Imperial welcomes top early-career researchers to new Fellowships

Junior Research Fellows take up their posts<em> - News</em>

By Laura Gallagher
Thursday 8 October 2009

The first cohort of top early-career researchers taking up Imperial's new Junior Research Fellowships has been welcomed to the College this week.

The Fellowships will give outstanding early-career scientists three years free from teaching and administration plus a competitive salary and laboratory support costs, to enable them to establish and develop their own scientific path. The Fellowship scheme also aims to help scientists to make the difficult leap from post-doctoral researcher to lecturer.

The new Fellows will be exploring issues such as how galaxies form and how to use organic solar cells to generate cheap, long-term energy. They have been chosen from over 200 applicants from across the world and they will start in their new roles over the next three months. Half of the researchers are already working at Imperial and half are joining the College after working at other institutions, including the University of Oxford, Stanford University and the University of Michigan.

Each Fellow is being supported and mentored by a senior researcher at the College, who will advise them on developing their career and the mechanics of establishing and furthering research programmes.

Professor Maggie Dallman, Principal of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, who has been spearheading the new Fellowship scheme, said:

“The Junior Research Fellows joining us today and over the next few months are the cream of the crop: world-class early-career researchers who stand to make the discoveries and breakthroughs that will shape our world in the coming decades. We know how daunting starting out in research can be, and with these Fellowships we hope to support and nurture their talents during the all-important early years of their careers."

Below, two of the new Fellows talk about what they enjoy most about their research and where they are hoping the new Fellowships will take them.

Dr Andrea Jimenez Dalmaroni Junior Research Fellow from the Division of Molecular Biosciences in the Department of Life Sciences

What is your background?
I was born in Argentina and I studied for my first degree, in Physics, at the University of La Plata. I followed this with a PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Oxford. After my PhD I had a rather dramatic career change, leaving the abstract world of mathematical physics behind and concentrating instead on using the tools I'd been working on and developing in my research so far to solve concrete problems in cell biology. This change took me to the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany, and then to University College London, where I’ve been since 2007.

Dr Andrea Jimenez Dalmaroni, Junior Research Fellow from the Department of Life Sciences

What will you be researching during your fellowship?
I am going to use techniques from theoretical physics to study how living cells reorganise their internal 'scaffolding', known as their cytoskeleton, in response to constraints in cell geometry.

The cytoskeleton is a highly dynamic structure that maintains the cell's shape, enables cell motion, and is responsible for cell polarity. In living organisms cells communicate with their neighbours in a variety of ways, causing the cytoskeleton to change and reorganise itself. Correct cytoskeletal reorganisation is essential for the growth of tissues, and deficiencies in this process can cause abnormal development and increase the risk of cancer. By making quantitative predictions, I will work with cell biologists to design new experiments to characterise the response of the cytoskeleton to cell shape. Hopefully this will provide a better understanding of how cells make decisions about which orientation to take, how and when to divide, and whether to move.

What do you enjoy most about being a researcher?
My research involves working closely with scientists from many different disciplines across science, including biology, physics and engineering. I really enjoy interacting with people from these different fields in different ways.

Where are you hoping your fellowship will take you?
The Junior Research Fellowship at Imperial is a wonderful opportunity for me to fully develop my independent research career and to make a smooth transition towards further advanced research fellowships and a permanent research position.

Dr Stuart Coleman, Junior Research Fellow from the Department of Aeronautics

What is your background?
I did a degree at Imperial in Aeronautical Engineering and later went on to do my post graduate studies at the College's Institute of Mathematical Sciences. I've been developing new mathematical models in fluid mechanics, which is the study concerned with the properties of fluids and gases.

Dr Stuart Coleman, Junior Research Fellow from the Department of Aeronautics

What will you be researching during your fellowship?
My research focuses on turbulence, which is what happens when water, air and gas is agitated by something. For example, the turbulent air surrounding the bus that drives you to work creates a drag on the bus, which slows it down. We've been studying turbulence for 150 years and yet we've not made much progress in understanding it. I am really interested in creating a mathematical model that explains turbulence and how it affects things.

For instance, I want to apply my new model to further our understanding about cloud formations, which would be of real benefit to climate modellers. We think that turbulence plays a big role in speeding up the cloud formation process because it causes moisture droplets in the atmosphere to collide more frequently, which helps to create clouds more rapidly. In the future, I hope my model will help to explain this phenomenon with greater accuracy. This could have important impacts on our understanding of the climate and the future effects of climate change.

What do you enjoy most about being a researcher?
For me it is the freedom to investigate and explore new ideas. In my first scientific breakthrough, I created a mathematical model that predicted how complex geometrical shapes affect the fluids that flow through them. I used this model to predict how the complex geometry of a tree affects the air flowing around it to create turbulence. This was my first scientific breakthrough and I really got a buzz out of discovering something new, something we didn't know before.

Where are you hoping your fellowship will take you?
Ultimately, I like to think that I will make progress with my turbulence research so that I can take it to the next level. I really want to use these three years as a JRF to go and collaborate with other researchers in the UK and abroad. After that, I would like to get a permanent post or another fellowshi p at Imperial and set up my own study group.

If you are interested in applying for a Junior Research Fellowship, please visit the website at www.imperial.ac.uk/juniorresearchfellowships for more information. The deadline for applications is 30 October 2009.