̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Peterhouse

Complete clean sweep for Cambridge at ̽��ֱ��Boat Race 2025

hcf38 — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 15:34:14 +0000

Thousands of spectators lined the banks of the River Thames on 13 April to witness a dramatic afternoon of action, with millions more following live on the BBC.

Cambridge Women secured their eighth consecutive win in the 79th Women’s Boat Race, extending their overall record to 49 victories to Oxford’s 30. ̽��ֱ��Men’s crew, too, were victorious in defending their title in the 170th edition of the event, notching up their 88th win, with Oxford sitting on 81.

Goldie, the Cambridge Men’s Reserve Crew, won the Men’s Reserve Race, while Blondie, the Cambridge Women’s Reserve Crew, won the Women’s Reserve Race. And the day before, the 2025 Lightweight Boat Race also saw two wins for Cambridge.

Cambridge’s Claire Collins said it was an incredible feeling to win the race.

“This is so cool, it’s really an incredible honour to share this with the whole club,” she said.

̽��ֱ��Women’s Race was stopped initially after an oar clash, but Umpire Sir Matthew Pinsent allowed the race to resume after a restart. Claire said that the crew had prepared for eventualities such as a restart and so were able to lean on their training when it happened.

“I had total confidence in the crew to regroup. Our focus was to get back on pace and get going as soon as possible and that’s what we did.”

For Cambridge Men’s President Luca Ferraro, it was his final Boat Roat campaign, having raced in the Blue Boat for the last three years, winning the last two.

He said: “It was a great race. ̽��ֱ��guys really stepped up. That’s something that our Coach Rob Baker said to us before we went out there, that each of us had to step up individually and come together and play our part in what we were about to do. I couldn’t be prouder of the guys, they really delivered today.”

Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, congratulated all the crews following the wins.

“I am in awe of these students and what they have achieved, and what Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Boat Club has been able to create,” she said.

“These students are out in the early hours of the morning training and then trying to make it to 9am lectures. It’s so inspiring. And a complete clean sweep – this was an incredibly impressive showing by Cambridge, I am so proud of them.”

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Blue Boats featured student athletes drawn from Christ’s College, Downing College, Emmanuel College, Gonville & Caius, Hughes Hall, Jesus College, Pembroke College, Peterhouse, St Edmund’s, and St John’s.

Cambridge is celebrating a complete clean sweep at ̽��ֱ��Boat Race 2025, with victories in all 4 openweight races and also both lightweight races.

Row360

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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10 Cambridge AI spinouts

skbf2 — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 15:20:09 +0000

Meet 10 Cambridge spinouts, all hoping to harness the potential of AI for the good of the planet and its people.

Cambridge Blue Boats revealed for ̽��ֱ��Boat Race 2025

hcf38 — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 18:00:00 +0000

With just over 2 weeks to go until the showdown on the River Thames, the Light Blues are gearing up to defend their titles. Cambridge leads the historic tally in both the men’s and women’s events and will be looking to extend their dominance when they take on Oxford on Sunday 13 April 2025.

Cambridge Crews for ̽��ֱ��Boat Race 2025

Women’s Blue Boat:
•   Cox: Jack Nicholas (Pembroke College)
•   Stroke: Samy Morton (Hughes Hall)
•   Tash Morrice (Jesus College)
•   Claire Collins (Peterhouse)
•   Carys Earl (Gonville & Caius)
•   Annie Wertheimer (St Edmund’s College)
•   Sophia Hahn (Hughes Hall)
•   Gemma King (St John’s College)
•   Bow: Katy Hempson (Christ’s College)

Men’s Blue Boat:
•   Cox: Ollie Boyne (Downing College)
•   Stroke: Douwe de Graaf (St Edmund’s)
•   Luca Ferraro (Peterhouse)
•   James Robson (Peterhouse)
•   George Bourne (Peterhouse)
•   Gabriel Mahler (Peterhouse)
•   Tom Macky (St Edmund’s)
•   Noam Mouelle (Hughes Hall)
•   Bow: Simon Hatcher (Peterhouse)

Countdown to ̽��ֱ��Boat Race 2025
̽��ֱ��prestigious race, one of the oldest amateur sporting events in the world, will take place along the 6.8 km Championship Course from Putney to Mortlake. ̽��ֱ��Women's Boat Race will commence at 1:21pm British Summer Time (BST), followed by the Men's Boat Race at 2:21pm BST.

