The Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists have recently announced this years’ winners, with Oxford University Professors Timothy Behrens and Elanor Stride recognised for their work in Neuroscience, and pioneering cancer treatment.

The award recognises excellence in life sciences, physical sciences & engineering, and chemistry, with a jury of leading UK scientists selecting three laureates and two finalists to receive the largest unrestricted cash prizes available to scientist under the age of 42.

Professor Behrens of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Oxford will receive £75,000 for his development of ground-breaking models for mapping the brain’s electrical signals.  Prof Behrens’ work has had large translational implications for how doctors provide brain surgery, using innovative computer models that also have large application in the field of artificial intelligence, and the diagnosis of mental health conditions. The junior research fellow said he was “completely thrilled and honoured” to be this year’s laureate.

Finalist Professor Elanor Stride’s use of microbubble technology has helped develop more effective cancer treatments, recognised by the scientific community in awarding her a finalist prize. Dr Brooke Grindlinger, Chief Scientific Officer for scientific Programmes & Awards at the New York Academy of Sciences speaks not only of Prof Stride’s radical clinical research in the use of microbubbles as targeted drug delivery vessels, but also of her innovative start-up company AtoCap which focuses on the treatment of chronic infections.  The professor of Biomedical Engineering at St Catherine’s College is a “bold, young innovator improving lives and inspiring minds.”

Funded by the Blavatink Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences, the award also involves the winners presenting an interactive lecture on their research at a public symposium in March. Other prizes were awarded for work in fields such as gravitational theory, fossil dating and atomic energy research.

The prize will “elevate these select scientists to an international stage that will enable them to be recognised globally,” says Sir Leonard Blavatnik, and will help the winners become established and recognised at what is a relatively early stage in their scientific career. The prize seeks to award and encourage young scientists who have taken big risks early on in their career, with many recipients going on to win other prizes later in their career.

 In its third year, the Blavatnik Awards received 80 nominations from 41 academic and research institutions in the UK, and is part of a wider scheme including the Blavatnik Awards in the United States and the Blavatnik Awards in Israel.

This weekend two extra armrests were drilled onto an Oxford bench on Woodstock road to stop people from lying down. 

A photo of the bench, located inside a bus shelter, was uploaded to Twitter on Monday showing two new metal bars. The person who installed them is unknown and did so against Oxford City Council wishes. The bars have since been removed by the council. 

The action has been branded as ‘hostile architecture’, a design strategy which aims to restrict behaviour in public spaces to boycott ‘antisocial’ behaviour such rough sleeping. 

A number of individuals spoke to the Oxford Mail about their feelings on the issue, including members of Oxford’s homeless community. 

James Ellam, a 41-year old living on the streets, said: “It’s tough – you get moved on all the time. Police give you a hard time, everybody gives you a hard time. They put things in front of doorways so you can’t get some shelter.” 

Sam King, who has been living in sheltered accommodation run by the city council, commented: 

He said: “I think people can help us just by being nice. Not by doing things to benches.” 

“When you get trench foot you have to sit down or lie down because you need to rest, but when you do you get told off for sitting down on the pavement and people think you’re begging. 

“Sometimes you are begging, but not all the time.” 

He also said: “Begging is a life skill for homeless people – it’s needed for survival. 

“I feel really bad about doing it – I hate asking people for money and I always say sorry when I ask.” 

28-year-old Jason Dart,who has been sleeping rough in and around Oxford for nearly ten years, said: “What happens if an old man needed to put his feet up or somebody with mental illness needed to rest – it might not be a homeless person using that bench.” 

He added: “I sleep in the covered market ally bit – they move me on at about 7am, they’re really nice about it every day. Then I go and sleep on the gap doorway until about 9am – after that I just try and find places to be.” 

Oxford City councillor Shaista Aziz said: “It’s quite an aggressive approach. 

“You can’t have a city like ours that wants to move forward with homelessness and then do this – we are supposed to be making progress. 

“It’s really easy to demonise homeless people but they actually feel ashamed – and it’s exhausting to be homeless – you can see it just by looking at them. 

“Hostile architecture is unwelcoming. Public spaces are for everyone – whether they have a home or not, and whether they are rich or poor. What this is saying is that public spaces are being limited for certain people.” 

