants. Participants will be monitored for 12 months after surgery to assess the effects of the implants on wellbeing, ability to hear speech in noise, and quality of life. The study will also evaluate the economic benefits and cost of bilateral implants for the NHS.

Called LUCIA, the trial will be co-led by Dr Matthew Smith, an ear, nose and throat (ENT) surgeon at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, and Professor Debi Vickers, a speech and hearing scientist in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge, who leads the SOUND Lab.

Professor Debi Vickers, who also co-leads the Devices and Advanced Therapies theme at the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, said: “Children routinely receive bilateral cochlear implants. These can provide 3-dimensional hearing, enabling them to hear more naturally than unilateral, with improved access to sound and better engagement with society.

“Adults tell us, and I agree, that they should be given the same hearing opportunities as children. In turn these will result in reduced social isolation, enriched communication, improved mental health, and better overall quality of life.”

The trial, which is expected to begin recruiting patients in the autumn, has been designed in collaboration with Janine and other patients. By involving individuals with lived experience of cochlear implantation, the researchers aim to measure changes that patients consider to be most important.

The primary trial outcome will reflect participants’ own perceptions of their quality of hearing. The study will also measure common challenges faced by patients, such as listening effort and fatigue, a choice directly based on discussions with patient groups.

Dr Smith, who is also an academic surgeon at the University of Cambridge, said: “We know from giving bilateral implants to children that it can have a transformative effect on their quality of life and interactions with other people. Through this study, we can offer the same opportunity to adults who have become deaf, and understand the potential added value of bilateral cochlear implants, not just in terms of hearing, but also how they enrich quality of life.”

Janine was diagnosed as a teenager with a genetic condition that caused hearing loss and eventually led to her needing hearing aids. For over 30 years she hid her deteriorating hearing and became a well-known mezzo-soprano, performing in operas, operettas and musicals, including at the Royal Opera House in London.

It was only in 2019, after she had retired due to profound hearing loss, that she had cochlear implant surgery, and received bilateral implants partly through personal funding. She said: “Having two implants is lightyears away from just one. Sound quality is so much better, sounds are fuller, clearer, louder and more natural. It’s much easier to tell where sounds are coming from, especially in busy spaces.

“If you’re out in public, it can be hard to follow who is speaking, making joining in with conversations almost impossible. As a result, you have debilitating concentration fatigue at the end of every day.”

Just like at the cinema, multi-directional surround sound is a key part of creating an engaging immersive experience. By comparison, living with one implant can be like listening to life through a single, poor-quality speaker.

She explains: “Struggling to hear can be extremely isolating and many people experience anxiety or depression as a result. The implants are life changing. They reconnect you to the world and most importantly people. Communication is surely the longing of every human heart.

“I also feel safer and more secure having the two implants. I am more aware of and connected to what’s happening in the world around me. And, if anything goes wrong with one of the implants, I’m not suddenly plunged into a world of total silence.”

While hearing aids help people with mild to moderate hearing loss by making sounds louder, they often provide very little benefit for people with severe or profound hearing loss. Cochlear implants bypass the outer, middle and inner ear and send electrical impulses directly to the hearing nerve which carries signals to the brain.

Participants in the trial will need to have become deaf later in life and cannot already have an implant.

People with cochlear implants will also be involved in delivering the trial. They will be specially trained to participate in interviewing trial participants that will be used to measure the impacts of the trial.

Professor Anthony Gordon, Programme Director for the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Programme, which funded the trial, said: “We fund innovative trials like the LUCIA study which explore how advances in technology can help make a positive difference to the day-to-day lives of those affected. This study offers real hope to people with severe hearing loss and the chance of a significant improvement in their quality of life.”

Adapted from a press release from Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

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A PhD student at Trinity College has unearthed a complete, unpublished play 65 years after Peter Shaffer wrote it – and before he reignited the world of theatre with the acclaimed plays The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Equus, and Amadeus.

He wanted to reinvent theatreJames Critchley

Trinity College is celebrating the centenary of the birth of twin brothers Peter Shaffer (1926-2016) and Anthony Shaffer (1926-2001) who both studied at Trinity and went on to become award-winning playwrights. Peter bequeathed his substantial archive of playscripts, correspondence and photographs to Trinity College.

