By Craig Brierley

“If we get things right, the possibilities for AI to transform health and medicine are endless. It can be of massive public benefit. But more than that, it has to be.”

Professors Andres Floto, Mihaela van der Schaar and Eoin McKinney, Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine

Cambridge researchers are looking at ways that AI can transform everything from drug discovery to Alzheimer’s diagnoses to GP consultations.

Tackling dementia

In 2024, Professor Zoe Kourtzi in the Department of Psychology showed that an AI tool developed by her team could outperform clinical tests at predicting whether people with early signs of dementia will remain stable or develop Alzheimer’s disease. 

At a time of intense pressure on the NHS, tools such as this could help doctors prioritise care for those patients who need it most, while removing the need for invasive and costly diagnostic tests for those whose condition will remain stable. They can also give patients peace of mind that their condition is unlikely to worsen, or, for those less fortunate, it can help them and their families prepare. 

These tools could also be transformational in the search for new drugs, making clinical trials more effective, faster and cheaper, says Kourtzi. 

Recently, two dementia drugs – lecanemab and donanemab – have shown promise in slowing the disease, but the benefits compared to the costs were judged insufficient to warrant approval for use within the NHS. Beyond these, there’s been limited progress in the field. 

Part of the problem is that clinical trials often focus on the wrong people, which is where AI may help to better decide who to include in trials. 

“If you have people that the AI models say will not develop pathology, you won’t want to put them in your trial. They’ll only mess up the statistics, and then [the trials] will never show an effect, no matter if you have the best drug in the world. And if you include people who will progress really fast, it might be already too late for the drug to show benefit.” 

Kourtzi is leading one of ai@cam’s AI-deas projects to create a ‘BrainHealth hub’ to tackle the global brain and mental health crisis. It will bridge the gap between engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists who have the tools but lack the data, and clinicians and neuroscientists who have the data but lack advanced tools to mine them. 

“Our idea is to create a ‘hothouse’ of ideas where people can come together to ask and answer challenging questions.“

University researchers, industry partners, the charity sector and policymakers will explore questions such as: how can we use AI for drug discovery, to accelerate clinical trials and develop new treatments, and how can we build interpretable AI models that can be translated to clinical tools?” 

The need for such AI to be reliable and responsible is a theme that comes up frequently when Kourtzi speaks to patient groups. 

“When doctors are using a complex diagnostic tool like an MRI machine, patients don’t query whether they understand what’s in this machine, why it works this way. What they want to know is that it’s gone through regulatory standards, it’s safe to use and can be trusted. It’s exactly the same with AI.”

Making GP practices more efficient

Professor Niels Peek from The Healthcare Improvement Studies (THIS) Institute believes that AI could have a major impact on primary care services, such as GP practices, by tackling some of their most mundane tasks.

One such application involves the use of ‘digital scribes’ to record, transcribe, and summarise conversations between GPs and patients.

“If you look at the amount of time that clinicians spend on that type of work, it’s just incredible,” he says.

“Considering that clinician time is probably the most precious commodity within the NHS, this is technology that could be transformational.”

It is likely that the NHS will increasingly adopt digital scribe technology in the future, so it will be important to ensure the summaries are accurate and do not omit key points or add things that were not mentioned (a ‘hallucination’). With support from The Health Foundation, Peek is asking whether the technology actually saves time? “If you have to spend a lot of time correcting its outputs, then it’s no longer a given that it actually does save you time.”

Peek believes that in the future, every clinical consultation will be recorded digitally, stored as part of a patient’s record, and summarised with AI. But the existing technology environment, particularly in primary care, presents a challenge.

“GPs use electronic health records that have evolved over time and often look outdated. Any new technology must fit within these systems. Asking people to log into a different system is not feasible.”

Peek is also involved in evaluating Patchs, a tool that applies AI to the process of booking GP appointments and conducting online consultations. It was designed by GP staff and patients, in collaboration with The University of Manchester (where Peek was formerly based) and commercialised by the company Patchs Health. It is now used by around one in 10 GP practices across England.

Working with end users – patients, GPs, and particularly the administrative staff who use these systems on a day-to-day basis – is crucial.  “You have to make sure they fit both with the systems people are already using, and also with how they do things, with their workflows. Only then will you see differences that translate into real benefits to people.”

Addressing mental health among young people

Over recent years, there has been a significant increase in the prevalence of mental health disorders among young people. But with stretched NHS resources, it can be difficult to access Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).

Not every child recommended for a referral will need to see a mental health specialist, says Dr Anna Moore from the Department of Psychiatry, but the bottleneck means they can be on the waiting list for up to two years only to be told they don’t meet the criteria for treatment. The quality of advice they get about alternative options that do meet their needs varies a lot.

Moore is interested in whether AI can help manage this bottleneck by identifying those children in greatest need for support, and helping those who don’t need specialist CAMHS to find suitable support from elsewhere. One way to do so is by using data collected routinely on children.

“The kinds of data that help us do this can be some of the really sensitive data about people,” she says. “It might be health information, how they’re doing at school, but it could also be information such as they got drunk last weekend and ended up in A&E.”

For this reason, she says, it’s essential that they work closely with members of the public when designing such a system to make sure people understand what they are doing, the kinds of data they are considering using and how it might be used, but also how it might improve the care of young people with mental health problems.

One of the questions that often comes up from ethicists is whether, given the difficulties in accessing CAMHS, it is necessarily a good thing to identify children if they cannot then access services.

“Yes, we can identify those kids who need help, but we need to ask, ‘but so what?’,” she says. The tool will need to suggest a referral to CAMHS for the children who need it, but for those who have a problem but could be better supported in other ways than CAMHS that could be more flexible to their needs, can it signpost them to helpful, evidence-based, age-appropriate information?

Moore is designing the tool to help find those children who might otherwise get missed. In the most extreme cases, these might be children such as Victoria Climbié and Baby P, who were tortured and murdered by their guardians. The serious case reviews highlighted multiple missed opportunities for action, often because systems were not joined up, meaning no one was able to see full picture.

“If we’re able to look at all of the data across the system relating to a child, then it might well be possible to bring that together and say, actually there’s enough information here that we can do something about it.”

From womb to world

Across the world, fertility rates are falling, while families are choosing to have children later on in life. To help them conceive, many couples turn to assisted reproductive technologies such as IVF; however, success rates remain low and the process can be expensive. In the UK, treatment at a private clinic can cost more than £5,000 per cycle – in the US, it can be around $20,000 – and with no guarantee of success.

Mo Vali and Dr Staci Weiss hope that AI can change this. They are leading From Womb to World, one of ai@cam’s flagship AI-deas projects, which aims to improve prospective parents’ chances of having a baby by diagnosing fertility conditions early on and personalising fertility treatments.

“We’re trying to democratise access to IVF outcomes and tackle a growing societal problem of declining fertility rates.”
_{Mo Vali}

They are working with Professor Yau Thum at The Lister Fertility Clinic, one of the largest standalone private IVF clinics in the UK, to develop cheaper, less invasive and more accurate AI-assisted tests that can be used throughout the patient’s IVF journey. To do this, they are making use of the myriad different samples and datasets collected during the fertility process, from blood tests and ultrasound images to follicular fluid, as well as data encompassing demographic and cultural factors.

Building the AI tools was the easy bit, says Vali. The bigger challenge has been generating the datasets, clearing ethical and regulatory hurdles, and importantly, ensuring that sensitive data is properly anonymised and de-identified – vital for patient privacy and building public trust.

The team also hopes to use AI to improve, and make more accessible, 4D ultrasound scans that let the parents see their baby moving in the womb, capturing movements like thumb-sucking and yawning. This is important for strengthening the maternal bond during a potentially stressful time, says Weiss.

“Seeing their baby’s face and watching it move creates a very different kind of physical, embodied reality and a bond between the mother and her child,” she says.

Consulting with women who have experienced first-hand the challenges of fertility treatments is providing valuable insights, while The Lister Fertility Clinic – a private clinic – is an ideal platform in which to test their ideas before providing tools for the wider public. It offers a smaller, more controlled environment where they can engage directly with senior clinicians.

“We want to ensure that the research that we are doing and the AI models that we’re building work seamlessly before we go at scale,” says Vali.

Preventing cancer

Antonis Antoniou, Professor of Cancer Risk Prediction at Cambridge, has spent most of his career developing models that predict our risk of developing cancers. Now, AI promises to take his work to an entirely new level.

Antoniou has recently been announced as Director of the Cancer Data-Driven Discovery Programme, a £10million initiative that promises to transform how we detect, diagnose – and even prevent – cancer in the future. It’s a multi-institutional project, with partners across the UK, that will build infrastructure and create a multidisciplinary community of researchers, including training the next generation of researchers, with funding for 30 PhD places and early career research positions in cancer data sciences.

The programme will enable scientists to access and link a vast array of diverse health data sets, from GP clinics and cancer screening programmes to large cohort studies through to data generated through interactions with public services such as on occupation, educational attainment and other geospatial data on air pollution, housing quality and access to services. These will be used in combination with AI and state-of-the-art analytics. 

“The funding will allow us to use these data sets to develop models that help us predict individual cancer risk and greatly improve our understanding of who is most at risk of developing cancer,” he says. “It will hopefully help us transform how we detect and prevent and diagnose cancer in the future.”

One of the key considerations of their work will be to ensure that the AI tools they develop do not inadvertently exacerbate inequalities.

“We have to be careful not to develop models that only work for people who are willing to participate in research studies or those who frequently interact with the healthcare sector, for example, and ensure we’re not ignoring those who can’t easily access healthcare services, perhaps because they live in areas of deprivation.”

Key to their programme has been the involvement of patients and members of the public, who, alongside clinical practitioners, have helped them from the outset to shape their programme.

“They were involved in co-developing our proposals from the planning phase, and going forward, they’ll continue to play a key role, helping guide how we work and to make sure that the data are used responsibly and safely,” he says.

^{The Cancer Data-Driven Detection programme is jointly supported by Cancer Research UK, the National Institute for Health & Care Research, the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council, Health Data Research UK, and Administrative Data Research UK.}

Read more about AI and cancer here

Innovations in drug discovery

It’s just over 20 years since the first human genome was sequenced, opening up a new scientific field – genomics – and helping us understand how our bodies function. Since then, the number of so-called ‘omics’ – complete readouts of particular types of molecules in our bodies, such as proteins (proteomics) and metabolites (metabolomics) – has blossomed.

Dr Namshik Han from the Milner Therapeutics Institute is interested in how AI can mine this treasure trove to help discover new drugs.

“We’re applying AI approaches to dissect those really big data sets and try to identify meaningful, actionable drug targets,” he says. 

His team works with partners who can take these targets to the next stage, such as by developing chemical compounds to act on these targets, testing them in cells and animals, and then taking them through clinical trials.

The Milner Institute acts as a bridge between academia and industry to accelerate this process, partnering with dozens of academic institutes, industry partners, biotech, pharma and venture capitalists. But at the ‘bleeding edge’ of Han’s work is his collaborations with tech companies. 

Han is interested in how quantum computers, which use principles of quantum mechanics to enable much faster and more powerful calculations, can address problems such as the complex chemistry underpinning drug development.

“We’ve shown that quantum algorithms see things that conventional AI algorithms don’t.” Han says.

His lab has used quantum algorithm to explore massive networks comprising tens of thousands of human proteins. When conventional AI explores these networks, it only looks at certain areas, whereas Han showed that quantum algorithms cover the entire network.