Cambridge’s women’s crew enters the race as the defending champions and currently leads the overall tally at 48-30. Meanwhile, Cambridge’s men’s crew also holds the advantage, leading Oxford 87-81, with one historic dead heat in 1877.

Praise for the athletes

Siobhan Cassidy, Chair of ̽��ֱ��Boat Race Company, congratulated the athletes on their selection for one of the Blue Boats. “I am not sure that everyone appreciates just what it takes to compete at this level,” she told the event.

“Having witnessed the intense training over a number of years, I can tell you these guys are no ordinary students; they combine their academic courses with a high-performance rowing programme. Their commitment to excellence on and off the water is truly extraordinary. It is nothing short of superhuman.”

Renowned BBC Sport commentator Andrew Cotter, who hosted the event, emphasised the purity of ̽��ֱ��Boat Race in today’s sporting landscape. “In the modern era of sport, when so much is inflated by money and professionalism, this is sport stripped back to its essence,” he said.

“It is pure competition, it is about winning and losing. And I know that’s how the athletes feel about it, but they also feel that this is where they will make friendships that will last a lifetime.”

Historic firsts and environmental commitments

This year’s event will also see a landmark moment in Boat Race history. Sarah Winckless MBE will become the first woman to umpire the Men’s Boat Race on the Championship Course. Sir Matthew Pinsent CBE will oversee the Women’s Boat Race.

Additionally, ̽��ֱ��Boat Race Company, alongside the Cambridge and Oxford ̽��ֱ�� Boat Clubs, have given their support to the London Rivers’ Pledge, a 10-year environmental initiative focused on improving water quality and sustainability on the Thames and beyond.

With the crews now announced and excitement continuing to build, all eyes will be on the Thames this April as Cambridge and Oxford prepare to write the next chapter in their historic rivalry.

̽��ֱ��stage has been set for ̽��ֱ��Boat Race 2025, with Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Boat Club announcing its Women’s and Men’s Blue Boats at the historic Battersea Power Station in London.

Row360

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Powerful new MRI scans enable life-changing surgery in first for adults with epilepsy

cjb250 — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 00:01:25 +0000

Scientists have developed a new technique that has enabled ultra-powerful MRI scanners to identify tiny differences in patients’ brains that cause treatment-resistant epilepsy. It has allowed doctors at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, to offer the patients surgery to cure their condition.

Presidents' Challenge marks start of 2025 Boat Race season

hcf38 — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 12:03:48 +0000

This year’s Challenge, held at the iconic Somerset House in London, saw the Oxford and Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Boat Clubs come together in celebration of one of British sport’s most enduring rivalries. ̽��ֱ��event traditionally sees the Presidents representing the losing teams of the previous year’s races formally challenge those from the winning teams, marking the renewal of an intense competition which stretches back nearly 200 years.

Those in attendance gathered with anticipation to witness Oxford Presidents Tom Mackintosh and Annie Anezakis challenge Cambridge Presidents Luca Ferraro and Lucy Havard. ̽��ֱ��pairs faced off before shaking hands on stage in front of the coveted men’s and women’s trophies.

̽��ֱ��Umpires were confirmed as Sarah Winckless MBE and Sir Matthew Pinsent, for the Men’s and Women’s races respectively. Winckless becomes the first woman to umpire the Men’s Race on ̽��ֱ��Championship Course.

̽��ֱ��Boat Race will take place on Sunday 13 April, with ̽��ֱ��79th Women’s Boat Race to be followed shortly after by ̽��ֱ��170th Men’s Boat Race. Two hundred thousand spectators are expected to line the banks of the River Thames to watch the event - which is free to attend and broadcast live on the BBC - while millions more are expected to watch globally.

̽��ֱ��Boat Race is made up of six races and in 2024, Cambridge won five. ̽��ֱ��make-up of the squads will be more diverse than ever in 2025, with 157 student rowers spanning 18 different nationalities from countries such as Nigeria, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, France, Sri Lanka and China. Oxford’s Luisa Fernandez Chirino, should she be selected to face Cambridge, would be the first Mexican woman to compete at ̽��ֱ��Boat Race.