PhD student James Critchley came across the unstaged play Our Lady of the Volcano in the archive, while studying Shaffer’s first play, Five Finger Exercise. The play had been catalogued by archivists, but has remained completely unknown. Our Lady of the Volcano reflects the importance of Italy in Shaffer’s creative life. Set on the sultry Amalfi Coast, the plot swirls around two British travellers staying in a villa and their interactions – for better or worse – with other residents.

James Critchley says: “It’s about competing kinds of romance narratives, primarily relating to the Brando-esque Jim Suckling, and his various encounters in relation to a religious festival near Sorrento. And in this kind of steamy, tempestuous sensuality, you can see the growing influence of writers such as Tennessee Williams, who Shaffer admired.”

For Critchley, the play is intriguing for its cinematic influences, at a time when Hollywood films set in Italy – among them Roman Holiday, Three Coins in the Fountain, Boy on a Dolphin – proved highly popular.

“It emerges from a real immersion in the cinematic world of the early 1960s – these films made in Italian studios fed into Shaffer’s thinking. It was quite unusual at the time to see a play set outdoors, in an Italian villa, so the play is an example of him thinking across different media.”

Our Lady of the Volcano marks a transition in the playwright’s early work, Critchley argues.

“Shaffer longed to leave behind the world of slammed doors and actual breakfasts being consumed in an atmosphere of domestic tension. He wanted to reinvent theatre. Of course, in later plays like Royal Hunt or Amadeus, he can be seen confidently working towards what he called ‘Total Theatre’: a mode of performance in which music, mime, movement might all play a role as important as scripted text.

“Even though the play never made it to stage, it is fascinating to see a writer developing his craft: to peek, as it were, behind the curtain. We can see in Our Lady ideas and scenarios that he would go on to flesh out more fully in the mature works of his later career.”

James, who began exploring the Shaffer Archive as an undergraduate, said his PhD offered an amazing opportunity to understand Shaffer’s evolution, as well as the ups and downs charted in his correspondence.  

“It’s really exciting to be up close and personal so to speak with the projects that didn’t necessarily make it to publication, but which still have all of the kind of thrilling imprints of a writer whose legacy continues to flourish today.”

Shaffer at Cambridge

Peter and Anthony Shaffer were conscripted to the coal mines in Kent as ‘Bevin Boys’ during the Second World War. After that, in 1947, aged 21, they arrived at Trinity, Anthony to study Law and Peter, history.

Peter Shaffer described student life as ‘heaven’ and Cambridge ‘an astonishing place for many reasons.’ He attended lectures of all kinds, including by the philosopher Bertrand Russell, and he met EM Forster at King’s College, where the novelist was an Honorary Fellow.

Peter entered a short story competition set by Forster and although he did not win, he did receive an invitation to tea. He recalled: “I said I would love to have tea with him and I went round in some awe of the great man. And he served me tea and he was very shy. … it was tremendously encouraging … the fact that he liked the story and it had merits and he had a way of conveying its demerits … that was very, very graceful.”

Enduring legacy

Peter Shaffer’s breakthrough came in 1958 with Five Finger Exercise. He would go on write acclaimed plays that continue to be staged today: a production of Equus opens in London this month and a major new production of Amadeus has been announced for 2027 in UK. Only last December Trinity alumnus Will Sharpe directed Amadeus for television, playing the title role himself.

Anthony Shaffer trained as a barrister but devoted his life to stage and film following the success of Sleuth in 1970. His film credits include Hitchcock’s Frenzy and the cult classic The Wicker Man.

In the centenary year, Trinity will announce the fifth Shaffer Playwright-in-Residence, a studentship established with funding from the Sir Peter Shaffer Charitable Foundation for early-career playwrights.

More information

A catalogue of the Sir Peter Shaffer Archive at Trinity College is available online. Researchers are welcome to consult items in the archive by appointment with the Wren Library.

James Critchley has written an essay, ‘An unpublished play by Peter Shaffer‘, for The Times Literary Supplement.

His research is funded by the Alice and James Penney Studentship in English Literature.

This story was originally published by Trinity College.

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Antonio has spent the past seven years running toward fires that most others run from. A firefighter in the Brazilian Amazon since 2019, he works inside the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth.