AI has the potential to improve every aspect of drug discovery – from identifying targets, as Han is doing, to optimising clinical trials, potentially reducing the cost of new medications and ensuring patients benefit faster. But that’s not what really excites Han.

“Take cancer, for example,” he says. “There are many different types, and for some of them we don’t have specific drugs to treat them. Instead, we have to use a drug for a related cancer and give that to the patient, which is not ideal. 

“Quantum based AI will open up a completely new door to find truly innovative drugs which we’ve never thought of before. That’s where the real impact has to be.” 

source: cam.ac.uk

AI will give us the next leap forward in forecasting the weather, says Richard Turner, and make it available to all countries, not just those with access to high-quality data and computing resources.

From farmers planting crops to emergency responders preparing for natural disasters, the ability to predict the weather is fundamental to societies all across the globe.

The modern approach to forecasting was invented a century ago. Lewis Fry Richardson, a former student of King’s College Cambridge, who was working as an ambulance driver during the First World War, realised that being able to predict the weather could help save lives. This led him to develop the first mathematical approach to forecasting the weather.

Richardson’s method was a breakthrough, but to say that it was time-consuming is an understatement: he calculated it would require 64,000 people working with slide rules to produce a timely forecast for the following day. It was the development of supercomputers in the 1950s that made Richardson’s approach practical.

Since then, weather forecasting methods have become more sophisticated and more accurate, driven by advances in computing and by the increased amount of information we have about the weather from satellites and other instruments. But now, we are poised to make another big leap forward, thanks to AI.

The last few years have seen an AI revolution in weather forecasting and my group has recently taken this to the next level. Working with colleagues at The Alan Turing Institute, Microsoft Research and the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts, we’ve developed Aardvark Weather, a fully AI-driven weather prediction system that can deliver accurate forecasts tens of times faster and using thousands of times less computing power than both physics-based forecasting systems and previous AI-based approaches.

We believe that Aardvark could democratise access to accurate forecasts, since it can be run and trained on a regular desktop computer, not the powerful supercomputers that power most of today’s weather forecasting technology. In developing countries where access to high-quality data and computing resources is limited, platforms like Aardvark could be transformational.

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AI is a game changer

The need for improved forecasting systems is more crucial than ever. Extreme weather events – from the recent wildfires in Los Angeles to last year’s flash floods in Spain – are becoming more frequent. Predicting other parts of the Earth system is equally as important. For example, 1.5 million people die each year in India due to poor air quality, and changes in ice on the sea and land at the poles have huge implications.

AI could help mitigate these risks by delivering timely, hyper-local forecasts, even in regions with limited observational data. These AI systems have the potential to dramatically improve public safety, food security, supply chain management, and energy planning in an increasingly volatile climate.

AI-driven forecasting is also well-placed to play a crucial role in our transition to a net-zero future. If we can better predict fluctuations in supply from wind and solar energy sources, we can optimise energy grids, reducing reliance on fossil fuels and making clean energy more viable on a global scale.

Richardson’s weather forecasting approach relied on numerical models – mathematical representations of the Earth’s atmosphere, land, and oceans that require massive computing power. These models, though incredibly advanced, have limitations: they are expensive, slow to run, time consuming to improve, and often struggle to deliver accurate predictions in areas like the tropics or the poles. The arrival of AI is changing the game entirely.

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Achieving its potential

Results from Aardvark and other AI-driven systems have demonstrated that they can perform weather forecasting tasks with excellent speed and accuracy. These models, trained on vast amounts of historical data, can learn patterns and generate forecasts in a fraction of the time that traditional methods require. Through the Aurora project with Microsoft Research, I’ve also shown that the same approaches can transform forecasts of air quality, ocean waves, and hurricanes.

Companies like Google DeepMind, Microsoft, and various research institutions – including my team at Cambridge – are achieving results that rival or even surpass conventional numerical models at a fraction of the computational cost.

Of course, this transformation comes with challenges.

Ensuring trust and transparency in AI weather forecasting technologies is paramount. Weather forecasting has long been a domain where public institutions – like the UK Met Office and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts – play a critical role in ensuring reliability and accountability. AI models, though promising, must be rigorously tested and validated to build public confidence. These systems should be implemented alongside existing methods, rather than replacing them outright, and continuous retraining and re-evaluation will likely be needed due to the changing climate.

National weather services and universities like Cambridge must step up to ensure that AI-driven forecasting remains a public good, not a commercial commodity. The rise of AI weather forecasting has opened the door to more commercial involvement in an area that would previously have been dominated by public institutions and international centres. While start-ups and big tech companies are making significant strides in AI weather prediction and are a valuable part of the forecasting ecosystem, business interests are not necessarily aligned with societal need. The risk is that critical forecasting capabilities could become privatised, limiting access for those who need it most.

Universities are uniquely positioned to act as a balancing force, driving research that prioritises long-term societal benefit. However, traditional academic structures are often ill-equipped to handle the scale and speed required for AI research. If we are to compete with industry, we must rethink how AI research is conducted – embracing interdisciplinary collaboration, investing in large-scale computational infrastructure, rethinking funding models so that they are faster and more agile, and fostering partnerships that ensure AI development aligns with the public good.

The future of weather forecasting will not be decided solely in the labs of tech giants or the halls of government. It will be shaped by the choices we make now – how we invest in research, how we regulate AI deployment, and how we ensure that life-saving technology remains accessible to all.

Richard Turner is Professor of Machine Learning in the Machine Learning Group of the Department of Engineering, a Research Lead at the Alan Turing Institute, and previously a Visiting Researcher at Microsoft Research. He is also a Bye Fellow of Christ’s College.

source: cam.ac.uk

AI in education has transformative potential for students, teachers and schools but only if we harness it in the right way – by keeping people at the heart of the technology, says Jill Duffy.

When you think about AI and education, the first thing that comes to mind is probably students using ChatGPT to write their essays and coursework. But, important as this issue is, the debate about AI in education should go way beyond it.

As head of an exam board (OCR), I am well aware of how serious this issue is. Deciphering whether a piece of work was AI generated was not part of the job description for educators a decade ago, and I’m sure not many appreciate this new addition to their workload.

ChatGPT writing essays may be the most noticeable phenomenon right now, but it is far from the only way that this technology will transform how we teach and assess young people. Crucially, AI offers opportunities as well as threats. But only if we harness it in the right way – by keeping people at the heart of education.

What does that mean in practice? Let’s look again at the concerns over AI and coursework. As I’ve previously argued, we cannot put generative AI back in its box. Demanding that students never use it in any capacity is obviously not enforceable, and I would also argue is not desirable: the proper use of this technology will be a vital skill in their working lives.

In future, instead of asking students “did you use AI?” teachers will be asking them “how did you use AI?” It’s about accepting where this technology can help students – finessing arguments, helping with research – while protecting the human skills they will still need – fact checking, rewriting, thinking analytically.

The same human-centric approach is needed when it comes to teaching and AI. We can’t afford to ignore the obvious benefits of this technology, but we cannot embrace it blindly at the cost of real, human teaching. At OCR we are looking into various tools that could help teachers who are struggling with ever-increasing workloads. This could be about helping them with lesson planning, or searching through subject specifications or guidance materials.

So, we don’t expect AI to replace the very human skills of intelligently questioning a student to guide their learning, or safeguarding their wellbeing, or passing on a passion for their subject. Instead, AI can take care of some of the time-consuming admin, giving teachers more time to actually teach.

This human centered approach guides everything we are doing at Cambridge and OCR. We have been developing digital exams for the past few years, for Cambridge’s international exams and for OCR’s popular Computer Science GCSE. What we are not doing here is simply transferring the paper exam on to a screen. We have been testing and monitoring how students perform in these on-screen exams, using mocks and trials, to make sure there is no advantage or disadvantage to a particular method.

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Achieving its potential

But keeping humans at the heart of education while getting the most out of new technology will take more than the efforts of one exam board.

As OCR recently warned in its report Striking the Balance, there is a risk that the move towards digital exacerbates existing inequalities in the system. If digital learning can be more effective, what happens to schools that can’t afford the required technology?

A national strategy is required – involving the government, regulators, and other stakeholders – to ensure every school can benefit from the transformative potential of this technology.

Jill Duffy leads OCR and is managing director for UK Education at Cambridge University Press and Assessment.

source: cam.ac.uk

Universities can bridge the gap between those who develop AI systems and those who will use and be affected by them. We must step up to deliver this role, say Neil Lawrence and Jess Montgomery.

As the government considers its ambitious agenda to drive wider roll out of AI across the public sector in areas that directly affect people’s lives, we need to find different approaches to innovation that avoid failures like the Horizon Post Office scandal.

For almost a decade, public dialogues have been highlighting what people want from AI: technologies that tackle challenges affecting our shared health and wellbeing; tools that strengthen our communities and personal interactions; and systems that support democratic governance. As these conversations continue, they reveal a growing public scepticism about AI’s ability to deliver on these promises.

This scepticism is warranted. Despite impressive technical advances and intense policy activity over the last ten years, a significant gap has emerged between AI’s capabilities in the lab and its ability to deliver meaningful benefits in the real world. This disconnect stems in part from a lack of understanding of real-world challenges.

We’ve seen the impact of this lack of understanding in previous attempts to drive technology adoption. In the UK, both the Horizon Post Office and Lorenzo NHS IT scandals demonstrated how IT projects can fail catastrophically.

These failures share common patterns that we must avoid repeating. Insufficient understanding of local needs led to systems being designed without considering how they would integrate into existing workflows. Lack of effective feedback mechanisms prevented early identification of problems and blocked adaptation to user experiences. Rigid implementation approaches imposed technology without allowing for local variation or iteration based on real-world testing. Together, these factors created systems that burdened rather than benefited their intended users.

As the government considers its ambitious agenda to drive wider roll out of AI across the public sector – in areas that directly affect people’s lives – we need to find different approaches to innovation that avoid these failures.

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Achieving its potential

There is an alternative. The UK has strategic advantages in research and human capital that it can leverage to bridge this gap by building AI from the ground up.

Work across Cambridgeshire demonstrates this alternative approach in action. In local government, Greater Cambridge Shared Planning is collaborating with universities to develop AI tools that analyse public consultation responses. By combining planners’ expertise with research capabilities, they’re creating systems that could reduce staff time for analysis from over a year to just two months.

Similar collaborations are emerging in healthcare, where clinicians and researchers are leading the development of AI tools for cancer diagnosis. Their work shows how frontline staff can ensure AI enhances rather than replaces clinical judgment, while improving outcomes for patients.

We’ve already seen the value of this approach during COVID-19, when NHS England East collaborated with researchers to develop AI models that helped hospital leaders make critical decisions about resource allocation. This partnership demonstrated how AI can support operational decisions when developed with those who understand local needs.

This points toward what we call an ‘attention reinvestment cycle’. The key to scaling innovation comes when some of the time that professionals save by using AI is reinvested in sharing knowledge and mentoring colleagues, allowing solutions to spread organically through professional networks. Unlike top-down implementation, this approach builds momentum through peer-to-peer learning, with frontline workers becoming both beneficiaries and champions of technology

Too often in the past, universities have been distant from the difficulties that society faces. However, universities have access to the research and human capital that are vital for the next wave of AI innovation. Their position as neutral conveners allows the creation of spaces where people working to deploy AI in public services and industry can collaborate with diverse communities of expertise, from engineering to ethics.

This bottom-up, human-centred approach offers more effective and ethical AI implementation. It is a vital component of how government can successfully implement its national AI strategy and deliver on the promise of AI for all citizens.

