Natural Sciences

James joined Lucy coming from a career mostly involving academic theoretical physics, but more recently a stint in the cybersecurity industry. He teaches first and second year students. In his research, James studies the structure of the proton using machine-learning methods.

Jonathan was previously a Research Associate in Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, and his work was investigating extending the lifetime of lithium-ion batteries using novel inorganic electrolytes and additives. He also undertook his PhD at the University of Cambridge, investigating the generation and reaction of organoaluminiums in marine container refrigeration systems. Throughout his PhD and postdoc, Jonathan did a large amount of teaching.

Dr Hunter worked for 12 years at the British Antarctic Survey on the evolution of the Antarctic continent over the last 200 million years. She worked on continental break up which left the Antarctic isolated over the South Pole and looked at how the continent has been affected by recent glacial cycles.

Her specialism is in understanding sedimentary rocks and their environment of deposition to then look at large scale changes such as plate tectonics or climate evolution.

Ryo Mizuta is Bye-Fellow and Director of Studies (Part II & III Natural Sciences, Physics) at Lucy Cavendish College, and a Senior Teaching Associate with the NanoDTC, overseeing the development and running of the new Applied Nanoscience module, as well as the DTC 1st year curriculum.

He is concurrently a postdoctoral research associate in the Nanomanufacturing group, working on the development and commercialisation of a microparticle manufacturing process via emulsion templating. Prior to this, he was a Translational Prize Fellow in the Bioelectronics Lab, working on the commercialisation of wearable biosensors for vaginal health monitoring. He completed his PhD in 2021 under the supervision of Prof. Stephan Hofmann, where he developed an environmental scanning electron microscope towards in-operando metrology of 1D and 2D nanomaterial growth and processing. 

Outside of academia, Ryo also works as a scientific illustrator, creating 3D illustrations for publications, journal covers and technical animations (Ryo Mizuta Graphics). 

Nathan Smith, FLS, is an educator, historian of science, and museum curator. He received his PhD from the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the changing perceptions of taxonomy and taxonomic subjects and how disciplinary identity shapes practice in the taxonomic sciences. He is a Bye-Fellow and Director of Studies of Zoology for Lucy Cavendish College. 

Alison is a Professor in Physiology, having trained in physiology, cardiology, and endocrinology at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her academic journey commenced with a focus on researching the physiology of steroid hormones and their impact on cardiovascular disease. Alison's research continues to centre on the molecular intricacies of steroid hormones, aiming to unravel how they function and contribute to health and disease.

Read Alison's full profile here.

'I work in the field of medical and pharmaceutical materials and direct the Cambridge Centre for Medical Materials in the Materials Science Department in Cambridge. My research concerns materials that interact therapeutically with the body.'

See Fellow's profile page

I worked in the fast food industry before taking an Access to HE Diploma at Birmingham Metropolitan College and studying A-level Sciences, independently. I like the fact that I’m lectured by world experts here: they know the field, because they’re the ones doing critical research in it. There’s also a useful overlap between courses in Natural Sciences, meaning that scientific concepts are explored from a number of perspectives. And overall, it isn’t as scary as I’d anticipated: the material is delivered at a level people feel comfortable with, and I can manage most of my work within scheduled contact hours. Lucy Cavendish is definitely the prettiest ‘mature’ college, with the nicest buildings of all the modern colleges. Everyone knows each other, and the Library has great sofas!

I grew up in Lithuania and left my job as a technician in a medical device development company to come to Cambridge, having previously sat the International Baccalaureate.Since Lucy is a rather small college, you get to know most of the student population and have plenty of opportunities for exciting social life. Furthermore, your voice really matters in the decision making processes of the college and you can get big things accomplished through joining the Student Union committee or launching a new society/initiative. I loved the fact that the Natural Sciences course aims to develop scientists capable of asking critical questions and developing solutions to them – at all times you are encouraged to think independently and judge objectively, rather than learn by rote.

Fred Alford is a researcher in general relativity. He is currently researching Hawking radiation - this is the radiation given off by black holes due to interesting quantum effects in their formation. Fred is a HIMR Research Fellow at Imperial College London, having finished his PhD in mathematics at Jesus College, Cambridge in April 2022.He also continues to supervise at several Cambridge colleges.

Her research focuses on determining how transcriptional regulators orchestrate gene expression programs and determine cell fate in normal and malignant cells. In particular, she and her team have been working on two key molecular machineries, the transcription factor MYC and SWI/SNF (BAF) chromatin remodelling complexes; and how their interplay could be exploited to develop new therapeutic approaches in cancer and for regenerative medicine.

See Dr Zinzalla's profile here.

Isabel teaches Natural Sciences at Lucy, and tutors students.

She was previously one of Postdocs, working on methods to transform the genome of dinoflagellates (algae at the base of coral reef ecosystems), unusual in being resistant to such transformations. The research team has recently succeeded in introducing novel genetic material into the dinoflagellate genome, allowing to genetically modify cultures that can then be grown with subculturing, maintaining the introduced genes and phenotypes. This will allow us (over time) to better understand the symbiotic relationship between the dinoflagellates and coral reefs.

Kun is a postdoctoral researcher in system neuroscience at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC LMB). He mainly works on the neural connectomics of larval drosophila. Recent years, neural connectomics offers researchers detailed maps of brains at a high resolution of nanometre and allows for mapping of anatomical connections of synaptic level. Using advanced functional imaging methods and optogenetic manipulation of single neurons, Kun is investigating the entire pathways from sensory input to descending neurons of larval drosophila brains. Long term, Kun’s research will help us understand the neural circuits of sensory-motor transformation and multisensory integration on the cellular level.

Before moving to Cambridge, Kun worked on the neural encoding of optic flow in the upstream neural circuits of visuomotor decision-making in the zebrafish brain in Germany.

Laura is a researcher with a passion for using biological tools to achieve the sustainable production, utilisation, and degradation of chemicals.

Laura is currently working with the Hollfelder group at the Cambridge Department of Biochemistry on the Preventing Plastic Pollution with Engineering Biology (P3EB) project, where she is evolving plastic-degrading enzymes using high-throughput screening.