New data
British Academy elects twelve Cambridge researchers to Fellowship in 2025
They are among 92 distinguished scholars to be elected to the fellowship in recognition of their work in fields ranging from medieval history to international relations.
The Cambridge academics made Fellows of the Academy this year are:
Professor Jeremy Adelman (Faculty of History; Global History Lab; Darwin College)
Professor Anthony Bale (Faculty of English; Girton College)
Professor Annabel Brett (Faculty of History; Gonville and Caius College)
Professor Hasok Chang (Dept. of History and Philosophy of Science; Clare Hall)
Professor Jennifer Howard-Grenville (Cambridge Judge Business School; Trinity Hall)
Professor Barak Kushner (Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies; Corpus Christi College)
Professor Marta Mirazón Lahr (Dept. of Archaeology, Clare College)
Professor Yael Navaro (Dept. of Social Anthropology; Newnham College)
Professor Joanna Page (Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics; Centre of Latin American Studies; Robinson College)
Professor Clare Pettitt (Faculty of English; Emmanuel College)
Professor Diane Reay (Faculty of Education)
Professor John Robb (Dept. of Archaeology; Peterhouse)
Founded in 1902, the British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. It is a Fellowship consisting of over 1700 of the leading minds in these subjects from the UK and overseas.
Current Fellows include the classicist Professor Dame Mary Beard, the historian Professor Sir Simon Schama and philosopher Professor Baroness Onora O’Neill, while previous Fellows include Dame Frances Yates, Sir Winston Churchill, Seamus Heaney and Beatrice Webb. The Academy is also a funder of both national and international research, as well as a forum for debate and public engagement.
In 2025, a total of 58 UK Fellows, 30 International Fellows and four Honorary Fellows have been elected to the British Academy Fellowship.
Professor Marta Mirazón Lahr said: “I am honoured and delighted to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy. As a native of South America who has been welcomed and encouraged throughout my career in the UK, I feel particularly privileged to join the academy. My work spans anthropology and archaeology and it is pleasing to see inter-disciplinarity recognised. Research in human origins is very dependent upon official and community support across many countries, and I am deeply grateful to the people of Brazil, India, Libya, Melanesia and specially Kenya who have made my work possible (and so enjoyable!), and I look forward to contributing to the Academy’s global mission.”
Professor Joanna Page said: “I am deeply honoured to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy, and I look forward to supporting its mission. It is more important than ever to uphold the value of the humanities and interdisciplinary approaches in forging more just and sustainable futures. Learning from the perspectives and experiences of other regions, including Latin America, is essential to that work. I would particularly like to thank the vibrant community of Latin Americanists at Cambridge – staff and students, past and present – who have made this such a stimulating place to do research.”
Professor Barak Kushner said: “It is an honour to be recognised by the British Academy, though also a bit daunting to be put on par with scholars I have looked up to for years. Recognition of this kind brings more attention to the importance of transnational history when researching East Asia and the need to look beyond national borders.”
Professor Yael Navaro said: “I feel truly honoured to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy. It couldn't be a more important time to mobilise the social sciences and humanities to address some of the most critical issues of our era."
Welcoming the Fellows, Professor Susan J. Smith PBA, new President of the British Academy, said: “One of my first acts as the incoming President of the British Academy is to welcome this year’s newly elected Fellows. What a line-up! With specialisms ranging from the neuroscience of memory to the power of music and the structural causes of poverty, they represent the very best of the humanities and social sciences. They bring years of experience, evidence-based arguments and innovative thinking to the profound challenges of our age: managing the economy, enabling democracy, and securing the quality of human life.
“This year, we have increased the number of new Fellows by nearly ten per cent to cover some spaces between disciplines. Champions of research excellence, every new Fellow enlarges our capacity to interpret the past, understand the present, and shape resilient, sustainable futures. It is a privilege to extend my warmest congratulations to them all.”
Twelve academics from the University of Cambridge have been made Fellows of the prestigious British Academy for the humanities and social science
It couldn't be a more important time to mobilize the social sciences and humanities to address some of the most critical issues of our eraYael NavaroThe British AcademyThe exterior of the British Academy in London
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
British Academy elects twelve Cambridge researchers to Fellowship in 2025
They are among 92 distinguished scholars to be elected to the fellowship in recognition of their work in fields ranging from medieval history to international relations.
The Cambridge academics made Fellows of the Academy this year are:
Professor Jeremy Adelman (Faculty of History; Global History Lab; Darwin College)
Professor Anthony Bale (Faculty of English; Girton College)
Professor Annabel Brett (Faculty of History; Gonville and Caius College)
Professor Hasok Chang (Dept. of History and Philosophy of Science; Clare Hall)
Professor Jennifer Howard-Grenville (Cambridge Judge Business School; Trinity Hall)
Professor Barak Kushner (Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies; Corpus Christi College)
Professor Marta Mirazón Lahr (Dept. of Archaeology, Clare College)
Professor Yael Navaro (Dept. of Social Anthropology; Newnham College)
Professor Joanna Page (Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics; Centre of Latin American Studies; Robinson College)
Professor Clare Pettitt (Faculty of English; Emmanuel College)
Professor Diane Reay (Faculty of Education)
Professor John Robb (Dept. of Archaeology; Peterhouse)
Founded in 1902, the British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. It is a Fellowship consisting of over 1700 of the leading minds in these subjects from the UK and overseas.
Current Fellows include the classicist Professor Dame Mary Beard, the historian Professor Sir Simon Schama and philosopher Professor Baroness Onora O’Neill, while previous Fellows include Dame Frances Yates, Sir Winston Churchill, Seamus Heaney and Beatrice Webb. The Academy is also a funder of both national and international research, as well as a forum for debate and public engagement.
In 2025, a total of 58 UK Fellows, 30 International Fellows and four Honorary Fellows have been elected to the British Academy Fellowship.
Professor Marta Mirazón Lahr said: “I am honoured and delighted to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy. As a native of South America who has been welcomed and encouraged throughout my career in the UK, I feel particularly privileged to join the academy. My work spans anthropology and archaeology and it is pleasing to see inter-disciplinarity recognised. Research in human origins is very dependent upon official and community support across many countries, and I am deeply grateful to the people of Brazil, India, Libya, Melanesia and specially Kenya who have made my work possible (and so enjoyable!), and I look forward to contributing to the Academy’s global mission.”
Professor Joanna Page said: “I am deeply honoured to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy, and I look forward to supporting its mission. It is more important than ever to uphold the value of the humanities and interdisciplinary approaches in forging more just and sustainable futures. Learning from the perspectives and experiences of other regions, including Latin America, is essential to that work. I would particularly like to thank the vibrant community of Latin Americanists at Cambridge – staff and students, past and present – who have made this such a stimulating place to do research.”
Professor Barak Kushner said: “It is an honour to be recognised by the British Academy, though also a bit daunting to be put on par with scholars I have looked up to for years. Recognition of this kind brings more attention to the importance of transnational history when researching East Asia and the need to look beyond national borders.”
Professor Yael Navaro said: “I feel truly honoured to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy. It couldn't be a more important time to mobilise the social sciences and humanities to address some of the most critical issues of our era."
Welcoming the Fellows, Professor Susan J. Smith PBA, new President of the British Academy, said: “One of my first acts as the incoming President of the British Academy is to welcome this year’s newly elected Fellows. What a line-up! With specialisms ranging from the neuroscience of memory to the power of music and the structural causes of poverty, they represent the very best of the humanities and social sciences. They bring years of experience, evidence-based arguments and innovative thinking to the profound challenges of our age: managing the economy, enabling democracy, and securing the quality of human life.
“This year, we have increased the number of new Fellows by nearly ten per cent to cover some spaces between disciplines. Champions of research excellence, every new Fellow enlarges our capacity to interpret the past, understand the present, and shape resilient, sustainable futures. It is a privilege to extend my warmest congratulations to them all.”
Twelve academics from the University of Cambridge have been made Fellows of the prestigious British Academy for the humanities and social science
It couldn't be a more important time to mobilize the social sciences and humanities to address some of the most critical issues of our eraYael NavaroThe British AcademyThe exterior of the British Academy in London
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Cambridge part of new Global Talent Fund plan to attract world’s best R&D to UK
Because of its track record in recruiting and supporting top international researchers, the University will get a share of the new £54 million Global Talent Fund, along with 12 of the UK’s leading universities and research institutions.
From AI to medicine, the Fund is designed to attract a total of 60-80 top researchers (both lead researchers and their teams) to the UK, working in the eight high priority sectors critical to the Government’s modern Industrial Strategy.
By bringing the very best minds in fields that will be critical to the future of life and work to the UK, the Government aims to pave the way for the products, jobs and even industries that define tomorrow’s economy, to be made and grow in Britain.
Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, said: "The University is grateful for this award of funding. It will bolster emerging and accelerating research areas, in line with the goals of the Government's Industrial Strategy. This investment will be pivotal in securing and supporting international academic expertise and strengthening the strategic opportunities the University is seeking to catalyse for both the University and the UK more widely. We look forward to the opportunities this will unlock."