There will also be six Olympians within the squads. For Cambridge, this includes two-time Olympian Claire Collins, alongside reserve athlete for the 2024 British Olympic team, James Robson. For Oxford, this includes Paris men’s eight bronze medallist Nick Rusher, Paris women’s eight bronze medallist Heidi Long, Tokyo men’s eight gold medallist Tom Mackintosh, as well as Paris Olympian Nicholas Kohl. Meanwhile, Harry Brightmore, Paris gold medallist in the men’s eight, has joined Oxford as an assistant coach.

Asked by host, Olympic champion and four-time Boat Race winner Constantine Louloudis MBE, if this year's race would be "rinse and repeat" for Cambridge, Women's President, Lucy Havard, who is pursuing a PhD in Early Modern History at Gonville & Caius College, said: "Absolutely not - it's never the same, every year it's new people and Boat Race wins don't come easily. Everyone is gunning for it, everyone is putting so much time and effort in."

Luca Ferraro, who is taking an MPhil in History of Art and Architecture at Peterhouse, was asked about how it felt to take on the responsibility of Men's President. "I would be lying if I didn't say it didn't add a certain extra layer... racing an opponent you don't really get to meet at full strength until next year," he said. "You have the odd moment of thinking are we doing the right things, are we going fast enough and no-one feels that quite as keenly as the President, but we are surrounded by such a great team and it is so rewarding to have that extra level of responsibility."

First raced by crews from Oxford and Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� in 1829, ̽��ֱ��Boat Race is now one of the world’s oldest and most famous amateur sporting events, offering an unrivalled educational experience to the student athletes who take part. ̽��ֱ��famous Championship Course stretches over 4.25 miles of tidal Thames in West London between Putney and Mortlake.

̽��ֱ��countdown to the 2025 Boat Race is officially underway, with the annual Presidents’ Challenge ushering in another season of competition between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Oxford Presidents Tom Mackintosh and Annie Anezakis challenge Cambridge Presidents Luca Ferraro and Lucy Havard

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‘Extinct’ snails found breeding in French Polynesia

jg533 — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 23:02:49 +0000

A global conservation effort to reintroduce a tiny snail to the wild is celebrating a momentous milestone: for the first time in 40 years, conservationists have found born-in-the-wild adult Partula tohiveana – meaning the precious molluscs have successfully established themselves in French Polynesia.

This year Cambridge’s Dr Justin Gerlach helped restore over 6,000 of the snails to Moorea, their French Polynesian island home as part of an annual reintroduction of zoo-bred ‘Extinct in the Wild’ and ‘Critically Endangered’ snail species – carried out through collaboration with zoos around the world.

During their work the team found unmarked Partula tohiveana: proof that previously reintroduced snails have successfully bred in the area.

̽��ֱ��momentous discovery means Partula tohiveana can now be considered as established – an incredibly rewarding result for 40 years of dedication and collaboration. Conservationists will now begin the process of downlisting the snails from ‘Extinct-in-the-Wild’ to ‘Critically Endangered’ on the IUCN’s Red List.

Very few species have been reintroduced successfully having been completely extinct in the wild. This is also the very first invertebrate species where this has been achieved.

Ten species and sub-species of the tropical snails, reared at London Zoo, Bristol Zoological Society, Detroit Zoological Society, Marwell Wildlife, the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, Saint Louis Zoo, Sedgwick County Zoo, Woodland Park Zoo and Zoo Schwerin, travelled more than 15,000km to Tahiti at the beginning of September. Before making the two-day journey to the islands of Tahiti, Moorea and Huahine, the incredibly rare snails, which each measure a tiny 1-2cm in length, were individually counted and marked with a dot of red UV reflective paint. ̽��ֱ��‘snail varnish’ glows under UV torchlight, helping conservationists in the field to spot and monitor the nocturnal snails at night, when they’re most active.

London Zoo’s Senior Curator of Invertebrates, Paul Pearce-Kelly, who leads the Partula conservation programme, said: “Though little, these snails have great cultural, scientific and conservation value. Partula snails have always been part of Polynesia’s rich cultural heritage and play an important role in the ecological health of their forest habitats. They’ve also been studied for over a century for the insights they give into how species evolve in isolated environments. Most recently, they’re providing a valuable conservation model for helping hundreds of endangered island species.”

