University of Cambridge

They are among 92 distinguished scholars to be elected to the fellowship in recognition of their work in fields ranging from medieval history to international relations. The Cambridge academics made Fellows of the Academy this year are: Professor Jeremy Adelman (Faculty of History; Global History Lab; Darwin College) Professor Anthony Bale (Faculty of English; Girton College) Professor Annabel Brett (Faculty of History; Gonville and Caius College) Professor Hasok Chang (Dept. of History and Philosophy of Science; Clare Hall) Professor Jennifer Howard-Grenville (Cambridge Judge Business School; Trinity Hall) Professor Barak Kushner (Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies; Corpus Christi College) Professor Marta Mirazón Lahr (Dept. of Archaeology, Clare College) Professor Yael Navaro (Dept. of Social Anthropology; Newnham College) Professor Joanna Page (Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics; Centre of Latin American Studies; Robinson College) Professor Clare Pettitt (Faculty of English; Emmanuel College) Professor Diane Reay (Faculty of Education) Professor John Robb (Dept. of Archaeology; Peterhouse) Founded in 1902, the British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. It is a Fellowship consisting of over 1700 of the leading minds in these subjects from the UK and overseas. Current Fellows include the classicist Professor Dame Mary Beard, the historian Professor Sir Simon Schama and philosopher Professor Baroness Onora O’Neill, while previous Fellows include Dame Frances Yates, Sir Winston Churchill, Seamus Heaney and Beatrice Webb. The Academy is also a funder of both national and international research, as well as a forum for debate and public engagement. In 2025, a total of 58 UK Fellows, 30 International Fellows and four Honorary Fellows have been elected to the British Academy Fellowship. Professor Marta Mirazón Lahr said: “I am honoured and delighted to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy. As a native of South America who has been welcomed and encouraged throughout my career in the UK, I feel particularly privileged to join the academy. My work spans anthropology and archaeology and it is pleasing to see inter-disciplinarity recognised. Research in human origins is very dependent upon official and community support across many countries, and I am deeply grateful to the people of Brazil, India, Libya, Melanesia and specially Kenya who have made my work possible (and so enjoyable!), and I look forward to contributing to the Academy’s global mission.” Professor Joanna Page said: “I am deeply honoured to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy, and I look forward to supporting its mission. It is more important than ever to uphold the value of the humanities and interdisciplinary approaches in forging more just and sustainable futures. Learning from the perspectives and experiences of other regions, including Latin America, is essential to that work. I would particularly like to thank the vibrant community of Latin Americanists at Cambridge – staff and students, past and present – who have made this such a stimulating place to do research.” Professor Barak Kushner said: “It is an honour to be recognised by the British Academy, though also a bit daunting to be put on par with scholars I have looked up to for years. Recognition of this kind brings more attention to the importance of transnational history when researching East Asia and the need to look beyond national borders.” Professor Yael Navaro said: “I feel truly honoured to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy. It couldn't be a more important time to mobilise the social sciences and humanities to address some of the most critical issues of our era." Welcoming the Fellows, Professor Susan J. Smith PBA, new President of the British Academy, said: “One of my first acts as the incoming President of the British Academy is to welcome this year’s newly elected Fellows. What a line-up! With specialisms ranging from the neuroscience of memory to the power of music and the structural causes of poverty, they represent the very best of the humanities and social sciences. They bring years of experience, evidence-based arguments and innovative thinking to the profound challenges of our age: managing the economy, enabling democracy, and securing the quality of human life. “This year, we have increased the number of new Fellows by nearly ten per cent to cover some spaces between disciplines. Champions of research excellence, every new Fellow enlarges our capacity to interpret the past, understand the present, and shape resilient, sustainable futures. It is a privilege to extend my warmest congratulations to them all.” Twelve academics from the University of Cambridge have been made Fellows of the prestigious British Academy for the humanities and social science It couldn't be a more important time to mobilize the social sciences and humanities to address some of the most critical issues of our eraYael NavaroThe British AcademyThe exterior of the British Academy in London The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms. YesLicence type: Attribution

Because of its track record in recruiting and supporting top international researchers, the University will get a share of the new £54 million Global Talent Fund, along with 12 of the UK’s leading universities and research institutions. From AI to medicine, the Fund is designed to attract a total of 60-80 top researchers (both lead researchers and their teams) to the UK, working in the eight high priority sectors critical to the Government’s modern Industrial Strategy. By bringing the very best minds in fields that will be critical to the future of life and work to the UK, the Government aims to pave the way for the products, jobs and even industries that define tomorrow’s economy, to be made and grow in Britain. Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, said: "The University is grateful for this award of funding. It will bolster emerging and accelerating research areas, in line with the goals of the Government's Industrial Strategy. This investment will be pivotal in securing and supporting international academic expertise and strengthening the strategic opportunities the University is seeking to catalyse for both the University and the UK more widely.  