̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Marian Holness

̽��ֱ��Royal Society announces election of new Fellows 2020

jg533 — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 17:53:50 +0000

Fellows are chosen for their outstanding contributions to scientific understanding. ̽��ֱ��62 newly elected Fellows embody the global nature of science, and are elected for life through a peer review process based on excellence in science. Past Fellows and Foreign Members include Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Dorothy Hodgkin and Stephen Hawking.

̽��ֱ��Royal Society is a self-governing Fellowship made up of the most eminent scientists, engineers and technologists from the UK and the Commonwealth. Its Foreign Members are drawn from the rest of the world. ̽��ֱ��Society’s fundamental purpose is to recognise, promote and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity.

Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, President of the Royal Society, said: “At this time of global crisis, the importance of scientific thinking, and the medicines, technologies and insights it delivers, has never been clearer. Our Fellows and Foreign Members are central to the mission of the Royal Society, to use science for the benefit of humanity.

"While election to the Fellowship is a recognition of exceptional individual contributions to the sciences, it is also a network of expertise that can be drawn on to address issues of societal, and global significance. This year’s Fellows and Foreign Members have helped shape the 21st century through their work at the cutting-edge of fields from human genomics, to climate science and machine learning.

"It gives me great pleasure to celebrate these achievements, and those yet to come, and welcome them into the ranks of the Royal Society.”

̽��ֱ��Cambridge scientists announced today as Royal Society Fellows are:

Professor Kevin Brindle FMedSci, Department of Biochemistry and Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. His current research is focused on novel imaging methods for detecting cancer progression and to monitor early tumour responses to treatment, with an emphasis on translating these techniques to the clinic.

Professor Vikram Deshpande, Department of Engineering, for his seminal contributions in microstructural mechanics. His works include developing ‘metallic wood’, sheets of nickel as strong as titanium, but four-times lighter thanks to their plant-like nanoscale pores.

Professor Marian Holness, Department of Earth Sciences. She has created a new approach to decoding rock history, and concentrates on understanding the evolution of bodies of magma trapped in the crust, which ultimately controls the eruptive behaviour of any overlying volcano.

Professor Giles Oldroyd, Russell R Geiger Professor of Crop Science, Crop Science Centre and Group Leader, Sainsbury Laboratory. He is leading an international research programme attempting to achieve more equitable and sustainable agriculture through the enhanced use of beneficial microbial associations.

Professor Hugh Osborn, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics for work in theoretical physics on quantum field theory and in particular conformal field theory.

Professor Didier Queloz, Cavendish Laboratory, for his part in the discovery of the first planet beyond our solar system, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics last year. Hundreds more exoplanets have since been revealed by his pioneering observational techniques.

Dr Sarah Teichmann FMedSci, Director of Research, Cavendish Laboratory and Senior Research Fellow, Churchill College, for her contributions to computational biology and genomics, including her role in founding and leading the Human Cell Atlas international consortium to map all cell types in the human body.

Professor Stephen Young, Department of Engineering, for pioneering the statistical approach to language processing - namely, treating conversation as a reinforcement learning problem - that made the speech-recognition products in millions of homes a reality.

Professor Jack Thorne, Department of Pure Maths and Mathematical Statistics for multiple breakthroughs in diverse areas of algebraic number theory. At age 32, he becomes the youngest living member of the Fellowship.

In addition, Dr William Schafer at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, based at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, has been elected as a Fellow.

Nine Cambridge scientists are among the new Fellows announced today by the Royal Society.

At this time of global crisis, the importance of scientific thinking, and the medicines, technologies and insights it delivers, has never been clearer.

Venki Ramakrishnan

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Women in STEM: Professor Marian Holness

sc604 — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 07:00:00 +0000

I was educated at state schools in Southampton before coming to Cambridge, where I gained my BA and PhD. I spent six years as a Postdoc at the ̽��ֱ�� of Edinburgh, and have been a ̽��ֱ�� Teaching Officer at Cambridge for the last 22 years.

I am interested in processes that happen during the solidification of partially molten rock. It's these processes, happening in batches of magma trapped under volcanoes, that ultimately control the explosivity of volcanic eruptions. ̽��ֱ��roots of volcanoes can be accessed if their tops have been eroded away, so I look at ancient volcanic regions, mainly in East Greenland and Scotland, where the rocks at the surface were originally buried several kilometres deep, so I can see what went on in the crust at that time. My approach involves careful field observation, followed by microscopic analysis of grain sizes and shapes and the ways grains fit together, to decode the solidification history.

Last summer we spent six weeks in East Greenland, working on a 60 million-year-old body of igneous rock called the Skaergaard Intrusion. I've been working on this for 12 years now, but on this trip, we saw masses of really novel things and I made many important breakthroughs in understanding - that was pretty thrilling.

I guide my group in their science and help them write their papers. I sometimes have time for my own research, which involves optical microscopy (I have rather less time for this than I would like!). One of the great things about Cambridge is that it has an excellent museum collection of rocks I can dip into when chasing up particular hunches and ideas. Most years I supplement this museum-based work by going into the field to collect new observations and samples - this is usually in the summer, and involves being away for up to several months though the usual time is a couple of weeks.