We must step up to deliver this role. By fostering collaboration between those who develop AI systems and those who will use and be affected by them, universities can ensure that technological progress truly serves the public good.

Jessica Montgomery is Director of ai@cam and Neil Lawrence is DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning and Chair of ai@cam, the University of Cambridge’s flagship mission on artificial intelligence. Leveraging the world-leading research pursued across the University, ai@cam creates connections between disciplines, sectors and communities to unlock a new wave of progress in AI and its application to benefit science and society. ai@cam’s mission is to drive a new wave of AI innovation that serves science, citizens and society.

source: cam.ac.uk

If you walk around Addenbrooke’s Hospital on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, sooner or later you will come across a poster showing a clinician in his scrubs standing by a CT scanner, smiling out at you.

This is Raj Jena, one of our colleagues and Cambridge’s first – in fact, the UK’s first – Professor of AI in Radiology. One of the reasons Raj has been chosen as a face of Addenbrooke’s is his pioneering use of AI in preparing radiotherapy scans. OSAIRIS, the tool he developed, can automate a complex, but routine task, saving hours of doctors’ time and ensuring patients receive crucial treatment sooner.

It’s just one example of the ways that AI will transform medicine and healthcare – and of how Cambridge is leading the charge.

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The impact of AI in medicine will likely be in four main areas:

First, it will ‘turbocharge’ biomedical discovery, helping us to understand how cells work, how diseases arise, and how to identify new drug targets and design new medicines.

Second, it will unlock huge datasets – so-called ‘omics’, such as genomics and proteomics – to help us predict an individual’s disease risk, detect diseases early and develop more targeted treatments.

Third, it will optimise the next generation of clinical trials, allowing us to recruit the most suitable participants, and analysing and interpreting outcomes in real time so that we can adapt the trials as they go along.

All of these will lead to the fourth way – transforming the treatments we receive and the healthcare systems that deliver them. It will allow us to personalise therapies, offering the right drug at the right time at the right dose for the right person.

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Achieving its potential

None of this, of course, will be straightforward.

While the technical knowhow to develop AI tools has progressed at almost breakneck speed, accessing the data to train these models can present a challenge. We risk being overwhelmed by the ‘three Vs’ of data – its volume, variety and velocity. At present, we’re not using this data at anywhere near its full potential.

To become a world leader in driving AI innovation in healthcare, we will need massive investment from the UK government to enable researchers to access well-curated data sets. A good example of this is UK Biobank, which took a huge amount of foresight, effort and money to set up, but is now used widely to drive innovation by the medical research community and by industry.

Clinical data is, by its very nature, highly sensitive, so it needs to be held securely, and if researchers want to access it, they must go through a strict approvals process. Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has established the Electronic Patient Record Research and Innovation (ERIN), a secure environment created for just this reason, with an audit trail so that it is clear how and where data is being used, and with data anonymised so that patients cannot be identified. It is working with other partners in the East of England to create a regional version of this database.

We need this to happen at a UK-wide level. The UK is fortunate in that it has a single healthcare system, the NHS, accessible to all and free of charge at the point of use. What it lacks is a single computer infrastructure. Ideally, all hospitals in the UK would be on the same system, linked up so that researchers can extract data across the network without having to seek permission from every NHS trust.

Of course, AI tools are only ever going to be as good as the data they are trained on, and we have to be careful not to inadvertently exacerbate the very health inequalities we are trying to solve. Most data collected in medical research is from Western – predominantly Caucasian – populations. An AI tool trained on these data sets may not work as effectively at diagnosing disease in, say, a South Asian population, which is at a comparatively higher risk of diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

There is also a risk that AI tools that work brilliantly in the lab fail when transferred to the NHS. That’s why it’s essential that the people developing these tools work from the outset with the end users – the clinicians, healthcare workers, patients, for example – to ensure the devices have the desired benefit. Otherwise, they risk ending up in the ‘boneyard of algorithms’.

Public trust and confidence that AI tools are safe is a fundamental requirement for what we do. Without it, AI’s potential will be lost. However, regulators are struggling to keep up with the pace of change. Clinicians can – and must – play a role in this. This will involve training them to read and appraise algorithms, in much the same way they do with clinical evidence. Giving them a better understanding of how the algorithms are developed, how accuracy and performance are reported and tested, will help them judge whether they work as intended.

Jena’s OSAIRIS tool was developed in tandem with Microsoft Research, but he is an NHS radiologist who understood firsthand what was needed. It was, in a sense, a device developed by the NHS, in the NHS, for the NHS. While this is not always essential, the healthcare provider needs to be involved at an early stage, because otherwise the person developing it risks building it in such a way that it is essentially unusable.

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Speaking each other’s language

In 2020, Cambridge established a Centre for AI in Medicine with the ambition of developing ‘novel AI and machine learning technologies to revolutionise biomedical science, medicine and healthcare’.

The Centre was initially set up with funding from AstraZeneca and GSK to support PhD studentships, with each student having as supervisors someone from industry, a data scientist and a ‘domain expert’ (for example, a clinician, biologist or chemist). Another industry partner – Boehringer Ingelheim – has since joined.

We are very fortunate in Cambridge because we have a mixture of world-leading experts in AI and machine learning, discovery biology, and chemistry, as well as scientifically-minded clinicians who are keen to engage, and high performance computing infrastructure, such as the Dawn supercomputer. It puts us in the perfect position to be leaders in the field of AI and medicine.

But these disciplines have different goals and requirements, different ways of working and thinking. It’s our role at the Centre to bring them together and help them learn to speak each other’s language. We are forging the road ahead, and it is hugely exciting.

If we get things right, the possibilities for AI to transform health and medicine are endless. It can be of massive public benefit. But more than that, it has to be.

Professor Andres Floto and Professor Mihaela van der Schaar are Co-Directors of the Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine. Professor Eoin McKinney is a Faculty Member

source: cam.ac.uk

We need to act fast to mitigate the impacts of climate change, and to protect and restore biodiversity. There’s incredible potential in using AI to augment our work. It enables us to do things much more quickly – it’s like giving humans global knowledge superpowers!

It can turbocharge human capabilities, simulate complicated systems and search through vast amounts of data. It would help us make rapid progress in reversing the damage we’ve done to the planet with well-targeted interventions, while continuing to supply human needs.

Of course, this comes with risks of runaway systems causing harm, so everything we do must include a ‘human in the loop’ to guide what’s going on. AI systems have no capability for nuanced judgement.

Humans are generating vast amounts of information about our natural world. The imaging data alone spans every scale, from satellite and drone images of countries and landscapes, to land-based photographs of species and habitats, to microscopic observations of life. Alongside the visuals, conservation and climate scientists and practitioners are publishing an ever-increasing amount of written information on their ideas, experiments and real-world trials.

Imagine having access to all of this, plus razor-sharp climate models, available at your fingertips – with answers about any real or imagined situation available in seconds.

The Holy Grail is to combine all this observational data with all knowledge-based data from the whole of humanity and generate evidence-driven insights to accelerate our collective healing of the planet.

AI algorithms, searching and analysing the data, could help empower decision-makers to be confident that they’re making the best choices.

Ultimately, we should be able to create AI ‘Co-Pilots’ for policy-makers, to help them make decisions about all sorts of things in the best interests of our planet – whether a new development in Cambridge is a good idea, for example. AI could quickly create a referenced, in-depth report on anything a policy-maker wants to know, and forecast what will happen as a result of any specific decision.

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Achieving its potential

There are currently three barriers to achieving this promising vision: access to enough hardware, energy and data.

Data is fuel for AI – but it’s been an enormous challenge getting hold of enough of it – particularly accessing published journal papers. The government has a desire to create a National Data Library, which is a great idea, because it would allow us to access huge amounts of existing knowledge and run it through AI algorithms while preserving privacy needs. Right now, the data is scattered and difficult to securely access for researchers and policymakers.

We also don’t have enough hardware. We need more GPUs – graphics processing units – they cost around £40,000 each and we need hundreds of thousands of hours of GPU time to unlock the scale required for modern learning algorithms.

And on energy, the fact that AI uses huge amounts of it is a big concern, but there have been recent research advances in the core AI approaches to make our energy expenditure much more efficient. Simulating the planet is also what’s called a ‘root node problem’ in that it is the beginning of a continuously ‘branching tree’ of other computational possibilities that will unlock ways to improve human lives.

If the barriers can be overcome, then the potential for AI to help us address the climate and biodiversity crises is huge. Through collaborative efforts across departments, Cambridge is harnessing the power of AI to work alongside some of the world’s brightest minds. There has never been a greater opportunity to develop solutions for our planet’s future – and to help rebalance the relationship between humans and nature across the world.

Anil Madhavapeddy is Professor of Planetary Computing in the Department of Computer Science and Technology.

source: cam.ac.uk

The potential of AI to transform people’s lives in areas ranging from healthcare to better customer service are enormous. But as the technology advances, we must adopt policies to make sure the risks don’t overwhelm and stifle those benefits.

Importantly, we need to be on alert for algorithmic bias that could perpetuate inequality and marginalisation of communities around the world.

Algorithmic bias occurs when systems – often based on machine learning or AI – deliver biased outcomes or decisions because the data it has been given is incomplete, imbalanced or not fully representative.

I and colleagues here in Cambridge and at Warwick Business School have proposed a new way of thinking about the issue – we call this a ‘relational risk perspective’. This approach looks at not just how AI is being used now, but how it may be used in the future and across different geographies, avoiding what we call ‘the dark side of AI’. The goal is to safeguard the benefits of AI for everyone, while minimising the harm.

We look at the workplace as one example. AI is already having a huge impact on jobs, affecting both routine and creative tasks, and affecting activities that we’ve thought of as uniquely human – like creating art or writing film scripts.

As businesses use the technology more, and perhaps become over-dependent on it, we are at risk of undermining professional expertise and critical thinking, leaving workers de-motivated and expected to defer to machine-generated decisions.

This will impact not just tasks but also the social fabric of the workplace, by influencing how workers relate to each other and to organisations. If AI is used in recruitment, a lack of representation in datasets can reinforce inequalities when used to make decisions about hiring or promotions.

We also explore how this billion-dollar industry is often underpinned by largely ‘invisible’ workers in the Global South who clean data and refine algorithms for a user-group predominantly in the Global North. This ‘data colonialism’ not only reflects global inequalities but also reinforces marginalisation: the people whose labour enables AI to thrive are the same people who are largely excluded from the benefits of that technology.

Healthcare data is in particular danger from such data-driven bias, so we need to ensure that health-related information analysed by the Large Language Models used to train AI tools reflects a diverse population. Basing health policy on data from selected and perhaps more privileged communities can lead to a vicious cycle in which disparity is more deeply entrenched.

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Achieving its potential

I believe that we can counter these threats, but time is of the essence as AI quickly becomes embedded into society. We should remember that generative AI is still an emerging technology, and take note that it is progressing faster than the ethical or regulatory landscape can keep pace with.

Our relational risk perspective does not present AI as inherently good or bad. Rather, AI is seen as having potential for benefit and harm depending on how it is developed and experienced across different social contexts. We also recognise that the risks are not static, as they evolve with the changing relationships between technology, its users and broader societal structures.

Policymakers and technologists should anticipate, rather than react to, the ways in which AI can entrench or challenge existing inequities​. They should also consider that some countries may develop AI maturity more quickly than others.

