School of Mathematics

Dr Anna Lisa Varri awarded Future Leaders Fellowship

Congratulations to Dr Anna Lisa Varri who has been awarded one of the first UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowships which aim to grow the strong supply of talented individuals needed to ensure that UK research and innovation is world class. Anna Lisa's profile has also been selected by UKRI as one the twelve inaugural case studies.

Rethinking the dynamical paradigm of low-mass stellar systems

Anna Lisa's Fellowship focusses on some of the most ancient structures in the universe - globular clusters - dense groups of about a million stars emerged the dawn of the formation of galaxies. The new European space observatory Gaia can now observe these stellar systems with unprecedented detail and LIGO has detected gravitational waves from merging binary black holes, possibly formed in dense cluster cores. A revolution in our understanding of these building blocks of our universe has therefore started. With a combination of applied mathematics techniques and numerical simulations, Anna Lisa will study how this new-generation data can shed light on three big questions in modern astrophysics: the origin of the first stellar aggregates, the existence of intermediate-mass black holes, and the nature of dark matter.

Anna Lisa has been a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh since 2012 - first in the Applied and Computational Mathematics group of the School of Mathematics, then at the Institute for Astronomy, within School of Physics and Astronomy. She will now pursue her Fellowship research programme in collaboration with both Schools.

UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship

The scheme will help the next generation of researchers, tech entrepreneurs, business leaders and innovators get the support they need to develop their careers. Altogether the inaugural cohort of 41 early career researchers at universities across the UK will each benefit from a share of £40 million.

Colleagues at the School of Chemistry, School of Biological Sciences, and MRC Centre for Reproductive Health have also been awarded Future Leaders Fellows under the newly announced UK Government programme.

UKRI will provide up to £900 million in support over six competition rounds over three years for the Future Leaders Fellowships, typically awarding around 200 new fellows each year.

Related links

Anna Lisa Varri: https://alvarri.com/

UKRI FLF Inaugural case studies: https://www.ukri.org/news/future-leaders-fellowships-gives-the-freedom-to-deliver-global-impact/

Fellowship summary: https://www.ukri.org/funding/funding-opportunities/future-leaders-fellowships/meet-our-future-leaders-fellows/anna-lisa-varri-university-of-edinburgh/