From Argentine – and former Cambridge scientist – César Milstein’s work on antibodies, to Hong Kong-born Sir Charles Kao who led the development of fibre optics, through to the efforts of German Ernst Chain – another former Cambridge scientist – to make penicillin usable in medicine, there is a long pedigree of overseas researchers making great breakthroughs whilst working in the UK.
The Government says that driving new tech innovations and scientific breakthroughs will fire up the UK economy and put rocket boosters on the Government’s Plan for Change. The IMF estimates that breakthroughs in AI alone could boost productivity by as much as 1.5 percentage points a year, which could be worth up to an average £47 billion to the UK each year over a decade. Other technologies could be gamechangers too: quantum computing could add over £11 billion to the UK’s GDP by 2045, while engineering biology could drive anywhere between £1.6-£3.1 trillion in global impact by 2040.
The Global Talent Fund, administered by UKRI, is just one part of over £115 million funding that is being dedicated to attracting the very best scientific and research talent to the UK. Work to cultivate top AI research talent in the UK is further bolstered through the Spärck AI scholarships, founded in partnership with Cambridge, which will provide full funding for master’s degrees at nine leading UK universities specialising in artificial intelligence and STEM subjects.
Science Minister Lord Vallance said: "Genius is not bound by geography. But the UK is one of the few places blessed with the infrastructure, skills base, world-class institutions and international ties needed to incubate brilliant ideas, and turn them into new medicines that save lives, new products that make our lives easier, and even entirely new jobs and industries. Bringing these innovations to life, here in Britain, will be critical to delivering this Government’s Plan for Change.
"My message to the bold and the brave who are advancing new ideas, wherever they are, is: our doors are open to you. We want to work with you, support you, and give you a home where you can make your ideas a reality we all benefit from."
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: "The UK is home to some of the world’s best universities which are vital for attracting international top talent. Supported by our new Global Talent Taskforce, the Global Talent Fund will cement our position as a leading choice for the world’s top researchers to make their home here, supercharging growth and delivering on our Plan for Change."
Cambridge University has been selected as a partner in a key Government initiative to attract more of the world’s best research talent to the UK.
This investment will be pivotal in securing and supporting international academic expertise and strengthening the strategic opportunities the University is seeking to catalyse. Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Cambridge part of new Global Talent Fund plan to attract world’s best R&D to UK
Because of its track record in recruiting and supporting top international researchers, the University will get a share of the new £54 million Global Talent Fund, along with 12 of the UK’s leading universities and research institutions.
From AI to medicine, the Fund is designed to attract a total of 60-80 top researchers (both lead researchers and their teams) to the UK, working in the eight high priority sectors critical to the Government’s modern Industrial Strategy.
By bringing the very best minds in fields that will be critical to the future of life and work to the UK, the Government aims to pave the way for the products, jobs and even industries that define tomorrow’s economy, to be made and grow in Britain.
Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, said: "The University is grateful for this award of funding. It will bolster emerging and accelerating research areas, in line with the goals of the Government's Industrial Strategy. This investment will be pivotal in securing and supporting international academic expertise and strengthening the strategic opportunities the University is seeking to catalyse for both the University and the UK more widely. We look forward to the opportunities this will unlock."
From Argentine – and former Cambridge scientist – César Milstein’s work on antibodies, to Hong Kong-born Sir Charles Kao who led the development of fibre optics, through to the efforts of German Ernst Chain – another former Cambridge scientist – to make penicillin usable in medicine, there is a long pedigree of overseas researchers making great breakthroughs whilst working in the UK.
The Government says that driving new tech innovations and scientific breakthroughs will fire up the UK economy and put rocket boosters on the Government’s Plan for Change. The IMF estimates that breakthroughs in AI alone could boost productivity by as much as 1.5 percentage points a year, which could be worth up to an average £47 billion to the UK each year over a decade. Other technologies could be gamechangers too: quantum computing could add over £11 billion to the UK’s GDP by 2045, while engineering biology could drive anywhere between £1.6-£3.1 trillion in global impact by 2040.
The Global Talent Fund, administered by UKRI, is just one part of over £115 million funding that is being dedicated to attracting the very best scientific and research talent to the UK. Work to cultivate top AI research talent in the UK is further bolstered through the Spärck AI scholarships, founded in partnership with Cambridge, which will provide full funding for master’s degrees at nine leading UK universities specialising in artificial intelligence and STEM subjects.
Science Minister Lord Vallance said: "Genius is not bound by geography. But the UK is one of the few places blessed with the infrastructure, skills base, world-class institutions and international ties needed to incubate brilliant ideas, and turn them into new medicines that save lives, new products that make our lives easier, and even entirely new jobs and industries. Bringing these innovations to life, here in Britain, will be critical to delivering this Government’s Plan for Change.
"My message to the bold and the brave who are advancing new ideas, wherever they are, is: our doors are open to you. We want to work with you, support you, and give you a home where you can make your ideas a reality we all benefit from."
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: "The UK is home to some of the world’s best universities which are vital for attracting international top talent. Supported by our new Global Talent Taskforce, the Global Talent Fund will cement our position as a leading choice for the world’s top researchers to make their home here, supercharging growth and delivering on our Plan for Change."
Cambridge University has been selected as a partner in a key Government initiative to attract more of the world’s best research talent to the UK.
This investment will be pivotal in securing and supporting international academic expertise and strengthening the strategic opportunities the University is seeking to catalyse. Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
AI can accelerate search for more effective Alzheimer’s medicines by streamlining clinical trials
Scientists have used an AI model to reassess the results of a completed clinical trial for an Alzheimer’s disease drug. They found the drug slowed cognitive decline by 46% in a group of patients with early stage, slow-progressing mild cognitive impairment – a condition that can progress to Alzheimer’s.
Using AI allowed the team to split trial participants into two groups: either slowly or rapidly progressing towards Alzheimer’s disease. They could then look at the effects of the drug on each group.
More precise selection of trial participants in this way could help select patients most likely to benefit from treatment, with the potential to reduce the cost of developing new medicines by streamlining clinical trials.
The AI model developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge predicts whether, and how quickly, people at early stages of cognitive decline will progress to full-blown Alzheimer’s. It gives predictions for patients that are three times more accurate than standard clinical assessments based on memory tests, MRI scans and blood tests.
Using this patient stratification model, data from a completed clinical trial - which did not demonstrate efficacy in the total population studied - was re-analysed. The researchers found that the drug cleared a protein called beta amyloid in both patient groups as intended - but only the early stage, slow-progressing patients showed changes in symptoms. Beta amyloid is one of the first disease markers to appear in the brain in Alzheimer’s disease.
The new findings have significant implications: using AI to separate patients into different groups, such as slow versus rapidly progressing towards Alzheimer’s disease, allows scientists to better identify those who could benefit from a treatment approach - potentially accelerating the discovery of much-needed new Alzheimer’s drugs.
The results are published today in the journal Nature Communications.
Professor Zoe Kourtzi in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, senior author of the report, said: “Promising new drugs fail when given to people too late, when they have no chance of benefiting from them. With our AI model we can finally identify patients precisely, and match the right patients to the right drugs. This makes trials more precise, so they can progress faster and cost less, turbocharging the search for a desperately-need precision medicine approach for dementia treatment.”
She added: “Our AI model gives us a score to show how quickly each patient will progress towards Alzheimer’s disease. This allowed us to precisely split the patients on the clinical trial into two groups – slow, and fast progressing, so we could look at the effects of the drug on each group.”
Health Innovation East England, the innovation arm of the NHS in the East of England, is now supporting Kourtzi to translate this AI-enabled approach into clinical care for the benefit of future patients.
Joanna Dempsey, Principal Advisor at Health Innovation East England, said: “This AI-enabled approach could have a significant impact on easing NHS pressure and costs in dementia care by enabling more personalised drug development - identifying which patients are most likely to benefit from treatment, resulting in faster access to effective medicines and targeted support for people living with dementia.”
Drugs like this are not intended as cures for Alzheimer’s disease. The aim is to reduce cognitive decline so that patients don’t get worse.
Dementia is the UK’s leading cause of death, and a major cause of mortality globally. It costs $1.3 tr per year, and the number of cases are expected to treble by 2050. There is no cure, and patients and families face high uncertainty.
Despite decades of research and development, clinical trials of treatments for dementia have been largely unsuccessful. The failure rate for new treatments is unreasonably high at over 95%, despite $43 bn having been spent on research and development. Progress has been hampered by the wide variation in symptoms, disease progression and responses to treatment among patients.
Although new dementia drugs have recently been approved for use in the US, their risk of side effects and insufficient cost effectiveness have prevented healthcare adoption in the NHS.
Understanding and accounting for the natural differences among individuals with a disease is crucial, so that treatments can be tailored to be most effective for each patient. Alzheimer’s disease is complex, and although some drugs are available to treat it they don’t work for everybody.