Ms Aziz shared the image on Twitter, writing: “I’m against all types of hostile architecture making it harder for people who are homeless to rest and take shelter from the rain and freezing cold.” 

Linda Smith, deputy leader and cabinet member for leisure and housing at the council, said in a statement: 

“These arm rests were not installed by Oxford City Council or Oxford Direct Services and we are removing them today. 

Arm rests on benches are part of inclusive design as they provide extra help for older people and people with mobility issues, making it easier for them to sit and stand up again. This bench already has three arm rests. 

We believe that nobody should have to sleep rough in Oxford and we’re doing more than ever before to tackle the national homelessness crisis.” 

The council has recently opened a new £1.9m homeless shelter on Floyds Row off St Aldates. 

Striking school pupils frustrated drivers by blocking the entrance to Westgate Centre car park in a climate change protest last Friday.

The Oxford Youth Strike for Climate protesters began in Bonn Square at 11am, where they first held a one-minute silence to stand in solidarity with people affected by Australia’s wildfires. 

They then marched through Westgate to occupy the entrance to the car park on Oxpens Road. A group held a sign saying ‘Oxford Youth Strike for Climate’.

Some of the group were the ‘non-violence and de-escalation team’. Others sang chants and distributed flyers to blocked drivers.

Resulting queues of over 10 vehicles attracted the attention of Westgate security guards who asked the protesters to leave.

EJ, an 18-year old campaigner, told Cherwell: “The aim of the strike was to step up the level of disruption. So far we have done 12 strikes. Although we’d seen some change, a lot of people didn’t care because it didn’t have any sort of direct effect.

“Although a lot of the blame lies with governments and major corporations, it is also with consumers: what they are eating, how much they buy, whether they drive.

“If you live in a really rural area, and you absolutely have to drive, then okay. But if you live somewhere close like Abingdon, then driving to go shopping isn’t something you should be doing.”

Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, supported the strikers as they gathered in Bonn Square. She spoke at the rally, saying: “There was not enough climate action in that Queen’s Speech. And this is 2020. If we don’t solve this now, if we don’t solve this in this decade, there is a chance that we will be too late. And I am not going to let that happen.”

Moran told Oxford Mail: “This isn’t being done so that children can skip school – they are doing this because they feel passionately about the activism and they feel there is an emergency they need to address.”

Oxford will commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau with 75 memorial flames. 

The flames will be lit as part of a service at Oxford Town Hall on Holocaust Memorial Day, Monday 27th January. 

Stand Together is the theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day, exploring “how genocidal regimes throughout history have deliberately fractured socities by marginalising certain groups, and how these tactics can be challenged by individuals standing together with their neighbours, and speaking out against oppression.”

The service will also mark the 25th anniversary of the genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia and Darfur. 

A Yahrzeit candle, a Jewish memorial candle, will be lit to reflect and remember the six million Jewish people murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the milions of other people killed under Nazi persecution and in subsequent genoicides around the world.

A reflection service, which will take place in the Old Library, it will be open to members of the public, City Council staff and councillors of any faith or none.

Councillor Craig Simmons, Lord Mayor of Oxford, will host the service which will also include an interview about the persecution of Jewish people in pogroms with Dr George Gilbert, Lecturer in Modern Russian History at the University of Southampton.

The service will also see contributions from the City Rector, The Reverend Anthony Buckley, Penny Faust of the Oxford Jewish Congregation, Jawaid Malik of the Oxford Foundation, and Anneliese Dodds, MP for Oxford East. 

Councillor Simmons said: “It is important we remember the horrors of the past to avoid them being repeated.

“Some of my own family came to the UK as refugees from the violent pogroms in Eastern Europe. One of my grandparents escaped from Vitebsk; the widespread massacres of Jewish people that occurred there in 1941 are well documented. Those family members who remained were certainly killed.”

The Holocaust witnessed the ideological and systematic prosecution and mass murder of millions of European Jewish, Travellers, the disabled, intellectual dissidents and homosexuals.

The Planning Inspectorate have approved Oxford City Council’s plan for the building of over 10,000 homes by 2036 to meet Oxford’s housing crisis. 