We look forward to the opportunities this will unlock." From Argentine – and former Cambridge scientist – César Milstein’s work on antibodies, to Hong Kong-born Sir Charles Kao who led the development of fibre optics, through to the efforts of German Ernst Chain – another former Cambridge scientist – to make penicillin usable in medicine, there is a long pedigree of overseas researchers making great breakthroughs whilst working in the UK. The Government says that driving new tech innovations and scientific breakthroughs will fire up the UK economy and put rocket boosters on the Government’s Plan for Change. The IMF estimates that breakthroughs in AI alone could boost productivity by as much as 1.5 percentage points a year, which could be worth up to an average £47 billion to the UK each year over a decade. Other technologies could be gamechangers too: quantum computing could add over £11 billion to the UK’s GDP by 2045, while engineering biology could drive anywhere between £1.6-£3.1 trillion in global impact by 2040.  The Global Talent Fund, administered by UKRI, is just one part of over £115 million funding that is being dedicated to attracting the very best scientific and research talent to the UK. Work to cultivate top AI research talent in the UK is further bolstered through the Spärck AI scholarships, founded in partnership with Cambridge, which will provide full funding for master’s degrees at nine leading UK universities specialising in artificial intelligence and STEM subjects.  Science Minister Lord Vallance said: "Genius is not bound by geography. But the UK is one of the few places blessed with the infrastructure, skills base, world-class institutions and international ties needed to incubate brilliant ideas, and turn them into new medicines that save lives, new products that make our lives easier, and even entirely new jobs and industries. Bringing these innovations to life, here in Britain, will be critical to delivering this Government’s Plan for Change. "My message to the bold and the brave who are advancing new ideas, wherever they are, is: our doors are open to you. We want to work with you, support you, and give you a home where you can make your ideas a reality we all benefit from."    Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: "The UK is home to some of the world’s best universities which are vital for attracting international top talent. Supported by our new Global Talent Taskforce, the Global Talent Fund will cement our position as a leading choice for the world’s top researchers to make their home here, supercharging growth and delivering on our Plan for Change." Cambridge University has been selected as a partner in a key Government initiative to attract more of the world’s best research talent to the UK. This investment will be pivotal in securing and supporting international academic expertise and strengthening the strategic opportunities the University is seeking to catalyse. Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms. Yes

Because of its track record in recruiting and supporting top international researchers, the University will get a share of the new £54 million Global Talent Fund, along with 12 of the UK’s leading universities and research institutions. From AI to medicine, the Fund is designed to attract a total of 60-80 top researchers (both lead researchers and their teams) to the UK, working in the eight high priority sectors critical to the Government’s modern Industrial Strategy. By bringing the very best minds in fields that will be critical to the future of life and work to the UK, the Government aims to pave the way for the products, jobs and even industries that define tomorrow’s economy, to be made and grow in Britain. Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, said: "The University is grateful for this award of funding. It will bolster emerging and accelerating research areas, in line with the goals of the Government's Industrial Strategy. This investment will be pivotal in securing and supporting international academic expertise and strengthening the strategic opportunities the University is seeking to catalyse for both the University and the UK more widely.  We look forward to the opportunities this will unlock." From Argentine – and former Cambridge scientist – César Milstein’s work on antibodies, to Hong Kong-born Sir Charles Kao who led the development of fibre optics, through to the efforts of German Ernst Chain – another former Cambridge scientist – to make penicillin usable in medicine, there is a long pedigree of overseas researchers making great breakthroughs whilst working in the UK. The Government says that driving new tech innovations and scientific breakthroughs will fire up the UK economy and put rocket boosters on the Government’s Plan for Change. The IMF estimates that breakthroughs in AI alone could boost productivity by as much as 1.5 percentage points a year, which could be worth up to an average £47 billion to the UK each year over a decade. Other technologies could be gamechangers too: quantum computing could add over £11 billion to the UK’s GDP by 2045, while engineering biology could drive anywhere between £1.6-£3.1 trillion in global impact by 2040.  The Global Talent Fund, administered by UKRI, is just one part of over £115 million funding that is being dedicated to attracting the very best scientific and research talent to the UK. Work to cultivate top AI research talent in the UK is further bolstered through the Spärck AI scholarships, founded in partnership with Cambridge, which will provide full funding for master’s degrees at nine leading UK universities specialising in artificial intelligence and STEM subjects.  Science Minister Lord Vallance said: "Genius is not bound by geography. But the UK is one of the few places blessed with the infrastructure, skills base, world-class institutions and international ties needed to incubate brilliant ideas, and turn them into new medicines that save lives, new products that make our lives easier, and even entirely new jobs and industries. Bringing these innovations to life, here in Britain, will be critical to delivering this Government’s Plan for Change. "My message to the bold and the brave who are advancing new ideas, wherever they are, is: our doors are open to you. We want to work with you, support you, and give you a home where you can make your ideas a reality we all benefit from."    Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: "The UK is home to some of the world’s best universities which are vital for attracting international top talent. Supported by our new Global Talent Taskforce, the Global Talent Fund will cement our position as a leading choice for the world’s top researchers to make their home here, supercharging growth and delivering on our Plan for Change." Cambridge University has been selected as a partner in a key Government initiative to attract more of the world’s best research talent to the UK. This investment will be pivotal in securing and supporting international academic expertise and strengthening the strategic opportunities the University is seeking to catalyse. Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms. Yes