But things are changing, and fast. “2024 was the most extreme year for fires,” Antonio said. “I had never seen anything like it. The forest burned like dry pasture – it was frightening for those of us who risk our lives to protect it.”

What Antonio and his fellow firefighters are witnessing on the ground has been backed up by a new study. An international team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, have found that the policies that helped reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon over the past two decades have mostly failed to stop forest degradation: a slower and potentially more dangerous form of destruction. Their results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Unlike deforestation, where whole areas of forests are cleared for farming, industry or infrastructure, a degraded forest still has trees standing. However, it has been so damaged by fire, illegal logging, fragmentation, droughts and over-hunting that it has lost much of its ecological value. The forest floor, stripped of shade and moisture, becomes a tinderbox.

“There’s still a forest there, but it’s so damaged that the carbon it once stored starts leaking, the animals have disappeared, and new grass species colonise the forest edges,” said lead author Federico Cammelli from Cambridge’s Department of Geography and the Conservation Research Institute. “Tropical forest fires are low intensity, flames often go undetected under the canopy, but after one or two years, trees die while standing, and the forest transforms into a cemetery of dead standing trees.”

Earlier research found that between 2001 and 2018, net carbon emissions from forest degradation in the Brazilian Amazon were comparable or even higher than those from deforestation itself. By 2050, degradation could affect the entire Brazilian Amazon, but it has barely featured in the policies meant to protect it.

Brazil has made real progress on deforestation. The first phase of the government’s Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon, launched in the mid-2000s, reduced tree clearing by an estimated 60 to 80 percent. Agreements in the private sector – including a moratorium on soybeans from deforested land, and a commitment from meat packers not to source cattle from newly deforested areas – also contributed to the region’s success.

However, the researchers found that four major policies meant to reduce deforestation across three Brazilian states did not reduce degradation.

When deforestation slows down, some degradation slows as well, since forests suffer less from so-called edge effects where cleared areas touch intact woodland. “However, we found no conclusive evidence that any of the supply chain policies, like the soy moratorium or the cattle agreements, tackled other big drivers of anthropogenic degradation, like fires, logging and fragmentation,” said Cammelli.
 

In one case, the research suggests, even successful deforestation policies can make degradation worse. The G4 cattle agreement, signed by Brazil’s four biggest meat packers, appeared to be linked to an increase in timber extraction: possibly because as cattle ranching became more regulated, some businesses switched to the less-regulated logging sector.

Back in Chico Mendes, Antonio sees some of the consequences of these gaps in policy. He said the dry season now lasts longer each year, forests are growing more fragile, and the rains arrive with sudden violence, washing out bridges and blocking roads.

He is not optimistic that the law is keeping up. “Environmental laws should be stricter, and offenders should be properly punished,” he said. “If we lose the forest, we indirectly lose our lives.”

Cammelli said that political will is vital. An update to Brazilian environmental policy published in 2023 includes forest degradation among the criteria for targeting environmental law enforcement towards municipalities with poor environmental records, along with requirements to reduce deforestation specifically.

“Fires often spread over many properties and entail complex liabilities: who is responsible for ignition, who for fire spread? They are best addressed at the landscape scale. The timber sector remains poorly regulated, and much can be done to crack down on illegal logging,” he said.

The researchers are calling for a fundamental shift in how governments, companies and regulators think about how to best protect forests.

The EU Deforestation Regulation, which bans imports of products linked to forest destruction, defines degradation too narrowly, the researchers say, and largely overlooks the fire damage and fragmentation caused by soybean and beef production. The researchers are urging the EU to expand their definition of degradation.

Despite commitments on deforestation, the researchers found no publicly documented examples of companies operating in the Brazilian Amazon that had set concrete targets for specifically addressing forest degradation.

“Avoiding deforestation and degradation is so much more important for climate and nature than restoring what’s already gone,” said senior author Professor Rachael Garrett, also from Cambridge’s Department of Geography and Conservation Research Institute. “There are certain things you can’t get back.”

“Every year,” said Antonio, “the forest and wildlife become more vulnerable.”

The research was supported in part by the European Union and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Reference:
Federico Cammelli et al. ‘Deforestation-focused policies do not reduce degradation in the Brazilian Amazon.’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2026). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2507793123

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Five academics from the University of Cambridge have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

They are among 252 leaders in academia, the arts, industry, journalism, philanthropy, policy, research, and science elected in 2026. 

