Schmidt Science Fellows

Schmidt Science Fellows brings scientific disciplines together to create novel ways of thinking and develop creative solutions. The fellowships are awarded to the world’s best emerging scientists who have completed a PhD in natural sciences, computing, engineering, or mathematics and places them in a field different from their existing expertise. The program funds a one or two-year postdoctoral placement and provides a comprehensive Science Leadership Program, creating a community of interdisciplinary leaders.

The 2025 fellows represent 15 nationalities, working on a range of problems from cancer treatment to quantum technologies to sustainability. See the full list of this year's Schmidt Fellows. 

Jake's fellowship project

Nature has a remarkable knack for reproducing body and organ size within each species—essentially, your organs are proportionate to your body size. However, the tissue interactions and molecular signaling required to achieve this are not well understood.

As a 2025 Schmidt Science Fellow, Jake will pivot from Molecular and Cell Biology to Systems Biology, combining novel approaches to measure cell behaviour when body size is perturbed and screen for the signals driving this regulation. This could provide us with the rules of size control for the first time.

Jake’s research aims to create an atlas of interactions underpinning size control. This would have profound implications for controlling tissue growth in regeneration and cancer and for biomanufacturing transplant-ready human-sized organs.

Jake said: 

I am thrilled to have been selected as a 2025 Schmidt Science Fellow. Working on principles of gene regulation during my PhD, I look forward to pivoting up several levels of biological organisation in my postdoctoral work to investigate how organs and organisms regulate their sizes.

James Briscoe, Group Leader of the Developmental Dynamics Laboratory, said:

Jake's exceptional talent for merging theoretical frameworks with experimental biology has been evident throughout his PhD. His ability to think across different scales of biological organisation makes him perfectly suited for this fellowship. It is richly deserved. I'm confident that Jake's interdisciplinary approach will yield fundamental insights that bridge molecular processes to whole-organism physiology.