Joining from the University of Hong Kong is Alfonso Ngan, Kingboard Professor in Materials Engineering. Holding a PhD and DSc from the University of Birmingham, he is internationally renowned for his work on the microstructural basis of properties of engineering materials, nanomechanics, and micro-scale plasticity. He is an International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK, a Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences and serves in a number of advisory and management boards in the government and other organizations in Hong Kong.
Professor of Health Outcomes Measurement, Devin Peipert, joins from Northwestern University. His FDA-funded work focuses on patient-reported outcomes in clinical trials to assess drug intolerability. He chairs the Patient Reported Outcomes Group for the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) ECOG-ACRIN cancer trials network and is active in the NCI Tolerability Consortium. He chaired the International Society for Quality of Life Research Psychometrics Special Interest Group and is active in multiple scientific societies focused on clinical outcome assessment.
Professor Joy Porter is an interdisciplinary researcher of Indigenous historical and environmental themes and leads the Treatied Spaces Research Group. She serves on the UKRI Interdisciplinary Assessment Panel, AHRC Review College, and reviews for the Fulbright Commission, Leverhulme Trust and NERC, among others. She served as UK REF 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Panel Member and full Panel Member (UoA28, History) and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Professor Nadia Schoenmakers joins from the University of Cambridge where she was Wellcome Senior Research Fellow and Honorary Consultant Endocrinologist. Her research, which has both laboratory-based and clinical elements, focuses on a range of thyroid disorders, in particular primary and central congenital hypothyroidism and resistance to thyroid hormone. At Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, her clinical work included management of general thyroid disease, thyroid disorders in pregnancy and involvement in the Cambridge National service for unusual thyroid disorders.
125th Anniversary Fellows
Dr Özge Eyice, Associate Professor in Molecular Microbial Ecology, focuses on the diversity, structure and function of microbial communities. She investigates methane production via one-carbon compound degradation in anoxic sediments such as from estuaries and wetlands. Her research interests also include resource and energy recovery from anaerobic digesters, and more recently the impact of plastic pollution on microbial communities in aquatic ecosystems. Her work is mainly funded by NERC, the Leverhulme Trust, and the European Union.
Associate Professor in AI and Digital Health Technologies, Dr Xiaoxuan Liu joined the University from Apple, having previously been an ophthalmologist in the NHS. She leads the AI theme in the Birmingham Health Partners Centre for Regulatory Science and Innovation, working with international regulators, academia, government and industry on the responsible innovation of AI health technologies.
Associate Professor in History of Energy and Environment, Dr Hiroki Shin joins from Queen’s University Belfast. A public historian, he led the Communicating Material Cultures of Energy project, which was based in the Science Museum, London. His current project examines the roles of cultural and heritage institutions in responding to today’s climate crisis as a way of envisaging society’s cultural adaptation to climate change.
Dr Mary Zhang, Associate Professor of International Social Policy joins from the University of Oxford where she lectured in Quantitative Research Methods. Her work, which focuses on sustainable development, inequalities, climate change and poverty, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, receives funding from ESRC, IDRC, NERC, UKRI, UNICEF.
University of Birmingham Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Rachel O’Reilly said: “Congratulations to the outstanding academics who become our first cohort of 125th Fellows and Chairs. I am very much looking forward to working with and supporting our new colleagues and am delighted that to mark our 125th year as a leading civic and global university, we are looking for more exceptional researchers to join us. Our campaign to attract applications from researchers and senior academics across the world continues later this year.”
The Fellowships offer excellent opportunities for career progression and a bespoke package of high-quality support to enable those with demonstrable impactful research to excel in their field. The scheme aims to develop academics who epitomise citizenship and collaboration – protecting research time through careful scheduling and planning to give appointees the freedom they need to carry out world-leading research.
Applications for the next phase of the 125th Anniversary Fellows and Chairs scheme will open in early October.