Scientists have used an AI model to reassess the results of a completed clinical trial for an Alzheimer’s disease drug. They found the drug slowed cognitive decline by 46% in a group of patients with early stage, slow-progressing mild cognitive impairment – a condition that can progress to Alzheimer’s. Using AI allowed the team to split trial participants into two groups: either slowly or rapidly progressing towards Alzheimer’s disease. They could then look at the effects of the drug on each group. More precise selection of trial participants in this way could help select patients most likely to benefit from treatment, with the potential to reduce the cost of developing new medicines by streamlining clinical trials. The AI model developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge predicts whether, and how quickly, people at early stages of cognitive decline will progress to full-blown Alzheimer’s. It gives predictions for patients that are three times more accurate than standard clinical assessments based on memory tests, MRI scans and blood tests.   Using this patient stratification model, data from a completed clinical trial - which did not demonstrate efficacy in the total population studied - was re-analysed. The researchers found that the drug cleared a protein called beta amyloid in both patient groups as intended - but only the early stage, slow-progressing patients showed changes in symptoms. Beta amyloid is one of the first disease markers to appear in the brain in Alzheimer’s disease. The new findings have significant implications: using AI to separate patients into different groups, such as slow versus rapidly progressing towards Alzheimer’s disease, allows scientists to better identify those who could benefit from a treatment approach - potentially accelerating the discovery of much-needed new Alzheimer’s drugs. The results are published today in the journal Nature Communications. Professor Zoe Kourtzi in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, senior author of the report, said: “Promising new drugs fail when given to people too late, when they have no chance of benefiting from them. With our AI model we can finally identify patients precisely, and match the right patients to the right drugs. This makes trials more precise, so they can progress faster and cost less, turbocharging the search for a desperately-need precision medicine approach for dementia treatment.”   She added: “Our AI model gives us a score to show how quickly each patient will progress towards Alzheimer’s disease. This allowed us to precisely split the patients on the clinical trial into two groups – slow, and fast progressing, so we could look at the effects of the drug on each group.” Health Innovation East England, the innovation arm of the NHS in the East of England, is now supporting Kourtzi to translate this AI-enabled approach into clinical care for the benefit of future patients. Joanna Dempsey, Principal Advisor at Health Innovation East England, said: “This AI-enabled approach could have a significant impact on easing NHS pressure and costs in dementia care by enabling more personalised drug development - identifying which patients are most likely to benefit from treatment, resulting in faster access to effective medicines and targeted support for people living with dementia.” Drugs like this are not intended as cures for Alzheimer’s disease. The aim is to reduce cognitive decline so that patients don’t get worse. Dementia is the UK’s leading cause of death, and a major cause of mortality globally. It costs $1.3 tr per year, and the number of cases are expected to treble by 2050. There is no cure, and patients and families face high uncertainty. Despite decades of research and development, clinical trials of treatments for dementia have been largely unsuccessful. The failure rate for new treatments is unreasonably high at over 95%, despite $43 bn having been spent on research and development. Progress has been hampered by the wide variation in symptoms, disease progression and responses to treatment among patients. Although new dementia drugs have recently been approved for use in the US, their risk of side effects and insufficient cost effectiveness have prevented healthcare adoption in the NHS. Understanding and accounting for the natural differences among individuals with a disease is crucial, so that treatments can be tailored to be most effective for each patient. Alzheimer’s disease is complex, and although some drugs are available to treat it they don’t work for everybody. “AI can guide us to the patients who will benefit from dementia medicines, by treating them at the stage when the drugs will make a difference, so we can finally start fighting back against these cruel diseases. Making clinical trials faster, cheaper and better, guided by AI has strong potential to accelerate discovery of new precise treatments for individual patients, reducing side effects and costs for healthcare services,” said Kourtzi. She added: “Like many people, I have watched hopelessly as dementia stole a loved one from me.  We’ve got to accelerate the development of dementia medicines. Over £40 billion has already been spent over thirty years of research and development - we can’t wait another thirty years.” This research was funded by the Royal Society, Alan Turing Institute and Wellcome. Reference  Vaghari, D. V. et al: ‘AI-guided patient stratification improves outcomes and efficiency in the AMARANTH Alzheimer’s Disease clinical trial.’ Nature Communications, July 2025.  DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-61355-3 Scientists have used AI to re-analyse a clinical trial for an Alzheimer’s medicine, and identified a group of patients who responded to treatment. The work demonstrates that AI can inform the design of future clinical trials to make them more effective and efficient, accelerating the search for new medicines. With our AI model we can finally identify patients precisely, and match the right patients to the right drugsZoe KourtziMichael Hewes/ Getty The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms. YesLicence type: Attribution-Noncommerical