Dr Sophie Gaida

Spotlight

Dr Tobias Wauer

It’s 8pm and I’m about to start a 12-hour shift at the national COVID-19 testing centre in Milton Keynes. Truckloads of boxes with transparent plastic bags just arrived and a brief announcement is made: 15,000 patient swabs. For now, the mood among the team is cheerful and enthusiastic, but I know it will have morphed into exhaustion and fatigue by the end of the night.

Over the past year, research programmes have had to adapt to closures of laboratories and libraries. Niklas describes how he has made the best of the challenges he’s encountered.

Callista is in her first year at Emma, studying for a PhD in education. When flights were cancelled in March she was one of several students who couldn’t return home, and she describes how she’s learned to manage while far away from her family.

As Fellows at Emmanuel we often find ourselves dividing our time between different professional activities: teaching, administration and research. Term-time is, as would be expected, a time of frantic teaching and pastoral care; vacations offer an opportunity to research and reflect; across both we plan future research projects and teaching courses. Over the decade that I have been fortunate enough to be part of the college one word has brought these disparate activities together: access. 

Technologies have become a staple component of twenty-first century social life. Social media platforms connect people around the globe, modern video games stream live events to millions of users and video calls help those experiencing ‘social distancing’ to keep in touch with friends and family.

The future is uncertain. But we know that if we don’t think now about the legacy of our actions we won’t enjoy the prosperous future we deserve.

Writing this article in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis, it might seem churlish to ask readers to focus their attention on another impending healthcare apocalypse. However, my academic research has applications in one such area:  the growing worldwide problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

DNA molecules released by tissues deep within our bodies allow doctors to take a non-invasive glimpse into our health. This technology holds promise for early and safer detection of disorders, even from before birth, and throughout life.

Human rights are something we all have simply by virtue of our existence. Natural and universal, they are timeless.

The past shapes our lives in so many ways. Identities, habits and responses are forged in relation to it, no matter how much we think our eyes are on the future.

"The hallmark of a developed society is not that even the poor have cars. It is that even the affluent use public transport".

Structural engineering is sometimes described as the Second Oldest Profession; the human race has been building homes and bridges from time immemorial.

Aeroacoustics is the science of sound induced by the flow of air; initial research in the field was motivated by the need to reduce aircraft noise.

Buses rumble past the roadside café where our meeting is taking place. The waiter brings over two copper trays of Bosnian coffee: on each an ornate coffee pot (džezva) sits alongside a cup (fildzan) and a cluster of sugar lumps.

Kyoto in the 1660s: here the thriving economy of early modern Japan had become the cradle of a robust consumer society.

Self-organisation is an intrinsic property of matter. Take any collection of molecules, and under the right conditions they will form an ordered arrangement.

My first acquaintance with computer science was during my first year in high school, where I participated in the RoboCup Olympiad. I found it a perfect match for my enthusiasm for solving maths problems.

I studied English as an undergraduate at Emma and was able to return this year to pursue an MPhil in film and screen studies thanks to the generosity of donors to the Late 80s Fund and other Emma members. It’s been the most productive and rewarding period I can remember.

Tinkering is a newly identified creative, inquiry-based, construction approach to education, which focuses on learning by doing, by trial-and-error and through play.

I am extraordinarily grateful to have been awarded a full postgraduate studentship, through the College’s research studentship fund and the incredible generosity of two Emma members.

I began my PhD in pharmacology at Cambridge in 2015, upon completion of my degree in pharmacy at the Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich. This opportunity would have not been possible without generous help from the Late 80s Fund and two other members of Emmanuel.

Having spent 2014–15 at Harvard University on a Herchel Smith Scholarship, I was delighted to return to Emmanuel this year (I completed my BA in English in 2014) to study for an MPhil in Criticism and Culture.

My interests in food and agriculture, rural livelihoods in Asia, and economic development combine into the question: how does climate change affect the long-term livelihoods of poor residents in the rural uplands of Nepal?

Through the generosity of the Late 80s fund and a member, I was awarded a full studentship, enabling me to study for an MPhil in Modern and Contemporary Literature. My MPhil dissertation investigates the relationship between poetry and parenthood.

A Lord Northfield Scholarship and an MPhil Studentship enabled me to pursue an MPhil in development studies, driven largely by my study of the post-colonial literatures of Africa and the Middle East.

For the last four years, Emmanuel has welcomed post-doctoral researchers from both the arts and sciences. We hope to be able to accommodate more in the future as associate members of the College.