He added: “This collaborative conservation effort is playing a crucial role in saving these species from extinction. It’s a powerful example of how conservation zoos can combat biodiversity loss. At a time when nature faces unprecedented challenges, these small snails are a symbol of hope for global wildlife.”

Partula snails - also known as Polynesian tree snails - eat decaying plant tissue and fungi, so play an important role in maintaining forest health. Returning these rare snails back to the wild helps to restore the ecological balance in these islands.

Dr Justin Gerlach of Peterhouse, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and an Academic Associate at the ̽��ֱ��'s Museum of Zoology, said: “Discovering wild-born adult snails was a great moment. Very few animal species have been re-established back in the wild so this is a fantastic achievement for the programme – the fruit of a vast amount of work.”

Conservation zoos are working with the French Polynesian Government’s Direction de l’environnement, to save Partula snails from extinction. In the 1980s and early 1990s, these snails faced a critical threat after the invasive rosy wolf snail (Euglandina rosea) was introduced to control the African giant land snail (Lissachatina fulica). Unfortunately, the predatory species targeted the native snails instead, leading to the extinction or near-extinction of many Partula species across the region.

In the early 1990s, the last remaining individuals of several Partula species were rescued by London and Edinburgh Zoos, launching an international conservation breeding programme. This collaboration between 15 zoos cares for 15 species and subspecies, most of which are classified as ‘Extinct-in-the-Wild’. These rescued snails, along with those already being studied at universities in the UK and North America, became the foundation for reintroducing the species back onto their native island homes.

Paul said: “After decades of caring for these species in conservation zoos and working with the Direction de l’environnement to prepare the islands, we started reintroducing Partula snails back into their lowland tropical forests almost 10 years ago. Since then, we’ve reintroduced over 30,000 snails, including 10 Extinct-in-the-Wild species and subspecies, with this year’s release being the largest so far, thanks to our international team and collaborators, including mollusc specialist Dr Justin Gerlach of Peterhouse, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.”

London Zoo’s coordination of the Partula snail reintroduction project is made possible due to funding from supporters including the Players of the People’s Postcode Lottery, who have enabled London Zoo to continue bringing species back from the brink of extinction.

Adapted from a press release by the Zoological Society of London.

A species of tropical tree snail is no longer extinct in the wild following a successful reintroduction project.

Very few animal species have been re-established back in the wild so this is a fantastic achievement for the programme – the fruit of a vast amount of work.

Justin Gerlach

Unmarked Partula tohiveana snail observed in the wild, meaning the species is re-established (c) Paul Pearce-Kelly

Born-in-the-wild unmarked Partula tohiveana snail observed in the wild, meaning the species is re-established (c) Paul Pearce-Kelly

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Cambridge scientists elected as Members of the European Molecular Biology Organisation

jg533 — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 12:00:56 +0000

Five Cambridge researchers join the community of over 2,100 leading life scientists today as the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) announces its newest Members in its 60th anniversary year.

New open-source platform allows users to evaluate performance of AI-powered chatbots

sc604 — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 10:34:36 +0000

A team of computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians and cognitive scientists, led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, developed an open-source evaluation platform called CheckMate, which allows human users to interact with and evaluate the performance of large language models (LLMs).

̽��ֱ��researchers tested CheckMate in an experiment where human participants used three LLMs – InstructGPT, ChatGPT and GPT-4 – as assistants for solving undergraduate-level mathematics problems.

̽��ֱ��team studied how well LLMs can assist participants in solving problems. Despite a generally positive correlation between a chatbot’s correctness and perceived helpfulness, the researchers also found instances where the LLMs were incorrect, but still useful for the participants. However, certain incorrect LLM outputs were thought to be correct by participants. This was most notable in LLMs optimised for chat.

̽��ֱ��researchers suggest models that communicate uncertainty, respond well to user corrections, and can provide a concise rationale for their recommendations, make better assistants. Human users of LLMs should verify their outputs carefully, given their current shortcomings.

̽��ֱ��results, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), could be useful in both informing AI literacy training, and help developers improve LLMs for a wider range of uses.

