Three Lancaster University researchers have been awarded Future Leaders Fellowships, through a flagship scheme by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Dr Isobelle Clarke, Dr Tim Lamont and Dr Federico Fedele are among 77 talented early-career researchers announced today as Future Leaders Fellows.

The Fellowship allows academics to devote their time to tackle challenging research and innovation problems and to develop their careers as they become the next wave of world-class research and innovation leaders.

Dr Isobelle Clarke, a Lecturer in Security and Protection Science in the School of Social Sciences, came to Lancaster University as a postdoctoral researcher in 2019 and has worked on a variety of (forensic) linguistics projects.

Her £1.5 million Future Leaders Fellowship will develop an interdisciplinary understanding of the far-right by examining language use and online behaviour across a range of far-right groups and individuals.

Dr Clarke’s project will help to identify the kinds of extreme far-right individuals and groups which pose the greatest risk to UK national security. She will pioneer new approaches to the analysis of language to achieve this.

Leading a large interdisciplinary team, Dr Clarke will work closely with security and intelligence agencies and political advocacy organisations, including Tech Against Terrorism and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, to keep the police and security services abreast of the latest trends in far-right extremism and terrorism.

She said: “I am unbelievably honoured to have secured a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship. This will provide me with the opportunity to conduct research that will contribute to help keep our nation safe and secure, as well as develop a methodology which will have broader uses beyond this area and across multiple disciplines.”

Dr Tim Lamont is a marine biologist at the Lancaster Environment Centre with research interests in coral reef ecology and restoration.

Dr Lamont’s £2m Future Leadership Fellowship, called ENTERPRISE (ENsuring Transformative Ecosystem Restoration in the PRIvate SEctor), will focus on critical research to ensure businesses’ environmental mitigation work results in realised benefits both for the environment and society.

He will build and lead an interdisciplinary team of researchers to address knowledge gaps in business reporting and transparency, the scaling-up of restoration of critical ecosystems and corporate sustainability strategies.

Combining scientific excellence, innovation in ecosystem restoration and impactful engagement with industry and society, Dr Lamont’s Fellowship will facilitate much greater clarity on the role of business in rebuilding nature, and how the power of the private sector can be best leveraged to help achieve global sustainability targets.

He said: “I’m really excited to bring together an interdisciplinary team of researchers, working together to develop ecologically informed sustainability strategies for businesses.

“I’ll be working with businesses to develop sustainability strategies that deliver the best possible environmental impacts. More and more businesses around the world are looking to improve their sustainability – we’ll be doing cutting-edge research to ensure that process is most effective.

“I’m excited to be working at Lancaster Environment Centre and the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business. Lancaster has real strength in interdisciplinarity and creating real-world impact – the University have been fantastically supportive in developing this research so far and are the ideal partner to help drive it forward.”

Dr Federico Fedele will join Lancaster University’s Physics department from the University of Oxford to take up his £2.1m Fellowship, which will focus on reconfiguring hardware for Thermodynamic Computing.

Dr Fedele said: “As computer chips become smaller and more powerful, the heat they generate presents a challenge that disrupts their correct operation. What if we could use this to our advantage and harness heat to make computers more efficient? This research will explore this idea by developing processors that use heat as a resource, opening the door to a new paradigm called Thermodynamic Computing.

He said: “I am excited to receive this Fellowship, with which I aim to lead advances in quantum hardware that unlock new paths to efficient computing.”

Frances Burstow, the Director of Talent and Skills at UKRI, said: "UKRI’s Future Leaders Fellowships provide researchers and innovators with long-term support and training to embark on large and complex research programmes, to address key national and global challenges.”

Professor Sir Ian Chapman, the Chief Executive of UKRI, said: “UKRI’s Future Leaders Fellowships offer long-term support to outstanding researchers, helping them turn bold ideas into innovations that improve lives and livelihoods in the UK and beyond. These fellowships continue to drive excellence and accelerate the journey from discovery to public benefit. I wish them every success.”