“AI can guide us to the patients who will benefit from dementia medicines, by treating them at the stage when the drugs will make a difference, so we can finally start fighting back against these cruel diseases. Making clinical trials faster, cheaper and better, guided by AI has strong potential to accelerate discovery of new precise treatments for individual patients, reducing side effects and costs for healthcare services,” said Kourtzi.
She added: “Like many people, I have watched hopelessly as dementia stole a loved one from me. We’ve got to accelerate the development of dementia medicines. Over £40 billion has already been spent over thirty years of research and development - we can’t wait another thirty years.”
This research was funded by the Royal Society, Alan Turing Institute and Wellcome.
ReferenceVaghari, D. V. et al: ‘AI-guided patient stratification improves outcomes and efficiency in the AMARANTH Alzheimer’s Disease clinical trial.’ Nature Communications, July 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-61355-3
Scientists have used AI to re-analyse a clinical trial for an Alzheimer’s medicine, and identified a group of patients who responded to treatment. The work demonstrates that AI can inform the design of future clinical trials to make them more effective and efficient, accelerating the search for new medicines.
With our AI model we can finally identify patients precisely, and match the right patients to the right drugsZoe KourtziMichael Hewes/ Getty
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
AI can accelerate search for more effective Alzheimer’s medicines by streamlining clinical trials
Scientists have used an AI model to reassess the results of a completed clinical trial for an Alzheimer’s disease drug. They found the drug slowed cognitive decline by 46% in a group of patients with early stage, slow-progressing mild cognitive impairment – a condition that can progress to Alzheimer’s.
Using AI allowed the team to split trial participants into two groups: either slowly or rapidly progressing towards Alzheimer’s disease. They could then look at the effects of the drug on each group.
More precise selection of trial participants in this way could help select patients most likely to benefit from treatment, with the potential to reduce the cost of developing new medicines by streamlining clinical trials.
The AI model developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge predicts whether, and how quickly, people at early stages of cognitive decline will progress to full-blown Alzheimer’s. It gives predictions for patients that are three times more accurate than standard clinical assessments based on memory tests, MRI scans and blood tests.
Using this patient stratification model, data from a completed clinical trial - which did not demonstrate efficacy in the total population studied - was re-analysed. The researchers found that the drug cleared a protein called beta amyloid in both patient groups as intended - but only the early stage, slow-progressing patients showed changes in symptoms. Beta amyloid is one of the first disease markers to appear in the brain in Alzheimer’s disease.
The new findings have significant implications: using AI to separate patients into different groups, such as slow versus rapidly progressing towards Alzheimer’s disease, allows scientists to better identify those who could benefit from a treatment approach - potentially accelerating the discovery of much-needed new Alzheimer’s drugs.
The results are published today in the journal Nature Communications.
Professor Zoe Kourtzi in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, senior author of the report, said: “Promising new drugs fail when given to people too late, when they have no chance of benefiting from them. With our AI model we can finally identify patients precisely, and match the right patients to the right drugs. This makes trials more precise, so they can progress faster and cost less, turbocharging the search for a desperately-need precision medicine approach for dementia treatment.”
She added: “Our AI model gives us a score to show how quickly each patient will progress towards Alzheimer’s disease. This allowed us to precisely split the patients on the clinical trial into two groups – slow, and fast progressing, so we could look at the effects of the drug on each group.”
Health Innovation East England, the innovation arm of the NHS in the East of England, is now supporting Kourtzi to translate this AI-enabled approach into clinical care for the benefit of future patients.
Joanna Dempsey, Principal Advisor at Health Innovation East England, said: “This AI-enabled approach could have a significant impact on easing NHS pressure and costs in dementia care by enabling more personalised drug development - identifying which patients are most likely to benefit from treatment, resulting in faster access to effective medicines and targeted support for people living with dementia.”
Drugs like this are not intended as cures for Alzheimer’s disease. The aim is to reduce cognitive decline so that patients don’t get worse.
Dementia is the UK’s leading cause of death, and a major cause of mortality globally. It costs $1.3 tr per year, and the number of cases are expected to treble by 2050. There is no cure, and patients and families face high uncertainty.
Despite decades of research and development, clinical trials of treatments for dementia have been largely unsuccessful. The failure rate for new treatments is unreasonably high at over 95%, despite $43 bn having been spent on research and development. Progress has been hampered by the wide variation in symptoms, disease progression and responses to treatment among patients.
Although new dementia drugs have recently been approved for use in the US, their risk of side effects and insufficient cost effectiveness have prevented healthcare adoption in the NHS.
Understanding and accounting for the natural differences among individuals with a disease is crucial, so that treatments can be tailored to be most effective for each patient. Alzheimer’s disease is complex, and although some drugs are available to treat it they don’t work for everybody.
“AI can guide us to the patients who will benefit from dementia medicines, by treating them at the stage when the drugs will make a difference, so we can finally start fighting back against these cruel diseases. Making clinical trials faster, cheaper and better, guided by AI has strong potential to accelerate discovery of new precise treatments for individual patients, reducing side effects and costs for healthcare services,” said Kourtzi.
She added: “Like many people, I have watched hopelessly as dementia stole a loved one from me. We’ve got to accelerate the development of dementia medicines. Over £40 billion has already been spent over thirty years of research and development - we can’t wait another thirty years.”
This research was funded by the Royal Society, Alan Turing Institute and Wellcome.
ReferenceVaghari, D. V. et al: ‘AI-guided patient stratification improves outcomes and efficiency in the AMARANTH Alzheimer’s Disease clinical trial.’ Nature Communications, July 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-61355-3
Scientists have used AI to re-analyse a clinical trial for an Alzheimer’s medicine, and identified a group of patients who responded to treatment. The work demonstrates that AI can inform the design of future clinical trials to make them more effective and efficient, accelerating the search for new medicines.
With our AI model we can finally identify patients precisely, and match the right patients to the right drugsZoe KourtziMichael Hewes/ Getty
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Support for STEM programme
Originally founded with funding from the Department of Education and philanthropy, the Isaac Physics platform and STEM SMART programme run by the University of Cambridge have proven results in improving A-level students’ grades and boosting their success in securing a place to study STEM subjects at research-intensive universities. The future of this pioneering STEM provision, which is freely available to anyone, wherever they are in the world, has now been made significantly more secure with an anonymous donation of £6.25 million that is mirrored with a similar gift to the University of Oxford.
The Isaac Physics online platform was founded in 2013 by Professor Lisa Jardine-Wright and Professor Mark Warner at Cambridge’s Department of Physics, specifically to support physics teaching at A-level in response to the challenges facing many state schools that teach physical sciences. Teachers use the unique platform to set homework, which is marked automatically. Pupils develop essential problem-solving skills as they are guided through questions rather than being supplied with answers. Resources have since been expanded to cover maths, further maths, chemistry, and biology, and to support students in physics from age 11 through to university. It can be used in the classroom and beyond—anyone can sign up for a free account and use the available resources.
Professor Lisa Jardine-Wright, Director of Isaac Physics and Co-Director of STEM SMART, said “We are absolutely thrilled that thanks to this generous gift, Isaac Physics and STEM SMART are now on a much more secure footing until 2031, enabling us to support hundreds of thousands more pupils to gain essential problem-solving skills and pursue STEM degrees”.
Dr Michael Sutherland, Co-Director of STEM SMART, added, “This transformational gift will have long-term impact, not only for those students who gain the confidence and skills to study STEM subjects at university but also for wider society, because when these young people graduate they can provide a critical boost to the country’s STEM workforce”.
Second year student Rebecca Millar believes the STEM SMART programme played a pivotal role in her applying to study Natural Sciences at Cambridge: “Being here has changed a lot about my life—the people I know and the subjects I am doing. I didn’t realise there were courses like NatSci.”
The STEM SMART widening participation programme leverages the scalability of the Isaac Physics platform to engage thousands of sixth-form students from disadvantaged backgrounds when they are planning their university applications, raising their aspirations and confidence to apply to study STEM degrees at research-intensive universities. Independent analysis of pupils’ A-levels and UCAS applications shows that STEM SMART students achieved higher A-level grades and secured more places at top universities compared with matched cohorts not on the programme.
Amira Yonis Sheikmohamud, a second-year Mechanical Engineering student at Imperial College London, who took part in STEM SMART, said it "gives people access to materials they wouldn’t otherwise have, unless they were in a fee-paying school, so the programme helps bridge that gap.”
Since its inception, more than 700,000 Isaac Physics accounts have been created with users from over 100 countries.
Professor Bhaskar Vira, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education and Environmental Sustainability, University of Cambridge, said, “The University is very grateful for this exceptional gift that will benefit significant numbers of school pupils and teachers, and bring more talented young people to study STEM degrees at Cambridge and other research-intensive universities. Closing the attainment gap in science and maths A-levels is crucial for developing society’s ability to solve the technological challenges of the future”.