While LLMs are becoming increasingly powerful, they can also make mistakes and provide incorrect information, which could have negative consequences as these systems become more integrated into our everyday lives.

“LLMs have become wildly popular, and evaluating their performance in a quantitative way is important, but we also need to evaluate how well these systems work with and can support people,” said co-first author Albert Jiang, from Cambridge’s Department of Computer Science and Technology. “We don’t yet have comprehensive ways of evaluating an LLM’s performance when interacting with humans.”

̽��ֱ��standard way to evaluate LLMs relies on static pairs of inputs and outputs, which disregards the interactive nature of chatbots, and how that changes their usefulness in different scenarios. ̽��ֱ��researchers developed CheckMate to help answer these questions, designed for but not limited to applications in mathematics.

“When talking to mathematicians about LLMs, many of them fall into one of two main camps: either they think that LLMs can produce complex mathematical proofs on their own, or that LLMs are incapable of simple arithmetic,” said co-first author Katie Collins from the Department of Engineering. “Of course, the truth is probably somewhere in between, but we wanted to find a way of evaluating which tasks LLMs are suitable for and which they aren’t.”

̽��ֱ��researchers recruited 25 mathematicians, from undergraduate students to senior professors, to interact with three different LLMs (InstructGPT, ChatGPT, and GPT-4) and evaluate their performance using CheckMate. Participants worked through undergraduate-level mathematical theorems with the assistance of an LLM and were asked to rate each individual LLM response for correctness and helpfulness. Participants did not know which LLM they were interacting with.

̽��ֱ��researchers recorded the sorts of questions asked by participants, how participants reacted when they were presented with a fully or partially incorrect answer, whether and how they attempted to correct the LLM, or if they asked for clarification. Participants had varying levels of experience with writing effective prompts for LLMs, and this often affected the quality of responses that the LLMs provided.

An example of an effective prompt is “what is the definition of X” (X being a concept in the problem) as chatbots can be very good at retrieving concepts they know of and explaining it to the user.

“One of the things we found is the surprising fallibility of these models,” said Collins. “Sometimes, these LLMs will be really good at higher-level mathematics, and then they’ll fail at something far simpler. It shows that it’s vital to think carefully about how to use LLMs effectively and appropriately.”

However, like the LLMs, the human participants also made mistakes. ̽��ֱ��researchers asked participants to rate how confident they were in their own ability to solve the problem they were using the LLM for. In cases where the participant was less confident in their own abilities, they were more likely to rate incorrect generations by LLM as correct.

“This kind of gets to a big challenge of evaluating LLMs, because they’re getting so good at generating nice, seemingly correct natural language, that it’s easy to be fooled by their responses,” said Jiang. “It also shows that while human evaluation is useful and important, it’s nuanced, and sometimes it’s wrong. Anyone using an LLM, for any application, should always pay attention to the output and verify it themselves.”

Based on the results from CheckMate, the researchers say that newer generations of LLMs are increasingly able to collaborate helpfully and correctly with human users on undergraduate-level maths problems, as long as the user can assess the correctness of LLM-generated responses. Even if the answers may be memorised and can be found somewhere on the internet, LLMs have the advantage of being flexible in their inputs and outputs over traditional search engines (though should not replace search engines in their current form).

While CheckMate was tested on mathematical problems, the researchers say their platform could be adapted to a wide range of fields. In the future, this type of feedback could be incorporated into the LLMs themselves, although none of the CheckMate feedback from the current study has been fed back into the models.

“These kinds of tools can help the research community to have a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of these models,” said Collins. “We wouldn’t use them as tools to solve complex mathematical problems on their own, but they can be useful assistants if the users know how to take advantage of them.”

̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by the Marshall Commission, the Cambridge Trust, Peterhouse, Cambridge, ̽��ֱ��Alan Turing Institute, the European Research Council, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Reference:
Katherine M Collins, Albert Q Jiang, et al. ‘Evaluating Language Models for Mathematics through Interactions.’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2318124121

Researchers have developed a platform for the interactive evaluation of AI-powered chatbots such as ChatGPT.

Anyone using an LLM, for any application, should always pay attention to the output and verify it themselves

Albert Jiang

da-kuk via Getty Images

Chatbot

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