Finally, let’s draw on stakeholders far and wide in setting AI risk policy. A multidisciplinary approach which will help avoid bias, while at the same time helping to demonstrate to the public that AI policy really does reflect varied and diverse interests and communities.

Michael Barrett is Professor of Information Systems and Innovation Studies, Vice-Dean for Strategy and University Engagement at Cambridge Judge Business School, and a Fellow of Hughes Hall.

source: cam.ac.uk

The Cambridge report argues that play should be a recognised component of children’s healthcare in the Government’s forthcoming 10-year plan for the NHS.

Hospital-based play opens up a far more complete understanding of what it means for a child to be a healthy or wellDr Kelsey Graber

Play should be a core feature of children’s healthcare in forthcoming plans for the future of the NHS, according to a new report which argues that play “humanises” the experiences of child patients.

The report, by University of Cambridge academics for the charity Starlight, calls for play, games and playful approaches to be integrated into a ‘holistic’ model of children’s healthcare – one that acknowledges the emotional and psychological dimensions of good health, alongside its physical aspects.

Both internationally and in the UK, health systems have, in recent decades, increasingly promoted play in paediatric healthcare. There is a growing understanding that making healthcare more child-friendly can reduce stress and positively improve younger patients’ experiences.

Despite this recognition, play often remains undervalued and inconsistently integrated across healthcare contexts. For the first time, the report compiles evidence from over 120 studies to make the case for its more systematic incorporation.

In the case of the UK, the authors argue that the Government’s forthcoming 10-year health plan for the NHS offers an important opportunity to embed play within a more holistic vision for childhood health.

The report was produced by academics at the Centre for Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL) at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. Starlight, which commissioned the review, is a national charity advocating to reduce trauma through play in children’s healthcare.

Dr Kelsey Graber, the report’s lead author, said: “Play and child-centred activities have a unique capacity to support the emotional and mental aspects of children’s healthcare experiences, whether in hospital or during a routine treatment at the GP. It won’t directly change the course of an illness, but it can humanise the experience by reducing stress and anxiety and enhancing understanding and comfort. Hospital-based play opens up a far more complete understanding of what it means for a child to be a healthy or well.”

Adrian Voce, Head of Policy and Public Affairs at Starlight, said: “With the government promising to create the healthiest generation of children ever as part of its new long term health plan, this compelling evidence of the benefits of play to children’s healthcare is very timely. We encourage ministers and NHS leaders to make health play teams an integral part of paediatric care.”

The report synthesised evidence from 127 studies in 29 countries. Most were published after 2020, reflecting intensified interest in children’s healthcare interventions following the COVID-19 outbreak.

Some studies focused on medically-relevant play. For example, hospital staff sometimes use role-play, or games and toys like Playmobil Hospital to familiarise children with medical procedures and ease anxiety. Other studies focused on non-medical play: the use of activities like social games, video games, arts and crafts, music therapy and storytelling to help make patients more comfortable. Some hospitals and surgeries even provide “distraction kits” to help children relax.

In its survey of all these studies, the report finds strong evidence that play benefits children’s psychological health and wellbeing. Play is also sometimes associated with positive physical health; one study, for example, found that children who played an online game about dentistry had lower heart rates during a subsequent dental procedure, probably because they felt more prepared.

The authors identify five main ways in which play enhances children’s healthcare based on the available body of evidence:

Reducing stress and discomfort during medical procedures. Play is sometimes associated with physiological markers of reduced distress, such as lower heart rates and blood pressure. Therapeutic play can also ease pain and anxiety.

Helping children express and manage emotions. Play can help to alleviate fear, anxiety, boredom and loneliness in healthcare settings. It also provides an outlet for emotional expression among all age groups.

Fostering dignity and agency. In an environment where children often feel powerless and a lack of personal choice, play provides a sense of control which supports mental and emotional wellbeing.

Building connection and belonging. Play can strengthen children’s relationships with other patients, family members and healthcare staff, easing their experiences in a potentially overwhelming environment. This may be particularly important for children in longer term or palliative care.

Preserving a sense of childhood. Play helps children feel like children, and not just patients, the report suggests, by providing “essential moments of happiness, respite and emotional release”.

While play is widely beneficial, the report stresses that its impact will vary from child to child. This variability highlights a need, the authors note, for informed, child-centred approaches to play in healthcare settings. Unfortunately, play expertise in these settings may often be lacking: only 13% of the studies reviewed covered the work of health play specialists, and most of the reported activities were directed and defined by adults, rather than by children themselves.

The report also highlights a major gap in research on the use of play in mental healthcare. Just three of the 127 studies focused on this area, even though 86% emphasised play’s psychological benefits. The report calls for greater professional and academic attention to the use of play in mental health support, particularly in light of escalating rates of mental health challenges among children and young people. More work is also needed, it adds, to understand the benefits of play-based activities in healthcare for infants and adolescents, both of which groups were under-represented in the research literature.

Embedding play more fully in healthcare as part of wider Government reforms, the authors suggest, could reduce healthcare-related trauma and improve long-term outcomes for children. “It is not just healthcare professionals, but also policy leaders who need to recognise the value of play,” Graber said. “That recognition is foundational to ensuring that children’s developmental, psychological, and emotional health needs are met, alongside their physical health.”

The report, Playing with children’s health? will be published on the Starlight website on 31 March: https://www.starlight.org.uk/ 

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Over 500 KS2 and KS3 students from as far away as Warrington got the chance to experience studying at the University of Cambridge with a selection of lectures and workshops held as part of the Cambridge Festival. 

We were delighted to welcome pupils from Warrington’s Lymm High School, Ipswich High School, The Charter School in North Dulwich, Rickmansworth School, Sutton Valance School in Maidstone as well as schools closer to home such as St Peter’s Huntingdon, Fenstanton Primary School, Barton Primary School, Impington Village College and St Andrews School in Soham. 

Running over two days (25/26 March 2025) and held in the Cambridge Sports Centre, students went on a great alien hunt with Dr Matt Bothwell from the Institute of Astronomy, stepped back in time to explore Must Farm with Department of Archaeology and the Cambridge Archaeological Unit as well as learning to disagree well with Dr Elizabeth Phillips from The Woolf Institute. 

Schools had a choice of workshops from a range of departments including, how to think like an engineer and making sustainable food with biotechnology with researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, as well as the chance to get hands-on experience in the world of materials science and explore how properties of materials can be influenced by temperature at the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy. 

The Department of Veterinary Medicine offered students the opportunity to find out what a career in veterinary medicine may look like with workshops on animal x-rays, how different professionals work together to treat animals in a veterinary hospital as well as meeting the departments horses and cows and learn how veterinarians diagnose and treat these large animals. 

Students also had the opportunity to learn about antibodies and our immune system with the MRC Toxicology Unit. The students learnt about the incredible job antibodies do defending our bodies against harmful invaders like bacteria and viruses. 

Alongside this, a maths trail, developed by Cambridgeshire County Council, guided students around the West Cambridge site whilst testing their maths skills with a number of problems to solve. 

Now in their third year, the Cambridge Festival schools days are offering students the opportunity to experience studying at Cambridge with a series of curriculum linked talks and hands on workshops.   

The Cambridge Festival runs from 19 March – 4 April and is a mixture of online, on-demand and in-person events covering all aspects of the world-leading research happening at Cambridge. The public have the chance to meet some of the researchers and thought-leaders working in some of the pioneering fields that will impact us all.

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The European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft has been powered down, after more than a decade spent gathering data that are now being used to unravel the secrets of our home galaxy.

On 27 March 2025, Gaia’s control team at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre switched off the spacecraft’s subsystems and sent it into a ‘retirement orbit’ around the Sun.

Though the spacecraft’s operations are now over, the scientific exploitation of Gaia’s data has just begun.

Launched in 2013, Gaia has transformed our understanding of the cosmos by mapping the positions, distances, motions, and properties of nearly two billion stars and other celestial objects. It has provided the largest, most precise multi-dimensional map of our galaxy ever created, revealing its structure and evolution in unprecedented detail.

The mission uncovered evidence of past galactic mergers, identified new star clusters, contributed to the discovery of exoplanets and black holes, mapped millions of quasars and galaxies, and tracked hundreds of thousands of asteroids and comets. The mission has also enabled the creation of the best visualisation of how our galaxy might look to an outside observer.

“The data from the Gaia satellite has and is transforming our understanding of the Milky Way, how it formed, how it has evolved and how it will evolve,” said Dr Nicholas Walton from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, lead of the Gaia UK project team. “Gaia has been in continuous operation for over 10 years, faultless, without interruption, reflecting the quality of the engineering, with significant elements of Gaia designed and built in the UK. But now it is time for its retirement. Gaia has finished its observations of the night sky. But the analysis of the Gaia mission data continues. Later in 2026 sees the next Gaia Data Release 4, to further underpin new discovery unravelling the beauty and mystery of the cosmos.”

Gaia far exceeded its planned lifetime of five years, and its fuel reserves are dwindling. The Gaia team considered how best to dispose of the spacecraft in line with ESA’s efforts to responsibly dispose of its missions.

They wanted to find a way to prevent Gaia from drifting back towards its former home near the scientifically valuable second Lagrange point (L2) of the Sun-Earth system and minimise any potential interference with other missions in the region.

“Switching off a spacecraft at the end of its mission sounds like a simple enough job,” said Gaia Spacecraft Operator Tiago Nogueira. “But spacecraft really don’t want to be switched off.

“We had to design a decommissioning strategy that involved systematically picking apart and disabling the layers of redundancy that have safeguarded Gaia for so long, because we don’t want it to reactivate in the future and begin transmitting again if its solar panels find sunlight.”

On 27 March, the Gaia control team ran through this series of passivation activities. One final use of Gaia’s thrusters moved the spacecraft away from L2 and into a stable retirement orbit around the Sun that will minimise the chance that it comes within 10 million kilometres of Earth for at least the next century.

The team then deactivated and switched off the spacecraft’s instruments and subsystems one by one, before deliberately corrupting its onboard software. The communication subsystem and the central computer were the last to be deactivated.

Gaia’s final transmission to ESOC mission control marked the conclusion of an intentional and carefully orchestrated farewell to a spacecraft that has tirelessly mapped the sky for over a decade.

Though Gaia itself has now gone silent, its contributions to astronomy will continue to shape research for decades. Its vast and expanding data archive remains a treasure trove for scientists, refining knowledge of galactic archaeology, stellar evolution, exoplanets and much more.

“No other mission has had such an impact over such a broad range of astrophysics. It continues to be the source of over 2,000 peer-reviewed papers per year, more than any other space mission,” said Gaia UK team member Dr Dafydd Wyn Evans, also from the Institute of Astronomy. “It is sad that its observing days are over, but work is continuing in Cambridge, and across Europe, to process and calibrate the final data so that Gaia will still be making its impact felt for many years in the future.”

A workhorse of galactic exploration, Gaia has charted the maps that future explorers will rely on to make new discoveries. The star trackers on ESA’s Euclid spacecraft use Gaia data to precisely orient the spacecraft. ESA’s upcoming Plato mission will explore exoplanets around stars characterised by Gaia and may follow up on new exoplanetary systems discovered by Gaia.

The Gaia control team also used the spacecraft’s final weeks to run through a series of technology tests. The team tested Gaia’s micro propulsion system under different challenging conditions to examine how it had aged over more than ten years in the harsh environment of space. The results may benefit the development of future ESA missions relying on similar propulsion systems, such as the LISA mission.