The Inspectorate concluded that Oxford faces ‘serious unaffordability in the housing market and unusually marked inequalities’. This justifies the Council’s estimated need figure of 1,400 homes a year until 2036. The plan that was initially submitted estimated a requirement of 8,620 homes in total, but this was modified to a minimum of 10,884 homes as the city’s needs became clear. 

According to the report, some of the housing ‘cannot be accommodated within [the city’s] boundaries and needs to be accommodated by Oxford’s neighbours’, requiring cooperation with other local authorities. There have already been large numbers of Oxford residents moving to nearby towns where house prices are far cheaper. In 2019, the average price of a property in Oxford was just shy of £400,000, around twice that of its counterpart in Swindon. The portion of the East-West railway connecting Oxford and Bedford due to be completed in the mid-2020s, will further encourage movement to neighbouring counties.

The housing proposals in accordance with a 2014 Strategic Housing Marketing Assessment study that called for more local authority building in the county amounting to a minimum of 24,000 a year in Oxfordshire. The South Oxfordshire District Council’s leader Sue Cooper suggested the SHMA findings had been ‘discredited … in some eyes’, as they may increase the pressure on rural local authorities outside the city. However, the certainty provided by the inspectors’ seal of approval was welcomed by all.

The Inspectorate has also stated that ‘the substantial level of affordable housing need in Oxford’ constitutes as ‘exceptional circumstances for the release of Green Belt’. This has been met with condemnation by several local campaign groups including the Campaign to Protect Rural England. They argue the ‘growth at all costs’ policy needs to stop, and their leader Helen Marshall told the Oxford Mail it was ‘a second-rate plan for what should be a first-rate city’.

However, the report contains provisions to ensure that ‘urban land is brought forward where possible’ and puts forward a modification for minimum housing numbers within site allocations. This would ensure that brownfield sites would be exploited to their full potential and hopefully prevent serious loss of the Green Belt. There have already been initiatives to this effect with the Council participating in the ‘Action on Empty Homes Week’ to address the 400 or so homes currently vacant in Oxford.

The plan was also modified to exempt affordable housing contributions on sites of less than ten homes and certain forms of student accommodation. Currently large student housing developments are required to provide some affordable housing, but this will not apply to housing on campus or redevelopment sites.

The current Cabinet Member for Planning and Sustainable Transport, Cllr Alex Hollingsworth, described the plan as ‘the culmination of a long period of work between the City Council and partners’ and looks forward to implementing it. Although recognising the compromises made to better provide affordable housing, he believes they have struck the right balance between conservation and development.

St Anne’s has been criticised for their creation of a non-stipendiary junior research fellowship to honour 100 years of women at the University. The fellowship, named after St Anne’s’ founder Annie Rodgers, is meant to “celebrate 100 years since women were formally admitted to the University of Oxford and first awarded Oxford degrees.”

However, in an article published in the Independent this week, an academic at Oxford criticised the move, saying: “The fellowships created by St Anne’s offer little by way of funding, so it is hard not to see them as exploitative, especially since the college is seeking applications from women and black and minority ethnic candidates to address their problems with under-representation.”

“A fellowship that actually funded the research of early career researchers would send a much stronger message about their support of women in higher education,”

St Anne’s has defended the post, and criticised the Independent’s publication of the story, telling Cherwell: “St Anne’s College is disappointed that The Independent chose to publish misinformed criticism of our Annie Rogers Fellowships, despite a telephone conversation with the journalist concerned and the provision of a press statement that clearly explained the positive nature of non-Stipendiary Junior Research Fellowships both for the individuals who are awarded them and for the College hosting them. The unprompted online comments under the article on The Independent website underline misunderstanding that underpins the concerns raised and the widespread, uncontroversial and constructive use of such Fellowships in many Oxford and Cambridge Colleges.”

The benefits of the fellowship to which St Anne’s refer are “to participate in the academic and social life of the College and support one or more of the aims and/or beliefs of the College.” The post also entitled fellows to free meals during term time, free breakfast and one main meal per day during the vacation, and hot-desk space at the College.

A research grant of £1,000 every three years is also available if the relevant research furthers the beliefs or aims of the college, and an extra £1,000 per annum can be made available if other research funding is unavailable.

The fellowship also requires a fee for the successful applicant’s membership of the SCR. These typically amount to around £35 per term.