Annual Review 2016/17 Pushing at the frontiers of Knowledge Portrait of Dr Henry Odili Nwume (Brasenose) by Sarah Jane Moon – see The Full Picture, page 17. FOREWORD 2016/17 has been a memorable year for the country and for our University. In the ever-changing and deeply uncertain world around us, the University of Oxford continues to attract the most talented students and the most talented academics from across the globe. They convene here, as they have always done, to learn, to push at the frontiers of knowledge and to improve the world in which we find ourselves. One of the highlights of the past twelve months was that for the second consecutive year we were named the top university in the world by the Times Higher Education Global Rankings. While it is reasonable to be sceptical of the precise placements in these rankings, it is incontrovertible that we are universally acknowledged to be one of the greatest universities in the world. This is a privilege, a responsibility and a challenge. Other highlights include the opening of the world’s largest health big data institute, the Li Ka Shing Centre for Health Information and Discovery, and the launch of OSCAR – the Oxford Suzhou Centre for Advanced Research – a major new research centre in Suzhou near Shanghai. In addition, the Ashmolean’s success in raising £1.35 million to purchase King Alfred’s coins, which included support from over 800 members of the public, was a cause for celebration. The pages that follow detail just some of the extraordinary research being conducted here on perovskite solar cells, indestructible tardigrades and driverless cars. Meanwhile our range of colleges, both ancient and modern, provide intellectual and social homes in a naturally multidisciplinary setting for our students to learn, to cultivate their curiosity, and to thrive. In an era in which the value of a university education is increasingly being called into question, the pages that follow attest to the enduring value of what we do. Contents Professor Louise Richardson 2 Research and Innovation Vice-Chancellor 6 Future Makers 8 Education 12 Development and Alumni 16 Equality and Diversity 18 Gardens, Libraries and Museums Front cover image: Glowing gas and dark dust within 22 Honours and Awards one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies – see the 26 New Appointments Hintze Centre for Astrophysical Surveys, page 12. 28 Financial Overview 1 High-powered lasers were Web-dwelling spiders have poor vision the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid able to experimentally measure the ultra-small and rely almost exclusively on web has found that webs are superbly tuned vibrations. vibrations for their ‘view’ of the world. instruments for vibration transmission, Spider silk, when plucked like a guitar and that the type of information being string, transmits vibrations across a wide sent can be controlled by adjusting factors range of frequencies, carrying information such as web tension and stiffness. It is an about prey, mates and even the structural important insight, which could contribute integrity of a web. A collaboration between significantly to the development and engineers and scientists at Oxford and refinement of ‘virtual vision’ systems. 2 UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD • ANNUAL REVIEW 2016/17 RESEARCH & INNOVATION This year the University of Oxford Oxford’s contribution to the Oxford scientists this year declared opened the Li Ka Shing Centre for development of penicillin treatment the tardigrade the world’s most Health Information and Discovery, was celebrated in September 2016, indestructible species, predicting that including the Big Data Institute and 75 years on from the first discovery the eight-legged micro-animal (also the Target Discovery Unit. The centre of its potential to combat bacterial known as the water bear) will survive provides a base to more than 600 scientists infections. Few discoveries have until the sun dies. Tardigrades are the from a wide range of research areas, all impacted human life across the globe as toughest, most resilient form of life on working to define disease more accurately, fundamentally as antibiotics. As staples of earth, and are able to survive for up to identify targets for new drugs, and modern medicine, they are used to treat 30 years without food or water. They help society to understand a wide range of illnesses and infections. can endure temperature extremes of how disease responds to Their discovery has rendered previously up to 150 degrees Celsius, the deep sea, treatment. Molecular life-threatening conditions benign, and even the frozen vacuum of and cell biologists, changed our attitude towards illness space. The water-dwelling chemists, epidemiologists, and mortality, and made possible ever micro-animal can live statisticians, computer more complex surgical advancements. for up to 60 years but scientists, informatics Alexander Fleming famously discovered grows to a maximum specialists, engineers and penicillin in 1928, but it wasn’t until size of just 0.5mm, clinical scientists are housed 1941 that it was first put to the test in and is best seen