Professor Alison Etheridge DBE FRS, Professor of Probability at Oxford’s Department of Statistics and the Mathematical Institute, has been appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to Mathematical Sciences. Much of her work focuses on infinite dimensional stochastic processes and their applications. Most recently her central interest has been a collection of mathematical problems arising in population genetics.
Professor Etheridge said: ‘This really is a huge honour and it's taking a while to sink in. It has made me appreciate how lucky I have been to have the support of family, friends, students, and colleagues in and beyond Oxford. And of course, it has been a huge privilege to spend so much of my career in the University of Oxford.’
Professor Ros Rickaby FRS OBE, Professor of Biogeochemistry at the Department of Earth Sciences, Oxford, Chair of Geology at Oxford Earth Sciences, and a Professorial Fellow at University College, Oxford, is appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Biogeochemistry.
Professor Rickaby joined the University of Oxford in 2002 and has been a Professor of Biogeochemistry since 2010. For the past 30 years, her research has utilised the past co-evolution of life, environmental chemistry, and Earth’s climate to inform predictions of future change. Her passion for the natural world has been an enduring theme of her work; she has spent time on various conservation projects across Europe, and during her time at Harvard she volunteered a penguin carer in the Boston Aquarium. She has been recognised with prestigious medals from the European Geosciences Union, American Geophysical Union, and the Geological Society of London, and was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2022.
Professor Rickaby said: ‘I am absolutely gobsmacked, humbled and hugely grateful to receive this recognition from His Royal Highness, King Charles. It has been truly a thrill to uncover the power of the plankton in maintaining a habitable Earth, and to appreciate the importance of planetary-scale thinking for plotting forward pathways. All of my research, and indeed my life, has flourished through the support of, and interactions with brilliant older and younger minds from across the world. I hope that the entire team can share in a warm swell of pride as we continue the push towards a sustainable future.’
See the full list of Oxford University academics receiving awards in the New Years Honours.