Professor Daniel Wolpert has been appointed as the Foundation Professor of Engineering (1875) to develop Engineering for the Life Sciences, a key theme within the Department's strategy.
The Department is promoting a number of research themes that address major global challenges and are likely to attract high levels of external interest. Engineering for the Life Sciences offers a significant opportunity as the demand grows for a quantitative mechanistic understanding of biological systems. Professor Wolpert will join the Department in September 2005 to help co-ordinate research and teaching that relate to the interplay between Engineering and the Biological and Medical Sciences.
Daniel Wolpert studied medical sciences at Cambridge and clinical medicine at Oxford. He then worked as a medical doctor for a year before returning to Oxford to earn his D.Phil in Physiology. After a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, he joined the Institute of Neurology, UCL. He is currently Professor of Motor Neuroscience and Co-director of the Institute of Movement Neuroscience at UCL. In 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.
Professor Wolpert is excited about the prospect of developing Engineering for the Life Sciences within the Department. "I see tremendous opportunities to further promote interdisciplinary research and teaching within engineering and the medical and biological sciences," he says. "I am delighted that Cambridge is taking a leading role in this dynamic and rapidly expanding field."