The Cambridge academics elected are:

Professor Julie Ahringer (Department of Genetics; Gurdon Institute)

Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore (International Honorary Member) (Department of Psychology; Emmanuel College; Newnham College)

Professor Vikram S. Deshpande  (International Honorary Member) (Department of Engineering; Pembroke College)

Professor Hiranya Peiris (International Honorary Member) (Institute of Astronomy; Murray Edwards College)

Professor Susan J. Smith (International Honorary Member) (Department of Geography; Girton College)

The Academy, chartered in 1780, was established to recognise accomplished individuals and engage them in addressing the greatest challenges facing the young republic. The first members elected to the Academy include George Washington, who said – in his first annual message to Congress in 1790 – “Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.”

“We celebrate the achievement of each new member and the collective breadth and depth of their excellence – this is a fitting commemoration of the nation’s 250th anniversary,” said Academy President Laurie Patton. “The founding of the nation and the Academy are rooted in the inextricable links between a vibrant democracy, the free pursuit of knowledge, and the expansion of the public good.”

The new class joins Academy members elected before them, including Benjamin Franklin (elected 1781) and Alexander Hamilton (1791) in the eighteenth century; Ralph Waldo Emerson (1864), Maria Mitchell (1848), and Charles Darwin (1874) in the nineteenth; Albert Einstein (1924), Robert Frost (1931), Margaret Mead (1948), Milton Friedman (1959), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1966), and Jacques Derrida (1985) in the twentieth; and, in this century, Madeleine K. Albright (2001), Antonin Scalia (2003), Jennifer Doudna (2003), Esther Duflo (2009), John Legend (2017), Anna Deavere Smith (2019), Salman Rushdie (2022), Xuedong Huang (2023), and José Andrés (2025).

Induction ceremonies for new members will take place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in October 2026.

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A new study suggests that malaria influenced where early humans lived in sub-Saharan Africa between around 74,000 and 5,000 years ago, fragmenting populations and influencing patterns of genetic exchange long before recorded history.

By fragmenting human societies across the landscape, malaria contributed to the population structure we see today.Andrea Manica

The presence of malaria affected where human populations lived across sub-Saharan Africa between 74,000 and around 5,000 years ago, a new study has found.

Over tens of thousands of years, the presence of this disease shaped how human populations met and mixed – allowing genes to be exchanged, and helping create the population structure seen in humans today.

The findings suggest that infectious disease was not simply a challenge early humans faced: it was a fundamental factor shaping the course of human evolution.

The researchers say malaria may have driven populations away from high-risk environments and separated them across the landscape, or it may have caused high death rates in specific areas.

Increasing evidence suggests that modern humans emerged through interactions between populations living in different parts of Africa, rather than from a single birthplace. Until now, however, most explanations for how those populations were distributed across the continent have focused on climate alone. The new research shows that disease – specifically malaria – also played a crucial role.

The results are published today in the journal Science Advances.

To reach their results, the team started with present-day distribution maps of Africa’s main malaria‑transmitting mosquito species. Then they used climate models to reconstruct how the ranges of these mosquitoes shifted over the past 74,000 years, alongside estimates of likely malaria transmission intensity. Finally, they compared these results with archaeological maps of ancient human settlements, and looked at where and when humans and malaria potentially overlapped.

“We estimated the risk of malaria transmission across sub-Saharan Africa over the past 74,000 years, and found that ancient humans were not living in high-risk areas for the majority of this time,” said Dr Margherita Colucci in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, first author of the study.

Colucci, who is also a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, added: “Our results indicate that ancient human populations strongly avoided, or were unable to survive in, areas with high malaria transmission risk. The effects of these choices shaped human demography for the majority of the last 74,000 years, and likely much earlier.”

“By fragmenting human societies across the landscape, malaria contributed to the population structure we see today. Our study suggests that climate and physical barriers were not the only forces shaping where human populations could live,” said Professor Andrea Manica in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, a co-senior author of the study.

The researchers found an increasing geographic overlap between human populations and malaria-carrying mosquitoes after around 15,000 years ago, beginning in West Africa. This coincides with the appearance of a human genetic mutation that gave rise to sickle-cell anaemia – and also provides partial protection against malaria.