Joint major gift to Cambridge and Oxford Universities helps boost initiatives to address challenges in science education and increase the number of pupils progressing to STEM degrees
Closing the attainment gap in science and maths A-levels is crucial for developing society’s ability to solve the technological challenges of the futureProf Bhaskar Vira
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Support for STEM programme
Originally founded with funding from the Department of Education and philanthropy, the Isaac Physics platform and STEM SMART programme run by the University of Cambridge have proven results in improving A-level students’ grades and boosting their success in securing a place to study STEM subjects at research-intensive universities. The future of this pioneering STEM provision, which is freely available to anyone, wherever they are in the world, has now been made significantly more secure with an anonymous donation of £6.25 million that is mirrored with a similar gift to the University of Oxford.
The Isaac Physics online platform was founded in 2013 by Professor Lisa Jardine-Wright and Professor Mark Warner at Cambridge’s Department of Physics, specifically to support physics teaching at A-level in response to the challenges facing many state schools that teach physical sciences. Teachers use the unique platform to set homework, which is marked automatically. Pupils develop essential problem-solving skills as they are guided through questions rather than being supplied with answers. Resources have since been expanded to cover maths, further maths, chemistry, and biology, and to support students in physics from age 11 through to university. It can be used in the classroom and beyond—anyone can sign up for a free account and use the available resources.
Professor Lisa Jardine-Wright, Director of Isaac Physics and Co-Director of STEM SMART, said “We are absolutely thrilled that thanks to this generous gift, Isaac Physics and STEM SMART are now on a much more secure footing until 2031, enabling us to support hundreds of thousands more pupils to gain essential problem-solving skills and pursue STEM degrees”.
Dr Michael Sutherland, Co-Director of STEM SMART, added, “This transformational gift will have long-term impact, not only for those students who gain the confidence and skills to study STEM subjects at university but also for wider society, because when these young people graduate they can provide a critical boost to the country’s STEM workforce”.
Second year student Rebecca Millar believes the STEM SMART programme played a pivotal role in her applying to study Natural Sciences at Cambridge: “Being here has changed a lot about my life—the people I know and the subjects I am doing. I didn’t realise there were courses like NatSci.”
The STEM SMART widening participation programme leverages the scalability of the Isaac Physics platform to engage thousands of sixth-form students from disadvantaged backgrounds when they are planning their university applications, raising their aspirations and confidence to apply to study STEM degrees at research-intensive universities. Independent analysis of pupils’ A-levels and UCAS applications shows that STEM SMART students achieved higher A-level grades and secured more places at top universities compared with matched cohorts not on the programme.
Amira Yonis Sheikmohamud, a second-year Mechanical Engineering student at Imperial College London, who took part in STEM SMART, said it "gives people access to materials they wouldn’t otherwise have, unless they were in a fee-paying school, so the programme helps bridge that gap.”
Since its inception, more than 700,000 Isaac Physics accounts have been created with users from over 100 countries.
Professor Bhaskar Vira, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education and Environmental Sustainability, University of Cambridge, said, “The University is very grateful for this exceptional gift that will benefit significant numbers of school pupils and teachers, and bring more talented young people to study STEM degrees at Cambridge and other research-intensive universities. Closing the attainment gap in science and maths A-levels is crucial for developing society’s ability to solve the technological challenges of the future”.
Joint major gift to Cambridge and Oxford Universities helps boost initiatives to address challenges in science education and increase the number of pupils progressing to STEM degrees
Closing the attainment gap in science and maths A-levels is crucial for developing society’s ability to solve the technological challenges of the futureProf Bhaskar Vira
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Smarter targeted radiotherapy just as effective for low-risk breast cancer and reduces risk of side effects
Findings of the IMPORT LOW trial, led by researchers at the University of Cambridge and The Institute of Cancer Research, London, showed that limiting radiation to only the tumour area is just as effective as treating the whole breast, therefore reducing radiation exposure.
At the 10-year follow-up mark, the team showed that recurrence rates for the less aggressive technique – known as partial breast radiotherapy – were 3 per cent, the same as for whole breast radiotherapy, according to findings published in The Lancet Oncology.
Partial breast radiotherapy, which has been shown to reduce long-term changes in breast appearance, has now been adopted widely across the NHS and internationally.
It is hoped that more than 9,000 women a year in the UK – one in four patients who require radiotherapy for breast cancer – will benefit from the more personalised treatment, along with many tens of thousands of patients around the world.
More than 37,000 women have radiotherapy for breast cancer in the UK each year. The procedure is given after a tumour is surgically removed and is aimed at eradicating all remaining cancer cells.
Side effects of radiotherapy include changes in breast size or shape, swelling in the arm or breast due to fluid build-up, as well as pain or breast hardness.
IMPORT LOW was co-led by Professor Charlotte Coles from the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and Professor Judith Bliss, Founding Director of The Institute of Cancer Research Clinical Trials and Statistics Unit (ICR-CTSU).
Professor Coles, Chief Investigator of the study, said: "The IMPORT LOW trial has transformed how we treat early breast cancer, offering women a safer and effective option while significantly reducing some side effects. By targeting the area around the tumour, rather than the whole breast, we have demonstrated that patients can achieve the same outstanding long-term outcomes with fewer complications.
“This approach is now widely adopted across the NHS, sparing thousands of women from unnecessary radiation exposure. The results of this study have not only shaped UK clinical practice but also informed international guidelines, ensuring that women worldwide benefit from this personalised, evidence-based treatment.”
The IMPORT LOW trial, which was managed by the ICR-CTSU and funded by Cancer Research UK, compared three radiotherapy approaches: whole-breast radiotherapy, partial-breast radiotherapy and partial-breast radiotherapy with reduced-dose to the part of the breast that was distant from the primary cancer. It involved more than 2,000 women at 30 radiotherapy centres in the UK who were monitored for 10 years after treatment.
The researchers found no difference in rates of cancer recurrence with either of the less aggressive approaches, and patients reported significantly lower side-effects.
Patients who received partial-breast radiotherapy were significantly less likely to experience long-term changes in breast appearance. Only 15 per cent of patients reported noticeable changes at five years, compared to 27 per cent in the whole-breast group.
Experts estimate that between 25-30 per cent of patients who have radiotherapy treatment for breast cancer are eligible for partial breast radiotherapy, due to their cancer being low risk and, to date, around 74,000 women have benefitted from the gentler technique.
Following the trial's success, partial-breast radiotherapy has been integrated into NHS treatment guidelines and endorsed by the Royal College of Radiologists and Association of Breast Surgery. The IMPORT LOW trial has also changed clinical practice worldwide, informing the 2022 European Society of Radiation Oncology guidelines, and 2023 American Society of Radiotherapy and Oncology (ASTRO) partial breast irradiation guidelines.
Since 2020, partial breast radiotherapy has been carried out in five sessions of radiotherapy instead of 15 – making it cheaper for the NHS and less burdensome for patients.
First author Dr Anna Kirby from The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and The Institute of Cancer Research said: "The long-term results of this study confirm that a less aggressive approach - limiting radiotherapy to the part of the breast where the tumour was - is just as effective as traditional whole-breast radiotherapy. Patients receiving partial breast radiotherapy experience fewer side effects while maintaining excellent cancer control.”
Dr Fay Cafferty, also from The Institute of Cancer Research, said: “This latest analysis confirms that partial breast radiotherapy remains a safe and effective treatment option, supporting its continued adoption as the standard of care in the UK and globally. Along with the parallel reduction in the number of radiotherapy sessions now required, the approach provides significant advantages both for patients and healthcare systems, helping to optimise resources while ensuring excellent long-term cancer control."
The study was supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research's Biomedical Research Centres in Cambridge and at the Royal Marsden and The Institute of Cancer Research.
Dr Dani Edmunds, Research Information Manager at Cancer Research UK, said: “This study shows that we can safely reduce the amount of radiotherapy we give to many women with early breast cancer without increasing the risk of the disease coming back.
“This means people experience fewer long-term side effects, like changes in how their breasts look or feel, making the treatment kinder.”
Reference
Kirby, AM et al. Partial-breast radiotherapy after breast conservation surgery for women with early breast cancer (UK IMPORT LOW): 10-year outcomes from a multicentre, open-label, randomised, controlled, phase 3, non-inferiority trial. Lancet Oncology; July 2025; DOI: 10.1016/S1470-2045(25)00194-9
Thousands of women who undergo radiotherapy for low-risk breast cancer could be spared some of the side effects of treatment after a study confirmed that more targeted treatments are just as effective at controlling the disease in the long term.
The IMPORT LOW trial has transformed how we treat early breast cancer, offering women a safer and effective option while significantly reducing some side effectsCharlotte ColesSDI Productions (Getty Images)Breast cancer patients (stock image)Hilary Stobart, 70Hilary Stobart, now 70, was diagnosed with ER-Positive breast cancer in December 2008 which revealed a two-centimetre tumour in her left breast.
Hilary, then aged 54, underwent wide local excision surgery and was then offered the chance to take part in the IMPORT-LOW trial. She was treated with partial breast radiotherapy as part of the trial. She says:
“I had three weeks of radiotherapy, but suffered no side effects, other than some soreness in my breast and nipple in the first few weeks.