The Gaia spacecraft holds a deep emotional significance for those who worked on it. As part of its decommissioning, the names of around 1500 team members who contributed to its mission were used to overwrite some of the back-up software stored in Gaia’s onboard memory.

Personal farewell messages were also written into the spacecraft’s memory, ensuring that Gaia will forever carry a piece of its team with it as it drifts through space.

As Gaia Mission Manager Uwe Lammers put it: “We will never forget Gaia, and Gaia will never forget us.”

The Cambridge Gaia DPAC team is responsible for the analysis and generation of the Gaia photometric and spectro-photometric data products, and it also generated the Gaia photometric science alert stream for the duration of the satellite’s in-flight operations.

Adapted from a media release by the European Space Agency. 

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Cambridge University football teams enjoyed a historic night on Friday 21 March, as both the men’s and women’s squads claimed stunning victories over Oxford in the football Varsity matches at Cambridge United FC’s Cledara Abbey Stadium.

The memorable evening, witnessed by over 2,000 spectators, set the perfect stage for the announcement of a new formal partnership between Cambridge University Association Football Club (CUAFC) and Cambridge United FC, strengthening the bond between the historic footballing institutions of the city.

The women’s match opened the night in dramatic fashion, with Cambridge securing a thrilling 3-2 comeback victory. Despite trailing 1-0 at halftime, the Light Blues displayed resilience and attacking intent in the second half. Johanna Niggemann (Gonville & Caius) equalised before Sakina Dhirani (Newnham) put Cambridge ahead. Oxford responded with a goal to level the score, but Alissa Sattentau (King’s) struck late to seal a hard-fought win, sending the home fans into jubilation.

Buoyed by the women’s success, the men’s team delivered a commanding performance, clinching a dominant 4-1 victory to secure their first Varsity triumph since 2019. Cambridge’s attacking pressure paid off in the 38th minute when Cai La-Trobe Roberts (Jesus) broke the deadlock with a composed finish. Moments before halftime, he doubled his tally from the penalty spot. Asa Campbell (Fitzwilliam) extended the lead early in the second half, before La-Trobe Roberts completed his hat-trick with another spot-kick, sealing a comprehensive win. Although Oxford’s Captain, Noah Fletcher, converted a penalty late on, Cambridge’s dominance was never in doubt, with midfielders Captain Reece Linney (Girton) and Jesse Tapnack (Trinity) controlling the game throughout.

Following the Light Blues’ sensational Varsity double, Cambridge United FC and CUAFC announced a groundbreaking new partnership intended to deepen and develop collaboration between the two clubs to benefit the wider City of Cambridge community.

Professor David Cardwell, President Elect of CUAFC, highlighted the significance of the partnership, stating:“Cambridge can rightly lay claim to being the global birthplace of football, and CUAFC is proud to be unofficially ‘the oldest football club in the world’. The DNA of the game was discovered here in the city in 1848 when the first game took place on Parker’s Piece under what are now the modern rules.

“Over the last two years, Cambridge United and the University have developed a strong partnership in a number of different areas. We were very grateful that the Varsity matches were once again hosted so well at the Cledara Abbey Stadium. We agree that now is the right time to build on this and seek to deepen the relationship between our two football clubs. There is much we can potentially do together to help each other as clubs, and we share a desire to do more to help the City of Cambridge celebrate its status as the birthplace of the global game.”

Godric Smith CBE, Chair of the Cambridge United Foundation and Director at the Club, echoed these sentiments, emphasising the potential benefits of the collaboration: “Cambridge United is proud to be the professional football club from the university city that gave football to the world, so it is logical and long overdue to have a formal partnership between our two football clubs on both the men’s and women’s side.

“We are at the beginning and will work out the detail of the first steps over the coming months, but there is a united desire to explore how we can best help each other and, most importantly, the City of Cambridge. Areas of collaboration could include merchandising, facilities, sports science and coaching, data, community work and mentoring. We have a lot of resources and expertise between us, and it will be exciting to see how we can potentially make best use of them together over the months and years ahead.”

The announcement of the partnership capped off a remarkable night of football at the Cledara Abbey Stadium. With both the men’s and women’s teams showcasing their talent and determination on the pitch, and a new era of cooperation between Cambridge United and CUAFC beginning, the city’s footballing future looks brighter than ever.

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source: cam.ac.uk

The stage has been set for The Boat Race 2025, with Cambridge University Boat Club announcing its Women’s and Men’s Blue Boats at the historic Battersea Power Station in London.

With just over two weeks to go until the showdown on the River Thames, the Light Blues are gearing up to defend their titles. Cambridge leads the historic tally in both the men’s and women’s events and will be looking to extend their dominance when they take on Oxford on Sunday, 13 April 2025.

Cambridge Crews for The Boat Race 2025

Women’s Blue Boat:
•    Cox: Jack Nicholas (Pembroke College)
•    Stroke: Samy Morton (Hughes Hall)
•    Tash Morrice (Jesus College)
•    Claire Collins (Peterhouse)
•    Carys Earl (Gonville & Caius)
•    Annie Wertheimer (St Edmund’s College)
•    Sophia Hahn (Hughes Hall)
•    Gemma King (St John’s College)
•    Bow: Katy Hempson (Christ’s College)

Men’s Blue Boat:
•    Cox: Ollie Boyne (Downing College)
•    Stroke: Douwe de Graaf (St Edmund’s)
•    Luca Ferraro (Peterhouse)
•    James Robson (Peterhouse)
•    George Bourne (Peterhouse)
•    Gabriel Mahler (Peterhouse)
•    Tom Macky (St Edmund’s)
•    Noam Mouelle (Hughes Hall)
•    Bow: Simon Hatcher (Peterhouse)

Countdown to The Boat Race 2025
The prestigious race, one of the oldest amateur sporting events in the world, will take place along the 6.8 km Championship Course from Putney to Mortlake. The Women’s Boat Race will commence at 1.21pm British Summer Time (BST), followed by the Men’s Boat Race at 2.21pm BST.
Cambridge’s women’s crew enters the race as the defending champions and currently leads the overall tally at 48-30. Meanwhile, Cambridge’s men’s crew also holds the advantage, leading Oxford 87-81, with one historic dead heat in 1877.

Praise for the athletes
Siobhan Cassidy, Chair of The Boat Race Company, congratulated the athletes on their selection for one of the Blue Boats.
“I am not sure that everyone appreciates just what it takes to compete at this level,” she told the event.
“Having witnessed the intense training over a number of years, I can tell you these guys are no ordinary students; they combine their academic courses with a high-performance rowing programme. Their commitment to excellence on and off the water is truly extraordinary. It is nothing short of superhuman.”
Renowned BBC Sport commentator Andrew Cotter, who hosted the event, emphasised the purity of The Boat Race in today’s sporting landscape.
“In the modern era of sport, when so much is inflated by money and professionalism, this is sport stripped back to its essence,” he said. 
“It is pure competition, it is about winning and losing. And I know that’s how the athletes feel about it, but they also feel that this is where they will make friendships that will last a lifetime.”

Historic firsts and environmental commitments
This year’s event will also see a landmark moment in Boat Race history. Sarah Winckless MBE will become the first woman to umpire the Men’s Boat Race on the Championship Course. Sir Matthew Pinsent CBE will oversee the Women’s Boat Race.
Additionally, The Boat Race Company, alongside the Cambridge and Oxford University Boat Clubs, have given their support to the London Rivers’ Pledge, a 10-year environmental initiative focused on improving water quality and sustainability on the Thames and beyond.
With the crews now announced and excitement continuing to build, all eyes will be on the Thames this April as Cambridge and Oxford prepare to write the next chapter in their historic rivalry.
 

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source: cam.ac.uk

A University of Cambridge spin-out company working to improve AI efficiency and bandwidth has raised €25 million in new funding.

CamGraPhIC – co-founded Professor Andrea Ferrari, Director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre, and Dr Marco Romagnoli of CNIT in Italy – is developing new types of photonic circuits for energy-efficient, high-bandwidth, optical interconnect technology.is developing new types of photonic circuits for energy-efficient, high-bandwidth, optical interconnect technology.

The investment will support continued innovation in graphene photonics transceivers, a technology that could improve energy efficiency, reduce latency, and increase bandwidth for artificial intelligence (AI) and cellular data transmission.

With the investment, CamGraPhIC will enhance its research and development capabilities and establish a pilot manufacturing line. The facility will demonstrate a scalable mass production process compatible with commercial semiconductor and photonics foundries.

The funding round was co-led by CDP Venture Capital, NATO Innovation Fund, Sony Innovation Fund, and Join Capital, with participation from Bosch Ventures, Frontier IP Group plc, and Indaco Ventures.

CamGraPhIC’s graphene-based transceivers provide a viable, stable, and scalable alternative to current silicon-based photonics. These transceivers deliver higher bandwidth density, and exceptional latency performance, while consuming 80% less energy than traditional pluggable data centre optical transceivers.

The company say their innovation is particularly effective for transferring large volumes of data between graphic processing units (GPUs) and high bandwidth memory (HBM), which are fundamental to generative AI and high-performance computing.

The transceivers operate efficiently across a broad temperature range, eliminating the need for complex and costly cooling systems. Thanks to a simplified device architecture enabled by the integration of graphene into the photonic structure, these transceivers are also more cost-effective to manufacture.

Thanks to this funding, CamGraPhIC will expand to applications in avionics, automotive advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), and space, where rugged, high-performance transceivers offer significant technical and commercial advantages over existing technologies.

“We are thrilled for this new phase in the journey towards commercialisation of CamGraPhIC groundbreaking and energy efficient devices, to speed up development of AI hardware, without impacting global emissions,” said Ferrari. “Having Sony, Bosch and NATO as shareholders and board members will help focus the work towards the most relevant applications, including defence and security.”

“With the backing of renowned investors, we are excited to propel towards commercialisation the Graphene Photonics technology to overcome the interconnection bottleneck of regenerative AI processing systems and driving the next leap in scaling bandwidth and reducing energy consumption for the future of optical data communications, ” said Romagnoli, former Head of Research Sector – Advanced Technologies for Photonic Integration of the Pisa National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT), and now Chief Scientific Officer of CamGraPhIC.

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Of the UK’s top three universities for spinouts – Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial – Cambridge saw the most growth in 2024, according to a new report on trends in UK academic spinouts.

The Spotlight on Spinouts 2025 report, produced by the Royal Academy of Engineering in collaboration with Beauhurst, analyses annual trends in UK spinouts. The University of Cambridge ranks second to Oxford for the number of spinouts created since 2011, with Imperial in third. However, in the last year, Cambridge has spun out 26 new companies, showing the largest increase in the number of spinouts among the top three.

According to the report, East of England spinouts secured 35.0% of total investment, leading all regions. The area hosted two of the top five spinout fundraisings in 2024, including a £450 million raise by Cambridge spinout, Bicycle Therapeutics. The South Cambridgeshire-based company develops cancer treatments, with the investment aimed at supporting its R&D efforts.

Dr Jim Glasheen, Chief Executive of Cambridge Enterprise, the University’s innovation arm, said: “This rapid increase in the number of spinouts coming out of Cambridge reflects our continued focus on accelerating Cambridge innovations as well as the impact of our newer initiatives, such as the Founders at the University of Cambridge programme and the Technology Investment Fund.”

Dr Diarmuid O’Brien, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Innovation at the University of Cambridge added: “It’s heartening to see the growth in spinouts from Cambridge and across the sector as a whole. University entrepreneurship has an increasingly vital role to play in driving UK economic growth and addressing some of our most pressing societal challenges. As one of the world’s top science and tech clusters, Cambridge has a responsibility to deliver innovation-led economic growth for the UK and we have ambitious plans to further strengthen our capabilities in this regard.”

