Congratulations to the new Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellows

Professors Marialuisa Aliotta and Sinead Farrington join the 80 names recognised as being some of the greatest thinkers, researchers and practitioners working in or with Scotland today.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), Scotland’s National Academy, has announced its 2022 intake of Fellows, with 80 names from the arts, business, public service, civil society and academia, from Scotland and beyond.

They will be joining the RSE’s current Fellowship of around 1,700 Fellows, who are recognised as being some of the greatest thinkers, researchers and practitioners working in or with Scotland today.

Newly elected Fellows

Marialuisa is Professor of Experimental Nuclear Astrophysics. Her research interests focus on the investigation of nuclear reactions that occur in stars and govern stellar lifetimes and evolution. These reactions are also responsible for the creation of new chemical elements both in quiescent stars such as our sun and in explosive scenarios such as novae, supernovae, and X-ray bursts.

I’m delighted to be joining the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. I look forward to working with the society in support of its endeavours to help inspire future generations.

Sinead is an experimental particle physicist with interests across collider physics as a means of understanding the most fundamental particles and their interactions. She is currently leading the UK effort in the ATLAS collaboration at the LHC at CERN. She led ATLAS searches for the Higgs boson decaying to tau leptons and now searches for exotic particles. She collaborated in discoveries in the CDF collaboration at Fermilab, USA. Farrington serves on STFC’s Project Peer Review Panel and the European Committee on Future Accelerators. She was awarded the 2021 Physical Sciences Laureateship, Blavatnik UK New York Academy of Sciences prize.

Besides it being a great honour, what’s really special to me about being elected to the fellowship of the RSE is the way it links work over the centuries. In my research area that means linking the same quest to understand the most fundamental processes in nature - back to James Clerk Maxwell and the nature of light, up to the present day and the quest to understand the nature of how particles acquire mass which we tackle at the LHC.  The people change, the experimental methods change, but the fundamental quest for knowledge and understanding are the same. That’s at the same time grounding and inspiring. It links us to the past and to the future.  I’m looking forward to working with RSE colleagues across a huge range of expertise.

Commenting on the new fellows, Professor Sir John Ball, President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, said:

It is a privilege to be able to welcome our new Fellows, and we are inspired by the breadth of talent and experience in our Fellowship. Every single individual elected this year has shown exceptional levels of expertise and insight in their chosen field, and their input helps RSE effect real and lasting change in Scotland’s society. We look forward to working with our diverse Fellowship who provide a crucial link between the world of academic research and practice with government, business and civil society.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh

The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's National Academy, is an educational charity established in 1783. Unlike similar organisations in the rest of the UK, the RSE’s strength lies in the breadth of disciplines represented by its Fellowship. Its membership stands at approximately 1700 Fellows from across the entire academic spectrum – science and technology, arts, humanities, social sciences, business, and public service. New Fellows are elected to the RSE each year through a rigorous five-stage nomination process.  This range of expertise enables the RSE to take part in a host of activities such as: providing independent and expert advice to Government and Parliament; supporting aspiring entrepreneurs through mentorship; facilitating education programmes for young people, and engaging the general public through educational events.