The Leverhulme Trust Board is pleased to announce the second of three winners of its 2022 Leverhulme International Professorships. These awards enable universities to attract globally leading scholars to take up permanent professorial posts in the UK. The Trust Board introduced these grants to support the UK higher education sector to maintain its strong international standing and help universities continue attracting top talent to reshape an existing area or field of study.
The Trust’s mission is to support research of outstanding originality and quality, which is fundamental or curiosity-driven, multi-disciplinary and often higher risk. The quality of the bids was exceptionally high, and selecting just three was challenging.
Professor Jonathan Heddle will join Durham University to help establish the Centre for Programmable Biological Matter, supporting a team of early career researchers and PhD students and building a solid foundation for further development of an exciting new area of research.
A global leader in bionanoscience, Professor Heddle takes inspiration from nature’s nanomachines. He hopes to build artificial cell-like ‘nanorobots’ that are biocompatible, biodegradable and capable of carrying out useful tasks that are not seen or even impossible in nature.
Professor Anna Vignoles, Director of the Leverhulme Trust, said:
‘The Trust is thrilled to award Professor Heddle a Leverhulme International Professorship. He is undertaking exciting and internationally important work in bionanoscience. This class of innovative, cutting-edge research will enable the UK to be world-leading in this area.’
Professor Martin Cann, Head of Biosciences Department at Durham University said:
‘I am delighted that Jonathan is joining the University. We see this award as just the beginning, his arrival is part of an exciting plan to build on our world class bio-capabilities and provide the basis for further expansion of our research goals.’
Read Durham University’s full media release.