Read more about Cambridge spinouts in Cambridge Enterprise’s Annual Review 2025

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Science Minister and Oxford-Cambridge Innovation Champion, Lord Patrick Vallance, visited Cambridge to see how the world’s most intensive science and technology cluster can drive economic growth.

The Oxford and Cambridge Corridor is a world-leading, high-growth, innovation cluster and we need to harness the opportunities that innovators are coming up with here.Lord Patrick Vallance, Science Minister

During his visit he saw the proposed city-centre site of Cambridge’s new flagship innovation hub, which was endorsed by the Chancellor Rachel Reeves earlier this year, and heard about plans for the space to support venture-backed, rapidly scaling companies. The hub will connect entrepreneurs, investors, and corporates, serving as the UK’s equivalent to Lab Central in Boston or Station F in Paris – a beacon for global talent and capital.

While he was in the city, the Minister unveiled Innovate Cambridge’s new Advisory Council. Featuring global tech and science pioneers, the Council will catalyse the Cambridge cluster’s potential to deliver substantial societal, environmental and economic benefits, and empower the city to become a global centre for responsible innovation.

He also spoke on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme about Cambridge’s role in the development of the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor. In a special edition, the programme focused on government plans to boost UK science and technology growth by linking up the two cities to create new homes, infrastructure, leisure facilities, office and laboratory space.

As part of his visit, the Minister toured the Cambridge West Innovation District, the transformative project that will allow industry to co-locate at scale with the University’s world-leading academic community. Once complete, the campus is expected to employ 14,000 people and will be the leading location in Europe for AI, quantum and climate research.

At the West Hub, a publicly accessible multi-purpose facility, Lord Vallance met with local authority leaders from across the region. He then toured the site and saw key research locations including the Whittle Laboratory, home to the UK’s Integrated Technology Accelerator for zero-carbon flight, and the Computer Lab, a long-standing driver of tech spinouts.

Visiting the Cavendish Laboratory (Department of Physics), he heard about the impact of industry collaboration with major companies like Hitachi and ARM, and the role that the Department’s new state-of-the-art facilities will play in setting the stage for a new era of scientific discovery in areas such as ‘green tech’ – including long-lasting batteries – next-generation ICT devices, and quantum healthcare technology.”

The visit concluded with a roundtable discussion, where senior representatives from across Cambridge’s innovation ecosystem discussed ways to accelerate company growth, attract global talent, and secure new foreign direct investment – delivering growth which will benefit the whole UK.

Lord Vallance said: “The Oxford and Cambridge Corridor is a world-leading, high-growth, innovation cluster and we need to harness the opportunities that innovators are coming up with here. By backing our strengths in the Corridor, we can boost economic growth across the country, unlocking up to £78 billion for our economy, and deliver on our Plan for Change.”

Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, said: “Cambridge is a mature innovation ecosystem spanning many high-growth sectors, including AI, technology, and life sciences. By working with the government and other partners, we can accelerate our impact even further, unlock the amazing potential of University research and innovation, and help drive UK growth.”

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A new AI weather prediction system, developed by researchers from the University of Cambridge, can deliver accurate forecasts tens of times faster and using thousands of times less computing power than current AI and physics-based forecasting systems.

The system, Aardvark Weather, has been supported by the Alan Turing Institute, Microsoft Research and the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts. It provides a blueprint for a new approach to weather forecasting with the potential to transform current practices. The results are reported in the journal Nature.

“Aardvark reimagines current weather prediction methods offering the potential to make weather forecasts faster, cheaper, more flexible and more accurate than ever before, helping to transform weather prediction in both developed and developing countries,” said Professor Richard Turner from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, who led the research. “Aardvark is thousands of times faster than all previous weather forecasting methods.”

Current weather forecasts are generated through a complex set of stages, each taking several hours to run on powerful supercomputers. Aside from daily usage, the development, maintenance and use of these systems require significant time and large teams of experts.

More recently, research by Huawei, Google, and Microsoft has shown that one component of the weather forecasting pipeline, the numerical solver (which calculates how weather evolves over time), can be replaced with AI, resulting in faster and more accurate predictions. This combination of AI and traditional approaches is now being used by the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).

But with Aardvark, researchers have replaced the entire weather prediction pipeline with a single, simple machine learning model. The new model takes in observations from satellites, weather stations and other sensors and outputs both global and local forecasts.

This fully AI driven approach means predictions that were once produced using many models – each requiring a supercomputer and a large support team to run – can now be produced in minutes on a desktop computer.

When using just 10% of the input data of existing systems, Aardvark already outperforms the United States national GFS forecasting system on many variables. It is also competitive with United States Weather Service forecasts that use input from dozens of weather models and analysis by expert human forecasters.

“These results are just the beginning of what Aardvark can achieve,” said first author Anna Allen, from Cambridge’s Department of Computer Science and Technology. “This end-to-end learning approach can be easily applied to other weather forecasting problems, for example hurricanes, wildfires, and tornadoes. Beyond weather, its applications extend to broader Earth system forecasting, including air quality, ocean dynamics, and sea ice prediction.”

The researchers say that one of the most exciting aspects of Aardvark is its flexibility and simple design. Because it learns directly from data it can be quickly adapted to produce bespoke forecasts for specific industries or locations, whether that’s predicting temperatures for African agriculture or wind speeds for a renewable energy company in Europe.

This contrasts to traditional weather prediction systems where creating a customised system takes years of work by large teams of researchers.

“The weather forecasting systems we all rely on have been developed over decades, but in just 18 months, we’ve been able to build something that’s competitive with the best of these systems, using just a tenth of the data on a desktop computer,” said Turner, who is also Lead Researcher for Weather Prediction at the Alan Turing Institute.

This capability has the potential to transform weather prediction in developing countries where access to the expertise and computational resources required to develop conventional systems is not typically available.

“Unleashing AI’s potential will transform decision-making for everyone from policymakers and emergency planners to industries that rely on accurate weather forecasts,” said Dr Scott Hosking from The Alan Turing Institute. “Aardvark’s breakthrough is not just about speed, it’s about access. By shifting weather prediction from supercomputers to desktop computers, we can democratise forecasting, making these powerful technologies available to developing nations and data-sparse regions around the world.”

“Aardvark would not have been possible without decades of physical-model development by the community, and we are particularly indebted to ECMWF for their ERA5 dataset which is essential for training Aardvark,” said Turner.

“It is essential that academia and industry work together to address technological challenges and leverage new opportunities that AI offers,” said Matthew Chantry from ECMWF. “Aardvark’s approach combines both modularity with end-to-end forecasting optimisation, ensuring effective use of the available datasets.”

“Aardvark represents not only an important achievement in AI weather prediction but it also reflects the power of collaboration and bringing the research community together to improve and apply AI technology in meaningful ways,” said Dr Chris Bishop, from Microsoft Research.

The next steps for Aardvark include developing a new team within the Alan Turing Institute led by Turner, who will explore the potential to deploy Aardvark in the global south and integrate the technology into the Institute’s wider work to develop high-precision environmental forecasting for weather, oceans and sea ice.

Reference:
Anna Allen, Stratis Markou et al. ‘End-to-end data-driven weather prediction.’ Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-08897-0

Adapted from a media release by The Alan Turing Institute

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As the UK Government continues to develop its national industrial strategy, the Cambridge Industrial Innovation Policy group at Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing has unveiled the UK Innovation Report 2025. 

This year’s report analyses the UK’s innovation landscape, by benchmarking industrial sectors against global competitors and delivering key insights into the country’s strengths, challenges, and opportunities. 

The report arrives at a particularly significant moment, with the UK Government placing industrial strategy at the core of its plans to deliver growth, emphasising investment, technology adoption, and high-growth sectors. 

Recent national consultations on scale-up financing, technology adoption, and industrial strategy have highlighted the demand for stronger data and analysis to guide decision making. 

The UK Innovation Report 2025 addresses this call by providing fresh data, deep insights, and expert perspectives to support informed policy making and strategic investment, which have significant implications for the UK’s industrial strategy.

 Key findings from this year’s report include:

• There has been a significant decline in the UK’s share of global manufacturing value-added, from 3.1% in 2000 to 1.9% in 2022 
• The UK remains a global leader in government financial support for business research and development but lags in direct funding
• Skills mismatches persist, with 37% of UK workers feeling overqualified for their jobs
• The UK is a leading innovator in renewable energy technologies, ranking fourth in public R&D spending on low-carbon energy
• Compiled by policy experts from the University of Cambridge, the report provides an easy-to-navigate overview of key trends across UK industry.  

Read the full report.

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Talented individuals from the world of science, music, drama, law, economics, sport and political activism are recognised in the list of distinguished people nominated for honorary degrees from the University of Cambridge this year.

Michael Omari Owuo Junior, better known as Stormzy, will receive a Doctorate in Law in recognition of his philanthropic work and impact in a number of fields, including education, music, sport and literature. He launched his Scholarship programme at the University of Cambridge in 2018 funding two Black British students per year covering both their tuition fees and maintenance costs. Three years later, the programme was expanded after HSBC UK agreed to fund a further ten students per year. So far, 55 students have been supported by a Stormzy Scholarship and 2025 will see the largest group graduate so far. The ‘Stormzy effect’ has been credited with being a contributor to an increase in applications to Cambridge from Black students across the UK.

An honorary Doctorate in Letters will be conferred upon the actor Sir Simon Russell Beale.  Renowned for his stage, film and television roles, Sir Simon is an Honorary Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, where he studied for his undergraduate degree. He is the recipient of two BAFTA awards, three Laurence Olivier Awards and a Tony. He was knighted in 2019.

Professor Angela Davis, the political activist, philosopher and author, will also receive a Doctorate in Letters. A Distinguished Professor Emerita from the University of California, Santa Cruz, Professor Davis is a radical feminist thinker and prominent civil rights campaigner who was an active member of the Communist Party and champion of the prison abolition movement. She is a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ rights.

Lady Arden of Heswall, former Justice of the UK’s Supreme Court, and an Honorary Fellow of Girton College, will receive a Doctorate in Law. She was previously a Judge in the Court of Appeal and before that, at the High Court of Justice, where she was the first female judge assigned to the Chancery Division. She is a former Chair of the Law Commission and a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. She was made a Privy Counsellor in 2000.

A Doctorate in Law will also be conferred on former Olympic rower and current chair of UK Sport, Dame Katherine Grainger. She is one of the most decorated British female Olympians and the only British woman to have won medals at five successive Olympic Games. In November, she was elected as the next chair of the British Olympic Association, the first woman to hold the post. She is currently Chancellor of the University of Glasgow.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist, Sir Oliver Hart, is to receive a Doctorate in Science. He is currently the Lewis P and Linda L Geyser University Professor at Harvard University. Hart’s work focuses on the theory of contracts, how parties can write better contracts, and on the social responsibility of business. He was knighted in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours.

Professor Maria Leptin, President of the European Research Council, is to be conferred with a Doctorate in Medical Science. Formerly a Staff Scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, she is a developmental biologist and immunologist. She is best known for her work on the mechanisms that allow a developing body to take on its correct shape. She was formerly Director of the European Molecular Biology Organization in Heidelberg.

Sir John Rutter is no stranger to Cambridge, being an Honorary Fellow at Clare College and Director of Music at the College from 1975 to 1979. A composer, arranger and conductor of choral music, his work has been performed all over the world. Founder and Director of the Cambridge Singers, Sir John, who was knighted in 2024, will receive a Doctorate in Music.

