Our people

Institute for Life Sciences

Our strength lies in our interdisciplinary collaborative network which is made up of over 430 academic members from across all the University’s faculties.

Interested in joining us? Please see details about current academic recruitment opportunities here.

Dr Shelly Vishwakarma PhD

Lecturer

Research interests

Designing and developing hardware and software frameworks for contextual sensing applications
Concurrent physical activity recognition and indoor localization

Connect with Shelly

Email: S.Vishwakarma@soton.ac.uk

Tel: +44 23 26872-Teams number

Google Scholar

Dr Shengjie Lai PhD

Principal Research Fellow

Research interests

Lai is interested in understanding the transmission dynamics and intervention effectiveness for infectious diseases; Quantifying seasonal human mobility, social connectivity and migration using novel data sources, e.g. mobile phone data; Investigating spatiotemporal interactions between human behaviour, environmental change and infectious disease dynamics.

Accepting applications from PhD students

Connect with Shengjie

Email: Shengjie.Lai@soton.ac.uk

Google Scholar

ORCID

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Dr Shiyang Tang PhD, BEng, FHEA, CEng, MRSC, MIET

Associate Professor

Research interests

Liquid metal
Intelligent microfluidics
Biosensors

Accepting applications from PhD students

Connect with Shiyang

Email: Shiyang.Tang@soton.ac.uk

Tel: +44 23 8059 8839

Google Scholar

ORCID

Professor Simon Coles

Professor of Structural Chemistry

Research interests

The work we do is highly collaborative and multidisciplinary and can broadly be split into three overlapping themes:
1) National Crystallography Service (NCS, www.ncs.ac.uk) & Physical Sciences Data-science Service (PSDS, www.psds.ac.uk) These national centres provide centralised facilities for UK researchers at a level that is beyond that achievable in any single institution. The NCS provides data collection and crystal structure analysis for the UK chemistry community. It also performs projects based on more advanced techniques, involving a dedicated team of experts employing cutting edge techniques and the use of very high-powered laboratory diffractometers or the UK synchrotron, Diamond. The PSDS provides national-level access to databases and is building infrastructure on top of these to drive and support data-driven approaches to scientific discovery.
2) Structural Chemistry We have an interest in determining the mechanisms of solid-state reactions and transformations and use a variety of diffraction and physical characterisation methods for this. Other work focuses on discovering and investigating structure-property relationships, the determination of charge densities and their properties and 'value-added' quantum mechanical calculations to compute properties from crystal structures. We also collaborate with other disciplines in a number of areas such as macromolecular crystallography (Biology), crystal growth (biology) and CT imaging (Engineering).

Accepting applications from PhD students

Connect with Simon

Email: S.J.Coles@soton.ac.uk

Tel: +44 23 8059 6721

ORCID

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Professor Simon Cox

Head of Department

Research interests

My research focusses on computational tools, technologies and platforms and how they enable interdisciplinary problems to be solved in engineering and science.His team in the Computational Engineering and Design Group is applying and developing high performance and cloud computing in a variety of collaborative interdisciplinary computational science and engineering projects. These include:
High Performance and novel Computing SystemsCloud Computing and commercial distributed computing - which led to a spin out companyApplied computational algorithms Computational electromagnetics– which led to the formation of a spin-off company.New algorithms such as meshless methods and fast solvers.Data Management Simon is also Director of the Microsoft Institute for High Performance computing where he demonstrates why, where and how current and future Microsoft tools and technologies can be exploited to enable engineering and scientific research to deliver faster, cheaper and better results.

Connect with Simon

Email: S.J.Cox@soton.ac.uk

Tel: +44 23 8059 3116

Dr Sofia Michopoulou PhD

Accepting applications from PhD students

Connect with Sofia

Email: S.Michopoulou@soton.ac.uk

Tel: +44 2381206628

ORCID

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Professor Sonia Zakrzewski

Prof of Bioarchaeology & BioAnthropology

Research interests

bioarchaeology and palaeopathology
disAbility, impairment, injury and disease
race, migration and mobility

Accepting applications from PhD students

Connect with Sonia

Email: S.R.Zakrzewski@soton.ac.uk

Tel: +44 23 8059 4778

ORCID

Dr Srinandan Dasmahapatra

Associate Professor

Connect with Srinandan

Email: sd@ecs.soton.ac.uk

Tel: +44 23 8059 4503

Professor Stefan Bleeck

Prof of Hearing Science and Technology

Research interests

My research interests lie in the intersection of hearing science, audiology, and signal processing, with a particular focus on:
Bio-inspired Auditory Modeling: Developing computational models of the auditory system to better understand how humans process sound and how hearing impairments affect this process.Speech Intelligibility in Noise: Investigating how noise affects speech understanding in both normal-hearing and hearing-impaired individuals, and developing algorithms to improve speech intelligibility in noisy environments.Cochlear Implants and Hearing Aids: Developing and evaluating signal processing strategies for cochlear implants and hearing aids to improve speech perception and sound quality for hearing-impaired individuals.Auditory Evoked Potentials: Investigating the use of auditory evoked potentials as an objective measure of auditory function and as a tool for evaluating the effectiveness of auditory rehabilitation.Psychoacoustics: Studying the relationship between the physical properties of sound and the perceptual experience of hearing, with a focus on how hearing impairments affect this relationship. My research combines experimental, computational, and clinical approaches to address these key areas, with the ultimate goal of improving the quality of life for people with hearing impairments.

Accepting applications from PhD students

Connect with Stefan

Email: S.Bleeck@soton.ac.uk

Tel: +44 23 8059 6682

ORCID