“Ten years on, I am doing fine. I have no side effects and no recurrence of disease. For me personally, I am very thankful to have received the lowest dose of radiotherapy. Whilst I may have had some niggling worries in the early days, having seen the results of the trial, I feel positive and optimistic now. I know that I was lucky enough back then to have had the best treatment, a treatment that other women will be routinely offered now.
“I am excited to have been part of a trial that has made a noticeable difference to the way in which breast cancer patients are treated now and in the future.”
Adapted from a press release from The Institute of Cancer Research
Find out how Cambridge is changing the story of cancer
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Smarter targeted radiotherapy just as effective for low-risk breast cancer and reduces risk of side effects
Findings of the IMPORT LOW trial, led by researchers at the University of Cambridge and The Institute of Cancer Research, London, showed that limiting radiation to only the tumour area is just as effective as treating the whole breast, therefore reducing radiation exposure.
At the 10-year follow-up mark, the team showed that recurrence rates for the less aggressive technique – known as partial breast radiotherapy – were 3 per cent, the same as for whole breast radiotherapy, according to findings published in The Lancet Oncology.
Partial breast radiotherapy, which has been shown to reduce long-term changes in breast appearance, has now been adopted widely across the NHS and internationally.
It is hoped that more than 9,000 women a year in the UK – one in four patients who require radiotherapy for breast cancer – will benefit from the more personalised treatment, along with many tens of thousands of patients around the world.
More than 37,000 women have radiotherapy for breast cancer in the UK each year. The procedure is given after a tumour is surgically removed and is aimed at eradicating all remaining cancer cells.
Side effects of radiotherapy include changes in breast size or shape, swelling in the arm or breast due to fluid build-up, as well as pain or breast hardness.
IMPORT LOW was co-led by Professor Charlotte Coles from the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and Professor Judith Bliss, Founding Director of The Institute of Cancer Research Clinical Trials and Statistics Unit (ICR-CTSU).
Professor Coles, Chief Investigator of the study, said: "The IMPORT LOW trial has transformed how we treat early breast cancer, offering women a safer and effective option while significantly reducing some side effects. By targeting the area around the tumour, rather than the whole breast, we have demonstrated that patients can achieve the same outstanding long-term outcomes with fewer complications.
“This approach is now widely adopted across the NHS, sparing thousands of women from unnecessary radiation exposure. The results of this study have not only shaped UK clinical practice but also informed international guidelines, ensuring that women worldwide benefit from this personalised, evidence-based treatment.”
The IMPORT LOW trial, which was managed by the ICR-CTSU and funded by Cancer Research UK, compared three radiotherapy approaches: whole-breast radiotherapy, partial-breast radiotherapy and partial-breast radiotherapy with reduced-dose to the part of the breast that was distant from the primary cancer. It involved more than 2,000 women at 30 radiotherapy centres in the UK who were monitored for 10 years after treatment.
The researchers found no difference in rates of cancer recurrence with either of the less aggressive approaches, and patients reported significantly lower side-effects.
Patients who received partial-breast radiotherapy were significantly less likely to experience long-term changes in breast appearance. Only 15 per cent of patients reported noticeable changes at five years, compared to 27 per cent in the whole-breast group.
Experts estimate that between 25-30 per cent of patients who have radiotherapy treatment for breast cancer are eligible for partial breast radiotherapy, due to their cancer being low risk and, to date, around 74,000 women have benefitted from the gentler technique.
Following the trial's success, partial-breast radiotherapy has been integrated into NHS treatment guidelines and endorsed by the Royal College of Radiologists and Association of Breast Surgery. The IMPORT LOW trial has also changed clinical practice worldwide, informing the 2022 European Society of Radiation Oncology guidelines, and 2023 American Society of Radiotherapy and Oncology (ASTRO) partial breast irradiation guidelines.
Since 2020, partial breast radiotherapy has been carried out in five sessions of radiotherapy instead of 15 – making it cheaper for the NHS and less burdensome for patients.
First author Dr Anna Kirby from The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and The Institute of Cancer Research said: "The long-term results of this study confirm that a less aggressive approach - limiting radiotherapy to the part of the breast where the tumour was - is just as effective as traditional whole-breast radiotherapy. Patients receiving partial breast radiotherapy experience fewer side effects while maintaining excellent cancer control.”
Dr Fay Cafferty, also from The Institute of Cancer Research, said: “This latest analysis confirms that partial breast radiotherapy remains a safe and effective treatment option, supporting its continued adoption as the standard of care in the UK and globally. Along with the parallel reduction in the number of radiotherapy sessions now required, the approach provides significant advantages both for patients and healthcare systems, helping to optimise resources while ensuring excellent long-term cancer control."
The study was supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research's Biomedical Research Centres in Cambridge and at the Royal Marsden and The Institute of Cancer Research.
Dr Dani Edmunds, Research Information Manager at Cancer Research UK, said: “This study shows that we can safely reduce the amount of radiotherapy we give to many women with early breast cancer without increasing the risk of the disease coming back.
“This means people experience fewer long-term side effects, like changes in how their breasts look or feel, making the treatment kinder.”
Reference
Kirby, AM et al. Partial-breast radiotherapy after breast conservation surgery for women with early breast cancer (UK IMPORT LOW): 10-year outcomes from a multicentre, open-label, randomised, controlled, phase 3, non-inferiority trial. Lancet Oncology; July 2025; DOI: 10.1016/S1470-2045(25)00194-9
Thousands of women who undergo radiotherapy for low-risk breast cancer could be spared some of the side effects of treatment after a study confirmed that more targeted treatments are just as effective at controlling the disease in the long term.
The IMPORT LOW trial has transformed how we treat early breast cancer, offering women a safer and effective option while significantly reducing some side effectsCharlotte ColesSDI Productions (Getty Images)Breast cancer patients (stock image)Hilary Stobart, 70Hilary Stobart, now 70, was diagnosed with ER-Positive breast cancer in December 2008 which revealed a two-centimetre tumour in her left breast.
Hilary, then aged 54, underwent wide local excision surgery and was then offered the chance to take part in the IMPORT-LOW trial. She was treated with partial breast radiotherapy as part of the trial. She says:
“I had three weeks of radiotherapy, but suffered no side effects, other than some soreness in my breast and nipple in the first few weeks.
“Ten years on, I am doing fine. I have no side effects and no recurrence of disease. For me personally, I am very thankful to have received the lowest dose of radiotherapy. Whilst I may have had some niggling worries in the early days, having seen the results of the trial, I feel positive and optimistic now. I know that I was lucky enough back then to have had the best treatment, a treatment that other women will be routinely offered now.
“I am excited to have been part of a trial that has made a noticeable difference to the way in which breast cancer patients are treated now and in the future.”
Adapted from a press release from The Institute of Cancer Research
Find out how Cambridge is changing the story of cancer
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Astronomers find a giant hiding in the ‘fog’ around a young star
Earlier observations of this star, called MP Mus, suggested that it was all alone without any planets in orbit around it, surrounded by a featureless cloud of gas and dust.
However, a second look at MP Mus, using a combination of results from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, suggests that the star is not alone after all.
The international team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, detected a large gas giant in the star’s protoplanetary disc: the pancake-like cloud of gases, dust and ice where the process of planet formation begins. This is the first time that Gaia has detected an exoplanet within a protoplanetary disc. The results, reported in the journal Nature Astronomy, suggest that similar methods could be useful in the hunt for young planets around other stars.
By studying how planets form in the protoplanetary discs around young stars, researchers can learn more about how our own Solar System evolved. Through a process known as core accretion, gravity causes particles in the disc to stick to each other, eventually forming larger solid bodies like asteroids or planets. As young planets form, they start to carve gaps in the disc, like grooves on a vinyl record.
However, observing these young planets is extremely challenging, due to the interference from the gas and dust in the disc. To date, only three robust detections of young planets in a protoplanetary disc have been made.
Dr Álvaro Ribas from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, who led the research, specialises in studying protoplanetary discs. “We first observed this star at the time when we learned that most discs have rings and gaps, and I was hoping to find features around MP Mus that could hint at the presence of a planet or planets,” he said.
Using ALMA, Ribas observed the protoplanetary disc around MP Mus (PDS 66) in 2023. The results showed a young star seemingly all alone in the universe. Its surrounding disc showed none of the gaps where planets might be forming, and was completely flat and featureless.
“Our earlier observations showed a boring, flat disc,” said Ribas. “But this seemed odd to us, since the disc is between seven and ten million years old. In a disc of that age, we would expect to see some evidence of planet formation.”
Now, Ribas and his colleagues from Germany, Chile, and France have given MP Mus another chance. Once again using ALMA, they observed the star at the 3mm range, a longer wavelength than the earlier observations, allowing them to probe deeper into the disc.
The new observations turned up a cavity close to the star and two gaps further out, which were obscured in the earlier observations, suggesting that MP Mus may not be alone after all.
At the same time, Miguel Vioque, a researcher at the European Southern Observatory, was uncovering another piece of the puzzle. Using data from Gaia, he found MP Mus was ‘wobbling’.