All eight distinguished individuals have accepted the University Council’s nomination to receive an honorary doctorate. Subject to final approval by the Regent House, the University’s governing body, they are now due to be admitted to their degrees at a special Congregation in the Senate-House on Wednesday 25 June, at which the University’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Deborah Prentice, will preside and which will be attended by staff, students and alumni as well as specially invited guests.

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A delegation of university representatives and innovation leaders from Cambridge, UK, recently visited Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to examine one of the world’s most successful innovation hubs.

The tour included visits to CIC (Cambridge Innovation Center), Greentown Labs, LabCentral, The Engine, MassRobotics, and Harvard Innovation Labs – each playing a vital role in supporting technology startups and scientific enterprise.

The delegates met with entrepreneurs, investors, and research leaders to understand how these organisations facilitate the transition from cutting-edge research to commercial success. They observed how dedicated innovation hubs provide early-stage companies with access to lab space, venture funding, and corporate partnerships, creating an environment where ideas can rapidly develop into high-growth businesses.

The visit highlighted the impact of physical infrastructure in driving innovation. The Engine, for example, supports startups developing breakthrough technologies by offering 200,000 square feet (more than 18,500 m²) of lab space, funding, and specialised resources. Greentown Labs, the largest climate tech incubator in North America, and LabCentral, a shared lab facility for biotech startups, provide entrepreneurs with critical resources and networks to scale their businesses.

These hubs foster dense, high-energy ecosystems where startups, researchers, and investors work in close proximity. Co-location with major research institutions and established tech companies further accelerates innovation by facilitating knowledge exchange and collaboration.

Cambridge, UK, is already a leading centre for research and innovation. However, the visit reinforced the need for investment in dedicated innovation infrastructure alongside the existing world-class science to scale up commercial success. Boston’s innovation growth has been underpinned by over $1.5bn (£1.16bn) in state funding over the past 15 years, ensuring startups have access to space, funding, and industry connections.

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Deborah Prentice, said: “Kendall Square demonstrates what is possible when world-class research, investment, and entrepreneurial ambition come together in a concentrated ecosystem.

“Cambridge, UK, has all the ingredients to be a global leader in science-driven enterprise, but we must ensure our innovation infrastructure matches our research excellence. This visit reinforced the urgency of scaling up our support for deep-tech and life sciences startups to drive economic growth and tackle global challenges.”
 

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In its 2024 Annual Review, Cambridge Enterprise, the University’s innovation arm, reports significant growth across a wide range of activities supporting the translation of University research into societal benefit and helping Cambridge realise its potential as a globally leading cluster.

Cambridge Enterprise is crucial in translating the University’s research into positive social and economic change.Dr Diarmuid O’Brien, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Innovation, University of Cambridge

25 new spinouts were formed in 2023-24, taking Cambridge Enterprise’s total portfolio to 174 companies. In the same period, it has helped with the submission of more than 450 patent applications and more than 750 approvals for commercial and research licences.  

New initiatives designed to further boost the number of high-potential spinouts emerging from the University, include the Technology Investment Fund (TIF) which during its first nine months has invested more than £2 million across 20 projects.

Founders at the University of Cambridge, a Cambridge Enterprise initiative to support University entrepreneurs, launched two new programmes, START 1.0 and SYNC in 2023-24. START 1.0 is an accelerator programme for very early-stage founders. Its first cohort included 11 companies, working to address global challenges ranging from climate change to healthcare with seven securing further funding within six months. SYNC is a new co-founder matching programme that will support, accelerate and scale new founders and companies from the University.

Dr Jim Glasheen, Chief Executive, Cambridge Enterprise, said: “Cambridge Enterprise remains committed to ensuring the innovations that spring from the University achieve their broader positive impact on society, and to our vital role in activating and enhancing the globally recognised Cambridge innovation ecosystem.”

Dr Diarmuid O’Brien, the University’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Innovation, added: “Cambridge Enterprise is crucial in translating the University’s research into positive social and economic change. From the full spectrum of innovation services that it provides for the University to its critical role in enabling transformational impact from University research, Cambridge Enterprise sets the standard for university innovation.”

Reflecting on the success of Cambridge Enterprise’s innovation activities, its Chair, Ajay Chowdhury, said: “Cambridge Enterprise is in an incredibly strong position, with consultancy and research tools revenues at an all-time high, new initiatives to accelerate innovation and spinout formation, record levels of venture investment and great achievements for our portfolio companies.”

In partnership with the University and Cambridge Innovation Capital, Cambridge Enterprise leads Innovate Cambridge, an inclusive, ambitious innovation roadmap for Cambridge to encourage collaboration and action to help Cambridge realise its potential as a globally leading cluster. In October 2024, a ten-year plan for the city and region was unveiled at the Innovate Cambridge Summit, attended by over 400 leaders.

Read Cambridge Enterprise’s Annual Review 2024

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Cambridge University experienced a day of 2 halves at The Varsity Matches on Saturday 8 March, with the men’s team securing a thrilling 35-28 victory over Oxford University’s Dark Blues while the women’s side fell to a 27-7 defeat in a hard-fought contest at Saracens’ StoneX Stadium. 

The men’s match saw Cambridge open the scoring with a fifth-minute penalty from George Bland (King’s), but Oxford responded with 2 tries, both converted, to establish a 21-6 lead. Despite the early setback, Cambridge rallied before halftime with tries from Matt Riddington (St Edmund’s) and Alex Christey (St John’s), both converted by Bland, to narrow the gap to 21-18.

Oxford extended their lead early in the second half but Cambridge refused to relent. A try from Ryan Santos (Jesus), followed by a decisive score from Luke John (Emmanuel), turned the tide in Cambridge’s favour. Bland’s conversion and a late penalty sealed a dramatic 35-28 victory, marking the Light Blues’ third consecutive Varsity Match win. 

The women’s match proved to be a tougher challenge and despite a valiant defensive effort, the Light Blues were unable to contain a strong Oxford side. The Dark Blues scored 2 early tries and added a third before halftime to give Oxford a 15-0 lead.

Cambridge showed renewed determination in the second half, with Zoe Wright (Clare) scoring a try after a quick tap penalty. Phoebe Jackson’s (Jesus) conversion brought the score to 15-7, but Oxford crossed the line twice more to secure a 27-7 victory for the Dark Blues. While the women’s team didn’t go home with the trophy their relentless tackling and commitment to the game earned them praise.

Congratulations to all 4 teams who competed on the day, their Coaches and everyone working behind the scenes. It was a day that demonstrated the spirit and determination that define University sports and The Varsity Matches.

Varsity women’s match

Cambridge men’s team:

Bland; Santos, John, Riddington, Andrew; Bottomley, Holdroyd; Collins, Gompels, Edwards, Beaumont, Kantolinna, Hughes, Christey, Tosa. 

Replacements: Petty (Collins, 40), Hide (Holdroyd, 55), Allinson (Bottomley, 55), Jones (Beaumont, 55), Day (Santos, 77). Not used: Du Roy, Addai, Evans.

Cambridge women’s team: 

Smith; Embil, Yau, Jackson, Chaoui; McGregor, Glazier; Jones, Warner, Heathfield, Harding, Wright, Millar, Martin, Brown.

Replacements: Haspel (McGregor, 31). Latimer (Harding, 40), Crozier (Martin, 40), Lord (Chaoui, 40), Ubom (Jones, 41), Weatherhogg (Heathfield, 71), Newton-Ingham (Smith, 74), Chadirchi (Warner, 79).

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Researchers at the University of Cambridge have discovered genes linked to obesity in both Labradors and humans. They say the effects can be over-ridden with a strict diet and exercise regime.

Dogs at high genetic risk of obesity showed signs of having higher appetite, as has also been shown for people at high genetic risk of obesity.Natalie Wallis

Researchers studying British Labrador retrievers have identified multiple genes associated with canine obesity and shown that these genes are also associated with obesity in humans.  

The dog gene found to be most strongly associated with obesity in Labradors is called DENND1B. Humans also carry the DENND1B gene, and the researchers found that this gene is also linked with obesity in people.  

DENND1B was found to directly affect a brain pathway responsible for regulating the energy balance in the body, called the leptin melanocortin pathway.  

An additional four genes associated with canine obesity, but which exert a smaller effect than DENND1B, were also mapped directly onto human genes. 

“These genes are not immediately obvious targets for weight-loss drugs, because they control other key biological processes in the body that should not be interfered with.

But the results emphasise the importance of fundamental brain pathways in controlling appetite and body weight,” said Alyce McClellan in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, and joint first author of the report.  

“We found that dogs at high genetic risk of obesity were more interested in food,” said Natalie Wallis in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, and joint first author of the report.  

She added: “We measured how much dogs pestered their owners for food and whether they were fussy eaters. Dogs at high genetic risk of obesity showed signs of having higher appetite, as has also been shown for people at high genetic risk of obesity.”  

The study found that owners who strictly controlled their dogs’ diet and exercise managed to prevent even those with high genetic risk from becoming obese – but much more attention and effort was required.  

Similarly, people at high genetic risk of developing obesity will not necessarily become obese, if they follow a strict diet and exercise regime – but they are more prone to weight gain. 

As with human obesity, no single gene determined whether the dogs were prone to obesity; the net effect of multiple genetic variants determined whether dogs were at high or low risk. 

The results are published today in the journal ‘Science’. 

“Studying the dogs showed us something really powerful: owners of slim dogs are not morally superior. The same is true of slim people. If you have a high genetic risk of obesity, then when there’s lots of food available you’re prone to overeating and gaining weight unless you put a huge effort into not doing so,” said Dr Eleanor Raffan, a researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience who led the study. 

She added: “By studying dogs we could measure their desire for food separately to the control owners exerted over their dog’s diet and exercise. In human studies, it’s harder to study how genetically driven appetite requires greater willpower to remain slim, as both are affecting the one person.” 

The current human obesity epidemic is mirrored by an obesity epidemic in dogs. About 40-60% of pet dogs are overweight or obese, which can lead to a range of health problems. 

Dogs are a good model for studying human obesity: they develop obesity through similar environmental influences as humans, and because dogs within any given breed have a high degree of genetic similarity, their genes can be more easily linked to disease. 

To get their results, the researchers recruited owners with pet dogs in which they measured body fat, scored ‘greediness’, and took a saliva sample for DNA. Then they analysed the genetics of each dog. By comparing the obesity status of the dog to its DNA, they could identify the genes linked to canine obesity. 
Dogs carrying the genetic variant most associated with obesity, DENND1B, had around 8% more body fat than those without it.  

The researchers then examined whether the genes they identified were relevant to human obesity. They looked at both large population-based studies, and at cohorts of patients with severe, early onset obesity where single genetic changes are suspected to cause the weight gain.  

The researchers say owners can keep their dogs distracted from constant hunger by spreading out each daily food ration, for example by using puzzle feeders or scattering the food around the garden so it takes longer to eat, or by choosing a more satisfying nutrient composition for their pets. 

Raffan said: “This work shows how similar dogs are to humans genetically. Studying the dogs meant we had reason to focus on this particular gene, which has led to a big advance in understanding how our own brain controls our eating behaviour and energy use.”  

The research was funded by Wellcome, the BBSRC, Dogs Trust, Morris Animal Foundation, MRC, France Genomique consortium, European Genomic Institute for Diabetes, French National Center for Precision Diabetic Medicine, Royal Society, NIHR, Botnar Foundation, Bernard Wolfe Health Neuroscience Endowment, Leducq Fondation, Kennel Club Charitable Trust. 

