̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Sithamparanathan Sabesan

Cambridge achievers recognised in 2024 New Year Honours list

Anonymous — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 09:46:09 +0000

Professor Dame Carol Black is awarded a Dame Grand Cross (GBE) for public service. Black was Principal of Newnham College from 2012-2019 and formerly a Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. GBE is the highest rank in the Order, and rarely awarded, to recognise the most exceptional and sustained service to the UK. Since its creation in 1917, fewer than 80 women have been awarded a GBE.

She said: “I am absolutely delighted to have been made a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire. This award comes almost 20 years after I received a DBE for services to medicine and recognises the progress being made to tackle some of the most entrenched and interrelated problems in society – poverty, homelessness, unemployment, and drug dependency. My heartfelt thanks go to everyone who has helped and supported me, and to those individuals doing great work on the frontline to change culture and practice.”

Composer Judith Weir, Honorary Fellow and alumna of King’s College, Cambridge, is awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to music. Weir is Master of the King’s Music, having been appointed by Queen Elizabeth II in 2014, and has twice written a specially-commissioned carol for the college’s A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.

Organist, conductor and broadcaster Anna Lapwood, Janeway Director of Music at Pembroke College, Cambridge, is awarded Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to music. Lapwood reaches a huge audience through her concerts and via social media with over 1 million followers across all platforms. Her passion for the organ is matched by her mission to support girls and women in music.

She said: “When you work as a musician, so much of what you do isn't quantifiable or finite - your work on a certain piece is never 'finished', and your playing is always changing and developing. Receiving this award feels like something concrete - a deeply significant moment in my musical journey.”

Gerard Grech, former CEO and Founder of Tech Nation, is awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to the technology sector. He joined Cambridge Enterprise this year to lead a new flagship initiative, 'Founders at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge', that will support ̽��ֱ�� founders to make an even greater impact on the world in the technology and software sectors.

Grech said: “I’m honoured to have been recognised for my contribution to the growing success of the UK’s tech and startup sector which is increasingly creating globally important tech and science-backed companies, from my time at Tech Nation. This honour is also recognition of the founders, ecosystem experts, investors, policy makers, and my colleagues who generously shared their knowledge and insights to support the UK’s most ambitious tech entrepreneurs. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to them all for all their hard work.”

Dr Sabesan Sithamparanathan, Enterprise Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge, and former student in the ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Engineering, is awarded Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to innovation technology. As Founder & President of PervasID he pioneered the world’s most accurate battery-free, real-time location tracking technology which is now in use by several NHS trusts, the largest aircraft manufacturers, airlines and blue-chip retailers.

He said: “I am absolutely delighted; this is a great honour and testament to the hard work and innovation of the entire team at PervasID. Our products offer a national and international benefit and we will continue to pioneer technology that has a wider value to society as a whole.”

Professor Ann Prentice, Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow at the ̽��ֱ��’s MRC Epidemiology Unit, is awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to British and Global Public Health Nutrition. A former director of the MRC Elsie Widdowson Laboratory (previously MRC Human Nutrition Research) at Cambridge, and programme leader of the MRC Nutrition and Bone Health Research Group at Cambridge, she was also head of the calcium, vitamin D and bone health research team at MRC Unit ̽��ֱ��Gambia. Her research is focused on life-course nutritional requirements for population health, with an emphasis on calcium and vitamin D, and encompasses the nutritional problems of both affluent and resource-limited societies.

She said: “I am delighted to receive this honour on behalf of all the people, in this country and worldwide, who have worked with me to improve our understanding of the links between nutrition and health.”

Dr Gillian Tett, Provost at Kings College, Cambridge, is awarded Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Economic Journalism. Tett, a former student at the ̽��ֱ��, is currently Chairman of the US Editorial Board and America Editor-at-Large of the Financial Times. She became the 45th Provost at King’s College in October 2023, and is renowned for her warnings ahead of the financial crisis of 2008.

Tett said: “I am deeply honoured to receive an OBE - and hope this helps to champion the importance of British intellectual capital, both in journalism and higher education. Thank you to everyone who has helped me in my career!”

Joan Winterkorn is awarded Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to heritage and culture. She is an expert on archives and literary and historical manuscripts, and was formerly in the antiquarian and rare book trade. In Cambridge she played a vital role in enabling the Churchill Archive Centre to acquire the papers of Sir Winston Churchill and Lady Thatcher and the ̽��ֱ�� Library to gain those of Siegfried Sassoon and Dame Margaret Drabble. In 2019 she received the honorary degree of Master of Arts from the ̽��ֱ��.

Maxine Purdie, Head of Catering and Conferences at Girton College, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, is awarded an MBE for services to knowledge exchange. Prior to arriving at Girton, she spent two decades at PraxisAuril, a world-leading professional association for knowledge exchange practitioners, where she became CEO and a Board Director.

Dr Rosie Trevelyan, Director of the Tropical Biology Association, is awarded an MBE for her services to environmental science and International conservation. Over the last three decades, Trevelyan developed the Tropical Biology Association into a globally respected organisation that offers an exceptionally high standard of ecology and conservation training to scientists, project managers and educators working to manage and safeguard tropical biodiversity in the long term. This international NGO has offices in the David Attenborough Building, Cambridge, UK and at Nature Kenya in Nairobi, Kenya.