“My first reaction was that I must have made a mistake in my calculations, because MP Mus was known to have a featureless disc,” said Vioque. “I was revising my calculations when I saw Álvaro give a talk presenting preliminary results of a newly-discovered inner cavity in the disc, which meant the wobbling I was detecting was real and had a good chance of being caused by a forming planet.”
Using a combination of the Gaia and ALMA observations, along with some computer modelling, the researchers say the wobbling is likely caused by a gas giant – less than ten times the mass of Jupiter – orbiting the star at a distance between one and three times the distance of the Earth to the Sun.
“Our modelling work showed that if you put a giant planet inside the new-found cavity, you can also explain the Gaia signal,” said Ribas. “And using the longer ALMA wavelengths allowed us to see structures we couldn’t see before.”
This is the first time an exoplanet embedded in a protoplanetary disc has been indirectly discovered in this way – by combining precise star movement data from the Gaia with deep observations of the disc. It also means that many more hidden planets might exist in other discs, just waiting to be found.
“We think this might be one of the reasons why it’s hard to detect young planets in protoplanetary discs, because in this case, we needed the ALMA and Gaia data together,” said Ribas. “The longer ALMA wavelength is incredibly useful, but to observe at this wavelength requires more time on the telescope.”
Ribas says that upcoming upgrades to ALMA, as well as future telescopes such as the next generation Very Large Array (ngVLA), may be used to look deeper into more discs and better understand the hidden population of young planets, which could in turn help us learn how our own planet may have formed.
The research was supported in part by the European Union’s Horizon Programme, the European Research Council, and the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
Reference:
Álvaro Ribas et al. ‘A young gas giant and hidden substructures in a protoplanetary disc.’ Nature Astronomy (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02576-w
Astronomers have detected a giant exoplanet – between three and ten times the size of Jupiter – hiding in the swirling disc of gas and dust surrounding a young star.
ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/A. Ribas et al.Protoplanetary disc around MP Mus
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Astronomers find a giant hiding in the ‘fog’ around a young star
Earlier observations of this star, called MP Mus, suggested that it was all alone without any planets in orbit around it, surrounded by a featureless cloud of gas and dust.
However, a second look at MP Mus, using a combination of results from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, suggests that the star is not alone after all.
The international team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, detected a large gas giant in the star’s protoplanetary disc: the pancake-like cloud of gases, dust and ice where the process of planet formation begins. This is the first time that Gaia has detected an exoplanet within a protoplanetary disc. The results, reported in the journal Nature Astronomy, suggest that similar methods could be useful in the hunt for young planets around other stars.
By studying how planets form in the protoplanetary discs around young stars, researchers can learn more about how our own Solar System evolved. Through a process known as core accretion, gravity causes particles in the disc to stick to each other, eventually forming larger solid bodies like asteroids or planets. As young planets form, they start to carve gaps in the disc, like grooves on a vinyl record.
However, observing these young planets is extremely challenging, due to the interference from the gas and dust in the disc. To date, only three robust detections of young planets in a protoplanetary disc have been made.
Dr Álvaro Ribas from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, who led the research, specialises in studying protoplanetary discs. “We first observed this star at the time when we learned that most discs have rings and gaps, and I was hoping to find features around MP Mus that could hint at the presence of a planet or planets,” he said.
Using ALMA, Ribas observed the protoplanetary disc around MP Mus (PDS 66) in 2023. The results showed a young star seemingly all alone in the universe. Its surrounding disc showed none of the gaps where planets might be forming, and was completely flat and featureless.
“Our earlier observations showed a boring, flat disc,” said Ribas. “But this seemed odd to us, since the disc is between seven and ten million years old. In a disc of that age, we would expect to see some evidence of planet formation.”
Now, Ribas and his colleagues from Germany, Chile, and France have given MP Mus another chance. Once again using ALMA, they observed the star at the 3mm range, a longer wavelength than the earlier observations, allowing them to probe deeper into the disc.
The new observations turned up a cavity close to the star and two gaps further out, which were obscured in the earlier observations, suggesting that MP Mus may not be alone after all.
At the same time, Miguel Vioque, a researcher at the European Southern Observatory, was uncovering another piece of the puzzle. Using data from Gaia, he found MP Mus was ‘wobbling’.
“My first reaction was that I must have made a mistake in my calculations, because MP Mus was known to have a featureless disc,” said Vioque. “I was revising my calculations when I saw Álvaro give a talk presenting preliminary results of a newly-discovered inner cavity in the disc, which meant the wobbling I was detecting was real and had a good chance of being caused by a forming planet.”
Using a combination of the Gaia and ALMA observations, along with some computer modelling, the researchers say the wobbling is likely caused by a gas giant – less than ten times the mass of Jupiter – orbiting the star at a distance between one and three times the distance of the Earth to the Sun.
“Our modelling work showed that if you put a giant planet inside the new-found cavity, you can also explain the Gaia signal,” said Ribas. “And using the longer ALMA wavelengths allowed us to see structures we couldn’t see before.”
This is the first time an exoplanet embedded in a protoplanetary disc has been indirectly discovered in this way – by combining precise star movement data from the Gaia with deep observations of the disc. It also means that many more hidden planets might exist in other discs, just waiting to be found.
“We think this might be one of the reasons why it’s hard to detect young planets in protoplanetary discs, because in this case, we needed the ALMA and Gaia data together,” said Ribas. “The longer ALMA wavelength is incredibly useful, but to observe at this wavelength requires more time on the telescope.”
Ribas says that upcoming upgrades to ALMA, as well as future telescopes such as the next generation Very Large Array (ngVLA), may be used to look deeper into more discs and better understand the hidden population of young planets, which could in turn help us learn how our own planet may have formed.
The research was supported in part by the European Union’s Horizon Programme, the European Research Council, and the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
Reference:
Álvaro Ribas et al. ‘A young gas giant and hidden substructures in a protoplanetary disc.’ Nature Astronomy (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02576-w
Astronomers have detected a giant exoplanet – between three and ten times the size of Jupiter – hiding in the swirling disc of gas and dust surrounding a young star.
ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/A. Ribas et al.Protoplanetary disc around MP Mus
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Cambridge wins two Prosperity Partnership awards to support innovation in clean technologies
A collaboration on carbon capture between Cambridge and Hitachi Europe Ltd has been awarded Prosperity Partnership funding to develop a new way of converting green methanol – made from captured CO2 – into high-value chemicals used in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and materials manufacturing.
While many technologies focus on capturing and storing surplus CO₂, the researchers, led by Professor Ljiljana Fruk, aim to turn it into something genuinely useful.
The approach uses compact, continuous‑flow reactors – systems that enable chemical reactions to run more efficiently – with lower energy demand, less waste, and better control at scale. The catalysts themselves are being designed to work under mild, sustainable conditions, helping reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
Professor Fruk said: “It’s exciting to be part of something that is working towards a future where science helps build a cleaner, healthier world.”
Read the full story here
Low-emission steel-makingWith Prosperity Partnership funding from UKRI and Tata Steel, Cambridge University, Imperial College and the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) at the University of Warwick will work in partnership to drive innovation in low-emission steel production.
As the UK steel industry transitions towards electric arc furnace (EAF) technology, the programme will address one of the key challenges of using high-recycled-content steel: how to ensure its performance in demanding applications such as some automotive components and packaging.
The five-year programme will also fund 13 PhD studentships across the three universities to conduct leading research into the advanced manufacturing of steels and steel products suited to EAF steelmaking.
Professor Howard Stone, lead academic for the project, said: “This partnership will enable us to unlock the full potential of electric arc furnace steelmaking, combining advanced data science with metallurgical expertise. By working closely with Tata Steel, we aim to deliver practical solutions that support a more sustainable future for the UK steel industry and beyond.”
The University of Cambridge has been awarded two Prosperity Partnerships by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The awards are designed to support partnerships between universities and business which are focused on fundamental research addressing key industry challenges.
Team member adding post-its to a white board
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Cambridge wins two Prosperity Partnership awards to support innovation in clean technologies
A collaboration on carbon capture between Cambridge and Hitachi Europe Ltd has been awarded Prosperity Partnership funding to develop a new way of converting green methanol – made from captured CO2 – into high-value chemicals used in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and materials manufacturing.
While many technologies focus on capturing and storing surplus CO₂, the researchers, led by Professor Ljiljana Fruk, aim to turn it into something genuinely useful.
The approach uses compact, continuous‑flow reactors – systems that enable chemical reactions to run more efficiently – with lower energy demand, less waste, and better control at scale. The catalysts themselves are being designed to work under mild, sustainable conditions, helping reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
Professor Fruk said: “It’s exciting to be part of something that is working towards a future where science helps build a cleaner, healthier world.”
Read the full story here
Low-emission steel-makingWith Prosperity Partnership funding from UKRI and Tata Steel, Cambridge University, Imperial College and the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) at the University of Warwick will work in partnership to drive innovation in low-emission steel production.
As the UK steel industry transitions towards electric arc furnace (EAF) technology, the programme will address one of the key challenges of using high-recycled-content steel: how to ensure its performance in demanding applications such as some automotive components and packaging.