Reference 
Wallis, N.J. et al: ‘Canine genome-wide association study identifies DENND1B as an obesity gene in dogs and humans.’ Science, March 2025. DOI: 10.1126/science.ads2145  
 

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A sneaky form of advertising favoured by oil giants influences public opinion with climate action misperceptions, but researchers are studying potential solutions.

In the battle against climate disinformation, native advertising is a fierce foe. A study published in the journal npj Climate Action by researchers from Boston University (BU) and the University of Cambridge, evaluates two promising tools to fight misleading native advertising campaigns put forth by big oil companies.

Many major news organisations now offer corporations the opportunity to pay for articles that mimic in tone and format the publication’s regular reported content. These ‘native advertisements’ are designed to camouflage seamlessly into their surroundings, containing only subtle disclosure messages often overlooked or misunderstood by readers. Fossil fuel companies are spending tens of millions of dollars to shape public perceptions of the climate crisis.

“Because these ads appear on reputable, trusted news platforms, and are formatted like reported pieces, they often come across to readers as genuine journalism,” said lead author Michelle Amazeen from BU’s College of Communication. “Research has shown native ads are really effective at swaying readers’ opinions.”

The study is the first to investigate how two mitigation strategies — disclosures and inoculations — may reduce climate misperceptions caused by exposure to native advertising from the fossil fuel industry. The authors found that when participants were shown a real native ad from ExxonMobil, disclosure messages helped them recognise advertising, while inoculations helped reduce their susceptibility to misleading claims.

“As fossil fuel companies invest in disguising their advertisements, this study furthers our understanding of how to help readers recognise when commercial content is masquerading as news and spreading climate misperceptions,” said co-author Benjamin Sovacool, also from BU.

“Our study showed that communication-led climate action is possible and scalable by countering covert greenwashing campaigns, such as native advertising, at the source,” said co-author Dr Ramit Debnath from Cambridge’s Department of Architecture. “The insights we’ve gained from this work will help us design better interventions for climate misinformation.”

The research builds on a growing body of work assessing how people recognise and respond to covert misinformation campaigns. By better understanding these processes, the researchers hope that they can prevent misinformation from taking root and changing people’s beliefs and actions on important issues like climate change.

‘The Future of Energy’ ad

Starting in 2018, readers of The New York Times website encountered what appeared to be an article, titled “The Future of Energy,” describing efforts by oil and gas giant ExxonMobil to invest in algae-based biofuels. Because it appeared beneath the Times’ masthead, in the outlet’s typical formatting and font, many readers likely missed the small banner at the top of the page mentioning that it was an ad sponsored by ExxonMobil.

The ad, part of a $5-million-dollar campaign, neglected to mention the company’s staggering carbon footprint. It also omitted key context, The Intercept reported, like that the stated goal for algae-based biofuel production would represent only 0.2% of the company’s overall refinery capacity. In a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, Massachusetts cited the ad as evidence of the company’s “false and misleading” communications, with several states pursuing similar cases.

Putting two interventions to the test

The researchers examined how more than a thousand participants responded to “The Future of Energy” ad in a simulated social media feed.

Before viewing the ad, participants saw one, both, or neither of the following intervention messages:

An inoculation message designed to psychologically ‘inoculate’ readers from future influence by broadly warning them of potential exposures to misleading paid content. In this study, the inoculation message was a fictitious social media post from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reminding people to be wary of online misinformation.

A disclosure message with a simple line of text appearing on a post. In this study, the text “Paid Post by ExxonMobil” accompanied the piece. Studies have shown that more often than not, when native ads are shared on social media, this disclosure disappears.

Bolstering psychological resilience to native ads

The team found that the ad improved opinions of ExxonMobil’s sustainability across the study’s many participants, regardless of which messages they saw, but that the interventions helped to reduce this effect. Some of the key findings include:

The presence of a disclosure more than doubled the likelihood that a participant recognised the content as an ad. However, the participants who had seen a disclosure and those who had not were equally likely to agree with the statement “companies like ExxonMobil are investing heavily in becoming more environmentally friendly.”

Inoculation messages were much more effective than disclosures at protecting people’s existing beliefs on climate change, decreasing the likelihood that participants would agree with misleading claims presented in the ad.

“Disclosures helped people recognise advertising. However, they didn’t help them recognise that the material was biased and misleading,” said Amazeen. “Inoculation messaging provides general education that can be used to fill in that gap and help people resist its persuasive effects. Increasing general awareness about misinformation strategies used by self-interested actors, combined with clearer labels on sponsored content, will help people distinguish native ads from reported content.”

Reference:
Michelle A. Amazeen et al. ‘The “Future of Energy”? Building resilience to ExxonMobil’s disinformation through disclosures and inoculation.’ npj climate action (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s44168-025-00209-6

Adapted from a Boston University story.

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A voluntary pledge made by UK shooting organisations in 2020 to replace lead shot with non-toxic alternatives by 2025 has failed, analysis by Cambridge researchers finds.

The voluntary route has now been tested – with efforts made by many people – and it has not been successful.Rhys Green

The pledge, made in February 2020 by the UK’s nine leading game shooting and rural organisations, aimed to benefit wildlife and the environment and ensure a market for the healthiest game meat food products. 

But a Cambridge team, working with the University of the Highlands and Islands, has consistently shown that lead shot was not being phased out quickly enough to achieve a complete voluntary transition to non-toxic ammunition by 2025. In a final study, published today in the journal Conservation Evidence, the team concludes that the intended transition has failed.

The team has closely monitored the impact of the pledge every year since its introduction, recruiting expert volunteers to buy whole pheasants from butchers, game dealers and supermarkets across Britain and recover embedded shotgun pellets for analysis. 

In 2025, the study – called SHOT-SWITCH – found that of 171 pheasants found to contain shot, 99% had been killed with lead ammunition. 

This year, for the first time, the team also analysed shotgun pellets found in red grouse carcasses shot in the 2024/25 shooting season and on sale through butchers’ shops and online retailers. In all 78 grouse carcasses from which any shot was recovered, the shot was lead. 

“Many members of the shooting community had hoped that the voluntary pledge away from lead ammunition would avert the need for regulation. But the voluntary route has now been tested – with efforts made by many people – and it has not been successful,” said Professor Rhys Green in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology and lead author of the report.

Eating game meat killed using lead shot will expose people unnecessarily to additional dietary lead. Lead is toxic to humans even in very small concentrations; the development of the nervous system in young and unborn children is especially sensitive to its effects. As a result, many food safety agencies now advise that young children and pregnant women should avoid, or minimise, eating game meat from animals killed using lead ammunition.

Discarded shot from hunting also poisons and kills many tens of thousands of the UK’s wild birds each year.

Despite proposing the voluntary change, many shooting organisations and some individual shooters do not support proposed regulatory restrictions on lead ammunition.

Green said: “Private individuals pay a lot of money to shoot pheasants on some private estates – and people don’t like to change their habits. It’s a bit like wearing car seatbelts, or not smoking in pubs. Despite the good reasons for doing these things, some people were strongly against using regulation to achieve those changes, which are now widely accepted as beneficial. The parallel with shooting game with lead shotgun ammunition is striking.” 

Danish shooters now say that the legal ban on lead introduced in Denmark around 30 years ago was justified. They say it has not reduced the practicality or popularity of their sport, and has increased its acceptability to wider society.

“Although a few large UK estates have managed to enforce non-lead ammunition on pheasant shoots, some have had to be quite draconian in order to do it, with the estate gamekeepers insisting on loading the guns for the shooters,” added Green.

In the 2020/21 and 2021/22 shooting seasons, over 99% of the pheasants studied were shot using lead ammunition. This figure dropped slightly to 94% in 2022/23 and 93% in 2023/24, with the remaining pheasants killed by ammunition made of steel or a metal called bismuth, before rising to 99% again in 2024/25.

Retail pressure

The researchers also checked up on a pledge made by Waitrose in 2019 to stop selling game killed with lead ammunition. 

They found that the retailer had been largely let down by suppliers, and that some of their shooters continued to shoot using lead despite making assurances to the contrary. As a result, Waitrose did not sell oven-ready pheasants at all between 2021 and 2023. It sold pheasants again in January 2024 and the 2024/25 season, but the researchers showed that the majority had been killed using lead shot.

In 2022 the National Game Dealers Association (NGDA), which buys game and sells it to the public and food retailers, also announced it would no longer sell game of any kind that had been shot using lead ammunition. But this pledge has since been withdrawn. The researchers bought 2024/25 season pheasants from three NGDA member businesses and found that all had been shot with lead ammunition.

Inside influence 

The researchers also analysed all articles relating to the voluntary transition published in the magazine of the UK’s largest shooting organisation, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation. They found that articles near the beginning of the five-year pledge communicated clear, frequent and positive messages about the effectiveness and practicality of non-lead shotgun ammunition.

But by 2023, mentions of the transition and encouragement to follow it had dropped dramatically. 

The upshot

At the request of the Defra Secretary of State, the UK Health & Safety Executive (HSE) has assessed the risks to the environment and human health posed by lead in shot and bullets. Its report, published in December 2024, proposes that the UK Government bans the use of lead shot and large calibre bullets for game shooting because of the risks they pose to the environment and health. This recommendation is currently under review by Defra ministers, with a response due in March 2025.

Steel shotgun pellets are a practical alternative to lead and can be used in the vast majority of shotguns, as can other safe lead-free alternatives. But the results of this study indicate UK hunters remain unwilling to make the switch voluntarily.

Since 2010, UK governments have preferred voluntary controls over regulation in many areas of environment and food policy and have suggested that regulation be used only as a last resort.

“Shooting organisations did a lot of questionnaire surveys when the pledge was introduced in 2020, and the results suggested many shooters thought the time had come to switch away from lead ammunition. Those responses stand in contrast to what we’ve actually measured for both pheasant and grouse,” said study co-author Dr Mark Taggart at the University of the Highlands and Islands.

Toxic lead

A previous study led by Green and colleagues found that pheasants killed by lead shot contained many fragments of lead too small to detect by eye or touch, and too distant from the shot to be removed without throwing away a large proportion of otherwise useable meat. This means that eating pheasant killed using lead shot is likely to expose consumers to raised levels of lead in their diet, even if the meat is carefully prepared to remove whole shotgun pellets and the most damaged tissue.

Lead has been banned from use in paint and petrol for decades. It is toxic to humans when absorbed by the body and there is no known safe level of exposure. Lead accumulates in the body over time and can cause long-term harm, including increased risk of cardiovascular disease and kidney disease in adults. Lead is known to lower IQ in young children and affect the neurological development of unborn babies.

The studies were part-funded by the RSPB, Waitrose & Partners, and an anonymous donor. They were supported by a group of unpaid volunteers, who are co-authors of the reports.
 

References

Green, R.E. et al: ‘The proportion of common pheasants shot using lead shotgun ammunition in Britain has barely changed despite five years of voluntary efforts to switch from lead to non-lead ammunition.’ March 2025, Conservation Evidence. DOI: 10.52201/CEJ22/EXYS6184

Green, R.E. et al.: ‘Sampling of red grouse carcasses in Britain indicates no progress during an intended five-year voluntary transition from lead to non-lead shotgun ammunition.’ February 2025, Conservation Evidence. DOI: 10.52201/CEJ22/YYWM1722
 

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