under the same roof, improving a human patient. Three researchers under a microscope. the collaboration between different at the Sir William Dunn School of An Oxford study teams. The Institute will also include Pathology in Oxford – Howard Florey, published in Scientific social scientists and academics from Ernst Chain and Norman Heatley – had Reports with colleagues the humanities, with a new Wellcome been investigating the use of penicillin from Harvard stated that Centre for Ethics and Humanities to treat bacterial infection in mice. The the tiny creatures will survive the addressing the challenges to ethics researchers then started looking into risk of extinction from all astrophysical posed by developments in data science, ways of mass-producing the drug, at catastrophes and be around for at least neuroscience and genomics. first using large bathtubs in their Oxford 10 billion years – far longer than the laboratories. They later collaborated human race. The research implies that with US-based pharmaceutical firms to life on earth will go on as long as the sun A self-driving vehicle equipped produce industrial quantities of the drug, keeps shining. It also revealed that once with Oxford-developed autonomy which was widely used by Allied forces life emerges, it is surprisingly resilient and software was tested successfully during World War II. Florey, Chain and difficult to destroy, opening the possibility in public for the first time Fleming were later awarded the 1945 of life on other planets. in the United Kingdom. Nobel Prize in Medicine in recognition The demonstration in of their work. The research that started in Milton Keynes marked Oxford continues to this day across the A synthetic soft tissue retina developed the conclusion of the Medical Sciences Division. at Oxford could offer fresh hope to LUTZ Pathfinder project, visually impaired people. Until now, which has been running all artificial retinal research has used for the past 18 months. The only rigid, hard materials. The new autonomy software running Researchers found that huge pulses of research was the first to successfully use the vehicle, called Selenium, volcanic activity are likely to have played biological synthetic tissues developed originated in Oxford University’s Oxford a key role in triggering the end-Triassic in a laboratory environment. The study Robotics Institute with funding from mass extinction, which set the scene for could revolutionise the bionic implant the Engineering and Physical Sciences the rise and age of the dinosaurs. The industry and the development of new, less Research Council (EPSRC). Selenium Triassic extinction occurred approximately invasive technologies that more closely uses data from cameras and LIDAR 200 million years ago. Its casualty list resemble human body tissues, helping to systems to navigate its way around included large crocodile-like reptiles and treat degenerative eye conditions such as the environment. Selenium is being marine invertebrates, and it provoked retinitis pigmentosa. commercialised and was integrated into huge changes in land vegetation. Why the an electric vehicle by Oxford University dinosaurs survived remains a mystery, but spinout company Oxbotica. they went on to fill the gap left by extinct species, alongside early mammals and amphibians. This mass extinction has long been linked to a large and abrupt release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but the exact source of this emission had until now remained unknown. 3 UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD • ANNUAL REVIEW 2016/17 RESEARCH & INNOVATIONCONTINUED Scientists from the University of Oxford Following the news that the UK Researchers from Oxford and Stanford Wildlife Conservation Research Unit government is to ban plastic universities created all-perovskite (WildCRU), the Ethiopian Wildlife microbeads by the end of 2017, a team tandem solar cells that convert sunlight Conservation Authority and the UK of scientists led by the University of to electricity at efficiencies above 20%, Animal and Plant Health Agency Oxford discovered the first evidence of with the potential to go much higher. worked in the Bale Mountains of microplastics being ingested by These solar cells could rival and even Ethiopia in an effort to protect deep-sea animals. Researchers outperform conventional cells made Africa’s most threatened predator and working on the Royal of silicon – potentially exceeding 30% the world’s rarest canid. They were Research Ship (RRS) efficiency. Writing in the journal Science, overseeing field trials of the oral rabies James Cook at two sites the researchers described using tin and vaccine SAG2 in Ethiopian wolves – in the mid-Atlantic and other inexpensive materials to create the first ever to be conducted in wild south-west Indian Ocean novel forms of perovskite – a photovoltaic populations of an endangered carnivore. found plastic microfibres crystalline material that is thinner, The researchers tested various types of inside creatures including more flexible and easier to manufacture baits and ways to deliver the vaccine, hermit crabs, squat lobsters than silicon crystals.