The five-year programme will also fund 13 PhD studentships across the three universities to conduct leading research into the advanced manufacturing of steels and steel products suited to EAF steelmaking.
Professor Howard Stone, lead academic for the project, said: “This partnership will enable us to unlock the full potential of electric arc furnace steelmaking, combining advanced data science with metallurgical expertise. By working closely with Tata Steel, we aim to deliver practical solutions that support a more sustainable future for the UK steel industry and beyond.”
The University of Cambridge has been awarded two Prosperity Partnerships by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The awards are designed to support partnerships between universities and business which are focused on fundamental research addressing key industry challenges.
Team member adding post-its to a white board
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
UK Govt appoints three Cambridge academics to new net zero council
Engineering Professor Julian Allwood (St Catharine's), Cambridge Zero Director Professor Emily Shuckburgh (Darwin) and Cambridge Energy Policy Research Group Director Emeritus Professor David Newbery (Churchill) join a panel of 17 expert advisors on STAC, which has been created to provide robust, scientific, evidence-based information to support key decisions as the UK overhauls its energy system to reach clean power by 2030.
The Council is expected to also offer independent viewpoints and cutting-edge research on topics from climate science, energy networks and engineering, to the latest technologies and artificial intelligence.
“Evidence-based decision-making is fundamental to the drive for clean power and tackling the climate crisis, with informed policymaking the key to securing a better, fairer world for current and future generations,” UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said in the Government’s announcement.
Professor Allwood is Professor of Engineering and the Environment at the University of Cambridge and directs the Use Less Group. Uniquely, his research aims to articulate a pathway to zero emissions based on technologies that already exist at scale. His projects include ground-breaking innovations such as electric cement.
Professor Shuckburgh is Director of Cambridge Zero, the University’s major climate change initiative. A mathematician and data scientist, Emily Shuckburgh is also Professor of Environmental Data Science at the Department of Computer Science and Technology, Academic Director of the Institute of Computing for Climate Science, and co-Director of the Centre for Landscape Regeneration and the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training on the Application of AI to the study of Environmental Risks (AI4ER).
As a climate scientist, Professor Shuckburgh worked for more than a decade at the British Antarctic Survey where her work included leading a UK national research programme on the Southern Ocean and its role in climate.
Professor Newbery is the Director of the Cambridge Energy Policy Research Group, an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the Faculty of Economics and a Professorial Research Associate in the UCL Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources, University College London.
STAC’s expert advice is expected to allow ministers to access the most up-to-date and well-informed scientific evidence, improving decision-making and effectiveness of policy implementation.
STAC is led by Professor Paul Monks, STAC Co-Chair and Chief Scientific Adviser & Director General, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ); and Professor David Greenwood FREng, STAC Co-Chair and CEO of Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) High Value Manufacturing Catapult Centre.
Read the government announcement here
Three Cambridge academics have been appointed to the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s new Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC), which met for the first time on Wednesday 9 July, 2025.
Evidence-based decision-making is fundamental to the drive for clean powerUK Energy Secretary David MilibandUK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband at London Climate Action Week/Credit: CISLUK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband at London Climate Action Week
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
UK Govt appoints three Cambridge academics to new net zero council
Engineering Professor Julian Allwood (St Catharine's), Cambridge Zero Director Professor Emily Shuckburgh (Darwin) and Cambridge Energy Policy Research Group Director Emeritus Professor David Newbery (Churchill) join a panel of 17 expert advisors on STAC, which has been created to provide robust, scientific, evidence-based information to support key decisions as the UK overhauls its energy system to reach clean power by 2030.
The Council is expected to also offer independent viewpoints and cutting-edge research on topics from climate science, energy networks and engineering, to the latest technologies and artificial intelligence.
“Evidence-based decision-making is fundamental to the drive for clean power and tackling the climate crisis, with informed policymaking the key to securing a better, fairer world for current and future generations,” UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said in the Government’s announcement.
Professor Allwood is Professor of Engineering and the Environment at the University of Cambridge and directs the Use Less Group. Uniquely, his research aims to articulate a pathway to zero emissions based on technologies that already exist at scale. His projects include ground-breaking innovations such as electric cement.
Professor Shuckburgh is Director of Cambridge Zero, the University’s major climate change initiative. A mathematician and data scientist, Emily Shuckburgh is also Professor of Environmental Data Science at the Department of Computer Science and Technology, Academic Director of the Institute of Computing for Climate Science, and co-Director of the Centre for Landscape Regeneration and the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training on the Application of AI to the study of Environmental Risks (AI4ER).
As a climate scientist, Professor Shuckburgh worked for more than a decade at the British Antarctic Survey where her work included leading a UK national research programme on the Southern Ocean and its role in climate.
Professor Newbery is the Director of the Cambridge Energy Policy Research Group, an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the Faculty of Economics and a Professorial Research Associate in the UCL Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources, University College London.
STAC’s expert advice is expected to allow ministers to access the most up-to-date and well-informed scientific evidence, improving decision-making and effectiveness of policy implementation.
STAC is led by Professor Paul Monks, STAC Co-Chair and Chief Scientific Adviser & Director General, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ); and Professor David Greenwood FREng, STAC Co-Chair and CEO of Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) High Value Manufacturing Catapult Centre.
Read the government announcement here
Three Cambridge academics have been appointed to the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s new Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC), which met for the first time on Wednesday 9 July, 2025.
Evidence-based decision-making is fundamental to the drive for clean powerUK Energy Secretary David MilibandUK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband at London Climate Action Week/Credit: CISLUK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband at London Climate Action Week
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Banking on AI risks derailing net zero goals: report on energy costs of Big Tech
By 2040, the energy demands of the tech industry could be up to 25 times higher than today, with unchecked growth of data centres driven by AI expected to create surges in electricity consumption that will strain power grids and accelerate carbon emissions.
This is according to a new report from the University of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, which suggests that even the most conservative estimate for big tech’s energy needs will see a five-fold increase over the next 15 years.
The idea that governments such as the UK can become leaders in AI while simultaneously meeting their net zero targets amounts to “magical thinking at the highest levels,” according to the report’s authors. The UK is committed to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Researchers call for global standards in reporting AI’s environmental cost through forums such as COP, the UN climate summit, and argue that the UK should advocate for this on the international stage while ensuring democratic oversight at home.
The report, published today, synthesises projections from leading consultancies to forecast the energy demands of the global tech industry. The researchers note that these projections are based on claims by tech firms themselves.
At the moment, data centres – the facilities that house servers for processing and storing data, along with cooling systems preventing this hardware from overheating – account for nearly 1.5% of global emissions.
This figure is expected to grow by 15-30% each year to reach 8% of total global greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, write the report’s authors. They point out that this would far exceed current emissions from air travel.
The report highlights that in the US, China, and Europe, data centres already consume around 2-4% of national electricity, with regional concentrations becoming extreme. For example, up to 20% of all power in Ireland now goes to data centres in Dublin’s cluster.
“We know the environmental impact of AI will be formidable, but tech giants are deliberately vague about the energy requirements implicit in their aims,” said Bhargav Srinivasa Desikan, the report’s lead author from Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre.
“The lack of hard data on electricity and water consumption as well as associated carbon emissions of digital technology leaves policymakers and researchers in the dark about the climate harms AI might cause.”
“We need to see urgent action from governments to prevent AI from derailing climate goals, not just deferring to tech companies on the promise of economic growth,” said Desikan.
The researchers also use data from corporate press releases and ESG reports of some of the world’s tech giants to show the alarming trajectory of energy use before the AI race had fully kicked into gear.
Google’s reported greenhouse gas emissions rose by 48% between 2019 and 2023, while Microsoft’s reported emissions increased by nearly 30% from 2020 to 2023. Amazon’s carbon footprint grew around 40% between 2019 and 2021, and – while it has begun to fall – remains well above 2019 levels.
This self-reported data is contested, note the researchers, and some independent reporting suggests that actual emissions from tech companies are much higher.
Several tech giants are looking to nuclear power to defuse the energy timebomb at the heart of their ambitions. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has argued that fusion is needed to meet AI’s potential, while Meta have said that nuclear energy can “provide firm, baseload power” to supply their data centres.
Microsoft have even signed a 20-year agreement to reactivate the Three Mile Island plant – site of the worst nuclear accident in US history.
Some tech leaders, such as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, argue that environmental costs of AI will be offset by its benefits for the climate crisis – from contributing to scientific breakthroughs in green energy to enhanced climate change modelling.
“Despite the rapacious energy demands of AI, tech companies encourage governments to see these technologies as accelerators for the green transition,” said Prof Gina Neff, Executive Director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy.
“These claims appeal to governments banking on AI to grow the economy, but they may compromise society's climate commitments.”
“Big Tech is blowing past their own climate goals, while they rely heavily on renewable energy certificates and carbon offsets rather than reducing their emissions,” said Prof Neff.
“Generative AI may be helpful for designing climate solutions, but there is a real risk that emissions from the AI build-out will outstrip any climate gains as tech companies abandon net zero goals and pursue huge AI-driven profits.”
