Imperial researchers elected as Fellows of Royal Society

Imperial experts in public health, physics, materials and AI have been announced as new Fellows of the Royal Society.

The four Imperial researchers elected as Fellows this year have expertise spanning string theory, clinical trials, artificial intelligence, and physical electronics and materials. They join more than 70 members of staff at Imperial College London able to use the prestigious ‘FRS’ suffix in their titles.

"This cohort represents the truly global nature of modern science and the importance of collaboration in driving scientific breakthroughs." Sir Adrian Smith President of the Royal Society

Fellowships are given to distinguished scientists by the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences, in recognition of "contributions to science, both in fundamental research resulting in greater understanding, and also in leading and directing scientific and technological progress in industry and research establishments.”

This year over 90 exceptional researchers from across the world have been elected as Fellows, including Dr John Jumper, the Nobel prize winner whose team created the transformative AI model, AlphaFold.

Sir Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society said: “The strength of the Fellowship lies not only in individual excellence, but in the diversity of backgrounds, perspectives and experiences each new member brings. This cohort represents the truly global nature of modern science and the importance of collaboration in driving scientific breakthroughs.”

Professor Ian Walmsley CBE FRS, Provost of Imperial College London, said: “I am proud to see these talented colleagues elected as Fellows of the Royal Society, an honour that is a testament to their brilliance and dedication. From public health to string theory, their work demonstrates the breadth and depth of scientific excellence at Imperial and these Fellows embody the values of innovation, impact, and scientific imagination that are at the heart of Imperial's mission.”

Professor Neil Alford MBE FREng FRS

Neil Alford is a Professor of Physical Electronics and Thin Film Materials in the Department of Materials. He graduated from St Andrews University and spent 3 years working in Southeast Asia and South America as a well-site geologist. After a postdoc in Oxford, he worked at Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) for 13 years, with inventions relating to high strength cements, composites and ceramics, before moving to academia.

Professor Alford has established an international reputation for his development of functional materials, notably oxides for radiofrequency/microwave applications. His work on the properties of microwave dielectrics has led to a better understanding of the theory and factors influencing dielectric loss in these industrially relevant materials.

His research with colleagues at Imperial, NPL and UCL resulted in the first demonstration of a room temperature, earth’s field solid-state MASER (microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) using Pentacene. It also resulted in the first observation of room temperature continuous wave masing in diamond with nitrogen-vacancy centres.

At Imperial College London, he has served as Head of the Department of Materials and Associate Provost. He was awarded the MBE for services to Engineering in 2013.

Professor Alford said: “I am absolutely delighted to be elected to the Royal Society. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to all the extraordinary colleagues and collaborators that I have worked with over many years who have made this award possible."

Professor Deborah Ashby OBE FMedSci FRS 

Professor Deborah Ashby is an internationally recognised leader in medical statistics and clinical trials. As Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial, she brings decades of experience advancing health research and education at the highest levels. 

Since joining Imperial in 2008, Professor Ashby has played a transformative role in shaping the Faculty of Medicine’s research strategy in public health and clinical trials. She was instrumental in establishing the Imperial Clinical Trials Unit as Founding Co-Director and served as Director of the School of Public Health, driving progress in evidence-based medicine and risk-benefit decision making for medicines. Her pioneering work in applying Bayesian statistical methods to healthcare continues to influence global best practices. 

Professor Ashby’s contributions have been widely recognised. She was awarded an OBE in 2009 for services to medicine, appointed an NIHR Senior Investigator in 2010, elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2012, and served as President of the Royal Statistical Society from 2019 to 2020. Her election as Fellow of the Royal Society reflects a distinguished career dedicated to improving population health through rigorous, innovative research and collaborative leadership. 

Professor Ashby said: “I am absolutely delighted to be elected to the Royal Society.  I’ve been fortunate to work at the intersection of statistics with public health and clinical medicine for my whole career. To be able to contribute to improving the health of populations working with amazing diverse multi-disciplinary teams, finding deep intellectual stimulation and having fun is a huge privilege. I can’t think of a better place to be doing this than Imperial. To be recognised by election as FRS by my peers really feels like the cherry on the cake.” 

Professor Daniel Rueckert FMedSci FREng FRS

Daniel Rueckert is a Professor of Visual Information Processing in Imperial’s Department of Computing. He is an Imperial alumnus, gaining his PhD in 1997 after which he rejoined in 1999 as a lecturer, also serving as Head of Department from 2016-20. Daniel is also Alexander von Humboldt Professor for AI in Medicine and Healthcare at the Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technical University of Munich, where he is Director of the Institute for AI and Informatics in Medicine.

Professor Rueckert has published over 500 journal and conference articles, graduated over 60 PhD students and supervised and mentored over 40 post-docs. He was elected as Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (2015), Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2019). He is the recipient of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (2025), which is the most important German research prize endowed with €2.5M by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Professor Rueckert said: "I am delighted and honoured to join the Royal Society as a newly elected Fellow. Many thanks to all the wonderful colleagues and collaborators I have worked with; this is a fantastic recognition.”

Photo credit: Andreas Heddergot/TUM

Professor Arkady Tseytlin FRS

Professor Arkady Tseytlin, from the Department of Physics, has made important contributions to string theory, both as a consistent framework for the unification of gravity with other fundamental interactions, and as a tool for describing the strong-coupling dynamics of gauge theories.

He pioneered the sigma-model approach to string theory in curved spacetime and proposed a path integral method for computing the low-energy effective action connecting string theory with field theory. Professor Tseytlin also uncovered the fundamental role of the Born-Infeld term in the open-string effective action which led to many applications in the study of D-brane dynamics and gauge/string duality. In addition, he constructed a superstring action in anti-de Sitter space, which plays a central role in the AdS/CFT correspondence, and underlies the integrability-based exact solution of the maximally supersymmetric gauge theory.

Professor Tseytlin’s research has been recognized by the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, the Rayleigh Medal and Prize of the UK Institute of Physics, and the Pomeranchuk International Prize in Theoretical Physics.

He said: “I am deeply honoured and humbled to have been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society. It is a privilege to join the distinguished company of Fellows from the Theoretical Physics Group at Imperial College London, including Abdus Salam, Tom Kibble, Christopher Hull, and Michael Duff. I am profoundly grateful to my collaborators and colleagues whose insight, support, and friendship have shaped and sustained my work throughout my career.”

Professor Joanne Webster FMedSci FRS

Joining Imperial’s newly elected Fellows is Professor Joanne Webster, a Visiting Professor in Imperial’s School of Public Health, where she formerly held the Chair in Infectious Diseases from 2006. Professor Webster also served as co-Director of the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative at Imperial.

In 2022 she was appointed Director of the London Centre for Neglected Tropical Disease Research (LCNTDR), a collaboration between the Royal Veterinary College, Imperial College London, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Natural History Museum.