A key moment that helped define the development of my career happened when I was waiting for an experiment to heat up during my time in Edinburgh: I was quietly knitting a sock, watching the temperature climb on the dial... and out of nowhere I suddenly had a brainwave that made sense of everything I had been working on for the previous year. I learned from this and now find that spending time knitting, running, breastfeeding(!) and other quiet activities is the best way to trigger insights into my research.

Professor Marian Holness leads a research group in the Department of Earth Sciences, and studies the processes which occur during the melting and solidification of rocks. Here, she tells us how time spent in quiet activities like running, knitting and even breastfeeding have helped to trigger new insights in her research.

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'Extreme Sleepover #6’ - drilling deep into geological history

bjb42 — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 09:00:01 +0000

East Greenland is not a holiday destination. Sheer mountains rise out of the ice-covered sea. Plants are rare, land animals rarer. ̽��ֱ��window for fieldwork is short, between the melting of the old snow and the arrival of new in September.

We arrive at the mining base on a Twin Otter plane, landing on carefully rolled moraine. ̽��ֱ��miners are welcoming but the mood is tense: most of our kit is on a ship stuck in sea-ice outside the fjord. After three days the captain finds a way through and the helicopter pilots unload the ship. ̽��ֱ��tents go up, and we construct the trip-wires that will give us precious extra seconds if a polar bear visits. We decide on the protocol for the rifles: the bolt closed above the full magazine, no rounds in the chamber, trigger pulled, safety catch off.

It’s good to be back. Familiar people, familiar ways of working and the simplicity of existence reduced to staying warm, eating, and looking at rocks. We’re studying an ancient magma chamber. Large underground bodies of molten rock usually feed volcanic eruptions but ours is unusual because it never got emptied: instead it quietly solidified inwards from the edges. We’re interested in the mushy crystal layer that grew on the walls. ̽��ֱ��shrinkage that occurred as it solidified sucked in liquid that reacted with the mush. We’re working out the details of this reactive infiltration. It’s difficult to hammer off samples so we’ve brought a rock drill. Our post-doc has to carry it. He gets teased a lot but he’s stoic.

̽��ֱ��campsite is carefully chosen to be as flat as possible, convenient for the sea and sheltered. A fine view is a bonus. We use Thermarest mattresses and high-performance down sleeping bags, with bundles of clothes for pillows. I never manage a good night's sleep: it doesn't get properly dark, you're listening out for intruders, you're often painfully tired, and the ground is hard!

We are all safety-conscious. ̽��ֱ��sea is frigid: we avoid falling out of the boat. We might get stranded so wherever we go we always take food and a tent. Food assumes overwhelming importance. It must be hot, stodgy and copious. I eat more than usual but still come home several kilos lighter. Most was shipped from the UK, but all the treats come from Iceland. Fieldwork in Greenland is immeasurably improved by the delights of black bread and pickled herring. Keeping clean is not so important (if no-one washes then nobody notices the smell). Merino underwear can be worn for weeks before becoming unacceptable. Washing, such as it is, takes place in a melt-water lake.

Leaving proves as stressful as arriving. ̽��ֱ��ship is stuck in sea-ice. When she finally arrives we are exuberant: showers, soft mattresses and haut cuisine (pickled herring features prominently). Our exuberance is short-lived. We are hit by a gale, prostrating us with sea-sickness. As we creep out of our bunks in ones and twos the chef designs increasingly ambitious menus, calibrated to the ambient level of queasiness. By the time the wind drops and we’re once again stuck in ice, we’re back to full Danish feasts.

It takes three more days to get through the ice to Mestersvig. This military settlement, with a dozen huts, three huskies and an airstrip, seems like a metropolis. Once there, everything happens quickly. A Twin Otter arrives and we’re off to Iceland and the certainties of commercial flights.

Back at home it takes time to re-adjust to normal life. You’ve been focused on staying alive and working effectively with few people in a very intense relationship. Now you need to deal with crowds and trivia. My family finds my insouciance irritating: we’re warm, dry, fed and there are no predators lurking in the garden – does it matter that we can’t find the car keys?

Dr Marian Holness

Marian is a Reader in the Department of Earth Sciences, and a Fellow of Trinity College. Her primary research interest concerns decoding the clues to a rock's history that are recorded in its microstructure. She is currently trying to work out the behaviour of the complex crystal mushy layers that develop during the solidification of silicate magma, both in large magma chambers and in smaller intrusions such as lava lakes. Marian's fieldwork in Greenland was supported by the NERC and the Carlsberg Foundation.

In the sixth in a series of reports contributed by Cambridge researchers, earth scientist Dr Marian Holness investigates the secrets locked into an ancient magma chamber that never erupted.

̽��ֱ��campsite is carefully chosen to be as flat as possible, convenient for the sea and sheltered. A fine view is a bonus.

Dr Marian Holness

Marian Holness

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