The report calls for the UK’s environmental policies to be updated for the “AI era”. Recommendations include adding AI’s energy footprint into national decarbonisation plans, with specific carbon reduction targets for data centres and AI services, and requirements for detailed reporting of energy and water consumption.
Ofgem should set strict energy efficiency targets for data centres, write the report’s authors, while the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology should tie AI research funding and data centre operations to clean power adoption.
The report’s authors note that that UK’s new AI Energy Council currently consists entirely of energy bodies and tech companies – with no representation for communities, climate groups or civil society.
“Energy grids are already stretched,” said Prof John Naughton, Chair of the Advisory Board at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy.
“Every megawatt allocated to AI data centres will be a megawatt unavailable for housing or manufacturing. Governments need to be straight with the public about the inevitable energy trade-offs that will come with doubling down on AI as an engine of economic growth.”
With countries such as the UK declaring ambitious goals for both AI leadership and decarbonisation, a new report suggests that AI could drive a 25-fold increase in the global tech sector’s energy use by 2040.
halbergman/Getty Technicians walking through a vast data centre for AI and cloud computing in the US
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Banking on AI risks derailing net zero goals: report on energy costs of Big Tech
By 2040, the energy demands of the tech industry could be up to 25 times higher than today, with unchecked growth of data centres driven by AI expected to create surges in electricity consumption that will strain power grids and accelerate carbon emissions.
This is according to a new report from the University of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, which suggests that even the most conservative estimate for big tech’s energy needs will see a five-fold increase over the next 15 years.
The idea that governments such as the UK can become leaders in AI while simultaneously meeting their net zero targets amounts to “magical thinking at the highest levels,” according to the report’s authors. The UK is committed to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Researchers call for global standards in reporting AI’s environmental cost through forums such as COP, the UN climate summit, and argue that the UK should advocate for this on the international stage while ensuring democratic oversight at home.
The report, published today, synthesises projections from leading consultancies to forecast the energy demands of the global tech industry. The researchers note that these projections are based on claims by tech firms themselves.
At the moment, data centres – the facilities that house servers for processing and storing data, along with cooling systems preventing this hardware from overheating – account for nearly 1.5% of global emissions.
This figure is expected to grow by 15-30% each year to reach 8% of total global greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, write the report’s authors. They point out that this would far exceed current emissions from air travel.
The report highlights that in the US, China, and Europe, data centres already consume around 2-4% of national electricity, with regional concentrations becoming extreme. For example, up to 20% of all power in Ireland now goes to data centres in Dublin’s cluster.
“We know the environmental impact of AI will be formidable, but tech giants are deliberately vague about the energy requirements implicit in their aims,” said Bhargav Srinivasa Desikan, the report’s lead author from Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre.
“The lack of hard data on electricity and water consumption as well as associated carbon emissions of digital technology leaves policymakers and researchers in the dark about the climate harms AI might cause.”
“We need to see urgent action from governments to prevent AI from derailing climate goals, not just deferring to tech companies on the promise of economic growth,” said Desikan.
The researchers also use data from corporate press releases and ESG reports of some of the world’s tech giants to show the alarming trajectory of energy use before the AI race had fully kicked into gear.
Google’s reported greenhouse gas emissions rose by 48% between 2019 and 2023, while Microsoft’s reported emissions increased by nearly 30% from 2020 to 2023. Amazon’s carbon footprint grew around 40% between 2019 and 2021, and – while it has begun to fall – remains well above 2019 levels.
This self-reported data is contested, note the researchers, and some independent reporting suggests that actual emissions from tech companies are much higher.
Several tech giants are looking to nuclear power to defuse the energy timebomb at the heart of their ambitions. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has argued that fusion is needed to meet AI’s potential, while Meta have said that nuclear energy can “provide firm, baseload power” to supply their data centres.
Microsoft have even signed a 20-year agreement to reactivate the Three Mile Island plant – site of the worst nuclear accident in US history.
Some tech leaders, such as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, argue that environmental costs of AI will be offset by its benefits for the climate crisis – from contributing to scientific breakthroughs in green energy to enhanced climate change modelling.
“Despite the rapacious energy demands of AI, tech companies encourage governments to see these technologies as accelerators for the green transition,” said Prof Gina Neff, Executive Director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy.
“These claims appeal to governments banking on AI to grow the economy, but they may compromise society's climate commitments.”
“Big Tech is blowing past their own climate goals, while they rely heavily on renewable energy certificates and carbon offsets rather than reducing their emissions,” said Prof Neff.
“Generative AI may be helpful for designing climate solutions, but there is a real risk that emissions from the AI build-out will outstrip any climate gains as tech companies abandon net zero goals and pursue huge AI-driven profits.”
The report calls for the UK’s environmental policies to be updated for the “AI era”. Recommendations include adding AI’s energy footprint into national decarbonisation plans, with specific carbon reduction targets for data centres and AI services, and requirements for detailed reporting of energy and water consumption.
Ofgem should set strict energy efficiency targets for data centres, write the report’s authors, while the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology should tie AI research funding and data centre operations to clean power adoption.
The report’s authors note that that UK’s new AI Energy Council currently consists entirely of energy bodies and tech companies – with no representation for communities, climate groups or civil society.
“Energy grids are already stretched,” said Prof John Naughton, Chair of the Advisory Board at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy.
“Every megawatt allocated to AI data centres will be a megawatt unavailable for housing or manufacturing. Governments need to be straight with the public about the inevitable energy trade-offs that will come with doubling down on AI as an engine of economic growth.”
With countries such as the UK declaring ambitious goals for both AI leadership and decarbonisation, a new report suggests that AI could drive a 25-fold increase in the global tech sector’s energy use by 2040.
halbergman/Getty Technicians walking through a vast data centre for AI and cloud computing in the US
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Large-scale DNA study maps 37,000 years of human disease history
A new study suggests that our ancestors’ close cohabitation with domesticated animals and large-scale migrations played a key role in the spread of infectious diseases.
The team, led by Professor Eske Willerslev at the Universities of Cambridge and Copenhagen, recovered ancient DNA from 214 known human pathogens in prehistoric humans from Eurasia.
They found that the earliest evidence of zoonotic diseases – illnesses transmitted from animals to humans, like COVID in recent times – dates back to around 6,500 years ago, with these diseases becoming more widespread approximately 5,000 years ago.
The study detected the world’s oldest genetic trace of the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, in a 5,500-year-old sample. The plague is estimated to have killed between one-quarter and one-half of Europe’s population during the Middle Ages.
In addition, the researchers found traces of many other diseases including:
Malaria (Plasmodium vivax) – 4,200 years ago
Leprosy (Mycobacterium leprae) – 1,400 years ago
Hepatitis B virus – 9,800 years ago
Diphtheria (Corynebacterium diphtheriae) – 11,100 years ago
This is the largest study to date on the history of infectious diseases and is published today in the journal Nature.
The researchers analysed DNA from over 1,300 prehistoric humans, some up to 37,000 years old. The ancient bones and teeth have provided a unique insight into the development of diseases caused by bacteria, viruses, and parasites.
“We’ve long suspected that the transition to farming and animal husbandry opened the door to a new era of disease – now DNA shows us that it happened at least 6,500 years ago,” said Willerslev.
He added: “These infections didn’t just cause illness – they may have contributed to population collapse, migration, and genetic adaptation.”
The significant increase in the incidence of zoonoses around 5,000 years ago coincides with a migration to north-western Europe from the Pontic Steppe – that is from parts of present-day Ukraine, south-western Russia and western Kazakhstan. The people embarking on this migration – and who to a large extent passed on the genetic profile found among people in north-western Europe today – belonged to the Yamnaya herders.
The findings could be significant for the development of vaccines and for understanding how diseases arise and mutate over time.
“If we understand what happened in the past, it can help us prepare for the future. Many of the newly emerging infectious diseases are predicted to originate from animals,” said Associate Professor Martin Sikora at the University of Copenhagen, and first author of the report.
Willerslev added: “Mutations that were successful in the past are likely to reappear. This knowledge is important for future vaccines, as it allows us to test whether current vaccines provide sufficient coverage or whether new ones need to be developed due to mutations.”
The sample material was primarily provided by museums in Europe and Asia. The samples were partly extracted from teeth, where the enamel acts as a lid that can protect the DNA against degradation as a result of the ravages of time. The rest of the DNA was primarily extracted from petrosa bones - the hardest bone in humans - located on the inside of the skull.
The research was funded by the Lundbeck Foundation.
ReferenceSikora, M. et al: ‘The spatiotemporal distribution of human pathogens in ancient Eurasia.’ Nature, July 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09192-8
Adapted from a press release by the University of Copenhagen.
Researchers have mapped the spread of infectious diseases in humans across millennia, to reveal how human-animal interactions permanently transformed our health today.
We’ve long suspected that the transition to farming and animal husbandry opened the door to a new era of disease – now DNA shows us that it happened at least 6,500 years agoEske WillerslevMarie Louise JørkovLate Neolithic skull from Madesø
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.