Until now, the emergence of infectious diseases affecting human populations was thought to be linked with the domestication of crops and the transition away from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, thought to have begun around 8,000-7,000 years ago.

Scientists have struggled to investigate the impact of disease on humanity’s early history due to a lack of direct evidence. The oldest ancient pathogen DNA, for example, is only around 10,000 years old, with the majority only from the last 2-3,000 years. In this study, the researchers used novel methods combining multiple lines of evidence that allowed them to reach much further back into the past.

74,000 years ago is a common time point for researchers to stop at when looking into the past. It coincides with the Toba supervolcano eruption – the largest known explosive eruption in human history.

“Disease has rarely been considered a major factor shaping the earliest prehistory of our species, and without ancient DNA from these periods it has been difficult to test. Our research changes that, and provides a new framework for exploring the role of disease in deep human history,” said Professor Eleanor Scerri at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, also a senior author of the study.

This research was funded by the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology.

Reference: Colucci, M et al: ‘Malaria shaped human spatial organization for the past 74 thousand years‘. Science Advances, April 2026. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aea2316

Adapted from a press release by the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology.

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An international team of researchers has identified an East African bat coronavirus capable of entering human cells.

We found a new coronavirus receptor in human cells ahead of any virus spillover into the human population.Giulia Gallo

The virus – Cardioderma cor coronavirus (CcCoV) KY43, or CcCoV-KY43 – can bind to a receptor cell found in the human lung, but testing in Kenya suggests it has not spilled over into the local human population.

Rather than work on ‘live’ viruses, the scientists used a public database of known genetic sequences, Genbank, to select and synthesise alphacoronavirus ‘spike’ proteins, including 27 viruses originally isolated in bats, and screened these against a library of coronavirus receptors found in human cells.

Spike proteins protrude from the surface of coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, and bind to specific receptors on human cells, triggering infection.

Funded largely through UK Research and Innovation’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Kenya Government’s National Research Fund, the study brought together UK and Kenyan expertise to show CcCoV-KY43 binds to the human glycoprotein CEACAM6.

Writing in the journal Nature, the team from The Pirbright Institute, the University of Cambridge, the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, the University of York and the National Museums of Kenya say their findings show alphacoronaviruses (alphaCovs) can use various receptors to enter human cells.

“Viral spike proteins are keys that fit into locks (host receptors) to open the door and enter a cell. So far, we have identified one alphaCov receptor. The challenge now is to find the others,” said Professor Stephen Graham in the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge, joint senior author of the paper.

“Before our study, it was assumed all alphacoronaviruses used just one of two possible receptors to enter their host, and the only difference was which species they could enter. We now know alphaCovs might use a whole variety of different receptors to open cells,” said Dr Dalan Bailey, Group Leader at the Pirbright Institute and joint senior author of the paper.

“Not only did we find the new coronavirus receptor in human cells ahead of any virus spillover into the human population, but the study was performed using just a piece of the virus (the spike) rather than the whole pathogen, negating the need to import a live virus into the UK,” said Dr Giulia Gallo, lead author of the paper who conducted the work at both the Pirbright Institute and the University of Cambridge.

CcCoV-KY43 is found in heart-nosed bats, Cardioderma cor, an ecologically important species found mainly in eastern Africa including in eastern Sudan and northern Tanzania.

The researchers say the zoonotic (animal-to-human) and pandemic potential of alphaCoVs has remained relatively unchartered – to date, only two cellular receptors have been characterized for alphaCoVs.

The work identifies the need for further study in East Africa to better understand the risk from the family of viruses that can use this receptor to enter human cells. This will help scientists to be better prepared for any spillover of the virus into humans in the future, and potentially begin to start developing human vaccines and antivirals. The team wants to apply the same computational technology used in this study to find other potential human pathogens, and also to understand the wider drivers of zoonotic potential.

Graham added: “We hope our findings will help better understand the risk from the family of viruses we identified that can use the human receptor: for example, by mapping the prevalence of the virus in bats and looking to see if it has already spilled over in at-risk populations.”

Reference: Gallo, G et al: ‘Heart-nosed bat alphacoronaviruses use human CEACAM6 to enter cells.’ Nature, April 2026. 

Adapted from a press release by The Pirbright Institute.

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