Professor Elizabeth Robertson, an alumna and Honorary Fellow of Darwin College, has been appointed a CBE. Recognised as a world leader in mammalian developmental genetics, Robertson‘s early work focused on embryonic stem cell gene targeting, a technique that pioneered the ability to genetically alter mice. She initiated this work as a post-doctoral fellow with Sir Martin Evans at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. “It was a big surprise and extremely gratifying to have received this honour,” Robertson said.

̽��ֱ��Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby (Alumnus and Honorary Fellow of Trinity College), was appointed GCVO (Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order).

̽��ֱ��Dean of Westminster, David Hoyle (Alumnus of Corpus Christi College, Honorary Fellow and former Fellow of Magdalene College) was appointed KCVO (Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order).

Maxine Ficarra, formerly Chief Executive Officer of PraxisAuril, the UK's professional association for Knowledge Exchange practitioners, has been made an MBE for her services to Knowledge Exchange. She led the not-for-profit, which was co-founded in 2002 by Professor David Secher, Life Fellow of Gonville & Caius College, and former Director of Research Services at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, for 20 years.

Also in 2024, Robert Chartener, a Fellow Commoner of Magdalene College and Chairman of the Magdalene Foundation, was awarded an Honorary OBE for services to Higher Education. It relates primarily to years of fundraising, both for Magdalene and for the support of its students.

Academics and staff associated with the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge feature in the 2024 list, which recognises the achievements and service of people across the UK, from all walks of life.

Senate house

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Intelligent airports and greener smart phones: award-winning Cambridge innovation

bjb42 — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 09:59:42 +0000

Airport queues. No one likes them, but in the modern world we’ve come to accept them as part of our travel routine. Equally, many people these days would struggle without their smart phones, but they take a toll on the environment and are expensive to produce.

Cambridge research that aims to tackle these issues has been celebrated at the UK ICT Pioneers Competition, an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council initiative which recognises the work of exceptional PhD students and researchers in the information and communications technologies.

̽��ֱ��intelligent airport

As demand for flights increases, airports are becoming increasingly congested, but environmental concerns make expansion a contentious issue. Sithamparanathan Sabesan, from the Department of Engineering, believes that tagging could provide an answer. ̽��ֱ��real-time, accurate identification of passengers and their luggage to within a metre of their locations would dramatically increase efficiency in security checks, lost luggage recovery, delayed passengers and the daily ebb and flow of air travel.

‘Passive’ tags have no batteries, making them viably cheap to produce; the key is devising a reliable method of detecting these tags with such accuracy, and over much greater distances than previously possible. Sabesan says he and his collaborators - Dr Michael Crisp, Prof. Richard Penty and Prof. Ian White - have cracked it using radio frequencies, and they’ve created a proof of principle demonstrator to show it works.

“Our demonstrator shows that this system could be 100 per cent accurate, as well as locating passive tags to within a metre, overtaking current conventional systems,” says Sabesan. “These breakthroughs are paving the way for a wide range of new applications. Key players in retail, airlines, manufacturers and document tracking have offered us trials, which we expect to carry out in 12-24 months.”

It is predicted that the Real Time Locations System (RTLS) could save airlines in excess of £400m, as well as significantly reducing the now traditional airport waiting times. Other industries have also shown interest in the project. Retail groups are looking at the technology with a view to shrinking checkout queues and reducing shoplifting. Sabesan, who came to Cambridge to work with ̽��ֱ�� spin-off company ARM Ltd before beginning his PhD in 2008, won the Connected World category at the ICT awards. He currently has two patents pending for his work and has just been elected to a junior research fellowship at Girton College.

Green touchscreens

̽��ֱ��Innovation for Sustainability category was won by Jens Christensen, also from the Department of Engineering, for his research into acoustic pulse recognition, and its application in the world of smart phones. Whilst the sight of people tapping and swiping at their mobile phone screen has become commonplace, it is the noises and vibrations resulting from these actions that Christensen is interested in.

By processing the various sounds into commands such select, scroll, zoom etc, the technology developed by Christensen and his colleagues at Input Dynamics converts every external edge of the phone into a touch-sensitive surface. ̽��ֱ��software uses existing microphones that most handsets carry, so it can be fitted with a few tweaks to enhance functionality and even add touch command capabilities to non-touch phones in a cost-effective way.

“Current touchscreen implementations rely on compounds that are in limited supply and consequently extremely expensive, which has an impact on both the environment and the consumer,” says Christensen. “Our technology TouchDevice™ dispenses with all of this by making better use of the hardware already present in the device.”

̽��ֱ��possible applications for the technology are vast as, in theory, walls and tables could be activated using microphones and the acoustic software. Could this potentially spell the end for such everyday staples as the light switch and the

TV remote?

“My research has applications far beyond what I have been able to imagine. This technology is highly customisable and any surface could potentially be made active, so that the technology can adapt to the user rather than the other way around.”

Christensen went on to take an additional prize at the ICT Pioneer awards, following a pitch to a ‘Dragons Den’ style panel of academics and industry experts. TouchDevice™ was voted by the panel to have the strongest commercial case, with Chief Executive of EPSRC Professor David Delpy describing the technology as “a win for both the customers and industry, fulfilling an unmet customer demand and satisfying the industry's need for newer and cheaper technologies”.

Two Cambridge researchers have received prizes at the ICT Pioneers awards for their groundbreaking approach to modern problems.

My research has applications far beyond what I have been able to imagine."

Jens Christensen

Ian Crowther from Flickr

Phone home

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