Three pioneering Oxford researchers are among the first recipients of the Royal Society Faraday Discovery Fellowships, prestigious long-term awards to support exceptional mid-career research leaders in the UK. Only seven academics were selected in total from more than 600 initial applications.
The Faraday Discovery Fellowships, supported by a fund from the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, provide selected researchers with grants of up to £8 million over 10 years to pursue high-quality original research and develop world-leading research groups in the UK.
Sir Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society, said: 'This exciting first cohort of Royal Society Faraday Discovery Fellowship fellows are using cutting-edge techniques to explore questions at the frontiers of human knowledge…These 10-year fellowships give researchers space to pursue new knowledge, build their research groups and develop close collaborations around the world that will ensure the UK continues to develop and attract the next generation of scientific talent and bring benefits to the whole country.'
Lord Vallance, UK Science Minister, said: 'Turbo-charging our world-class institutions with the very best research talent will be critical to unlocking breakthroughs that could help protect our food chains, put AI to work in the economy, and tackle climate change. That's why DSIT has backed the Royal Society with £250 million in long-term funding to support the work of mid-career researchers who are at the top of their game.'
About the Oxford recipients:
Professor Timothy Behrens , Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences (Fellowship held jointly between Oxford and UCL).
This Faraday Discovery Fellowship will allow us to make a sustained attack on one of the most interesting questions to face our species - the mechanistic basis of our own intelligence. Having ten years of stable funding will allow us ask the deepest, most ambitious questions that we can think of. I am feeling very lucky indeed!
Professor Timothy Behrens , Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences
Professor Behrens researches some of the most complex human behaviours, such as reasoning and planning. 'To plan effectively, we need to know the relationships between objects and events in the world - we need a model of the world inside our brains,' he said. 'As part of the Faraday grant, we will try to find out what this model looks like, in terms of the neurons in our brains and the connections between them.'
He and his group will measure the neuronal connections that underlie a world model and investigate how these connections are built by learning. They will then test whether these patterns match predictions made by theories in computational neuroscience and AI. 'We will also determine whether we can establish rules that the brain uses to build models, from the simple models that might be used for a mouse navigating a maze, all the way to complex models that underlie sophisticated human reasoning.'
Professor Andrew Goodwin , Department of Chemistry
I am thrilled and honoured to receive this prestigious grant, which very much builds on the achievements, creativity, and insight of the many talented students, postdocs, and collaborators with whom I have worked over the years. This a truly precious opportunity to tackle some very deep questions in our field.
Professor Andrew Goodwin , Department of Chemistry
As a materials chemist, Professor Goodwin designs solid materials that have useful functions. A key focus for his group is using disorder as a design strategy. 'In many materials, disorder isn't random; it follows hidden patterns that can actually enhance performance,' he said. 'We see this in systems like batteries, magnets, and even natural materials such as shells.'
His Faraday project will explore materials with "responsive disorder", where the type of disorder changes when triggered by a stimulus such as heat, pressure, or electricity. 'Many advanced technologies rely on materials that can switch between different states,' he said. 'While traditional materials switch states through changes in crystal structure, disordered materials must follow different rules-offering new possibilities for transformation. We will study several types of disorder found in things such as glasses and polymers, with potential applications in areas like computing. Working with a visual artist, we will also explore new ways of representing these different states.'
Professor Andrea Vedaldi , Department of Engineering Science
Oxford and its Visual Geometry Group, which I co-lead, have been at the forefront of machine learning and computer vision research for more than three decades. This fellowship offers unique long-term support and will enable us to sustain and expand our impact over the next ten years. I am grateful and honoured that my project was selected by the Royal Society and I look forward to beginning this new journey.
Professor Andrea Vedaldi , Department of Engineering Science
Professor Vedaldi's research will focus on Spatial AI, creating a foundation for future AIs that can reason in a spatially aware manner to solve new, challenging problems.
'Even modern AIs, such as chatbots, have only a limited grasp of what things are and how they work in the real world,' Professor Vedaldi explained. 'This limitation leads to hallucinations, where machines assume impossible events could occur, and hinders applications requiring sophisticated spatial reasoning, such as technical design.' For his Faraday project, he will develop Spatial AI that will allow machines to predict the consequences of actions in the physical world and use intuition to solve spatial tasks.
'Over time, these machines will also apply mathematics and physics principles to automatically design new structures and machines in response to user requests, potentially revolutionising engineering,' he added. 'Combined with powerful language models, such AIs will be able to reason, act, and create in the physical world-much like we humans can.'
Further information about the 2025 Faraday Discovery Fellowships can be found on the Royal Society website.
