Today we congratulate three members of our department, Dr Gregory Jefferis, Prof Claire Spottiswoode and Dr Marta Zlatić on being elected Fellows of the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences.
Fellowship of the Society is a significant honour. Fellows are elected for life, based on excellence in science, through a peer review process. They are entitled to use the letters FRS after their names.
Prof Rebecca Kilner FRS, our Head of Department said, ‘It’s extraordinary to have three members of the department recognised in such a prestigious way in one year, reflecting our strength in neurobiology and animal behaviour.
‘‘The Department is delighted to celebrate our colleagues’ successes - we all benefit from being immersed in the stimulating research environment that has helped to propel these exceptional discoveries.’’
Dr Gregory Jefferis
‘This is a wonderful recognition of our group’s progress in understanding how the brain is wired up to control behaviour, including the development of high-resolution wiring diagrams or connectomes.’
Dr Jefferis studies the neural circuit basis of behaviour using the nervous system of the fruit fly, Drosophila, as a model. His research spans the developmental and organisational logic of brain wiring, moving from the resolution of individual synaptic connections between neurons to brain-spanning circuits.
‘Through collaboration between the Drosophila Connectomics Group here in Zoology, my research group at the MRC LMB and partners beyond Cambridge we have recently completed the first connectomes for the brain and nerve cord of an animal with eyes and legs, the adult fruit fly Drosophila. This is revolutionising how neuroscientists study sensory processing, memory and complex motor behaviours.’
Dr Jefferis is a Director of Research here in Zoology and is joint head of the Neurobiology Division at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. In 2019 he was awarded the Royal Society’s Francis Crick Medal.
Prof Claire Spottiswoode
‘I’m so touched and more than a little bowled over by this recognition for field research that’s been a delight to do. Research is always a team effort, and this big honour is also recognition for the many people who shared in this work, including the communities in Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa who make all our findings together possible – and immensely enjoyable.’
Prof Spottiswoode is a Visiting Research Associate here in Zoology, and Pola Pasvolsky Chair in Conservation Biology at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at the University of Cape Town. She is an evolutionary biologist studying the ecology, evolution and conservation of species interactions, through two long-term field projects in central and eastern Africa. Together with her colleagues, she particularly focusses on coevolution between brood-parasitic birds and the host species they exploit to raise their young, and on mutually beneficial interactions between wax-eating birds called honeyguides and the human honey-hunters whom they lead to bees’ nests.
‘If I have learnt anything these last couple of decades, it is that science truly does thrive on diversity and definitely needs more than just scientists,' Prof Spottiswoode adds.
‘This feels particularly poignant right now, as our collaborators and friends in Mozambique are imperilled by armed attacks in the Niassa Special Reserve – an extraordinary place where cooperation between honeyguides and people still flourishes.’
More about Claire and her team’s research can be found at www.AfricanHoneyguides.com and www.AfricanCuckoos.com.
Dr Marta Zlatić
‘I am thrilled and very honoured. I am truly grateful for this recognition.’ Dr Zlatić is a Director of Research here in Zoology as well as a Programme Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and a Fellow of Trinity College. She leads the Zlatić Group, based here in Zoology and at the MRC LMB.
Dr Zlatić studies how neural circuits generate behaviour. She has pioneered brain-wide mapping of synaptic-resolution architecture of neural circuits in the tractable Drosophila larva and combined it with the analysis of neural activity and behaviour to provide fundamental insights into nervous system development and function.
She has made important discoveries of the mechanisms by which sensory information is processed, actions are selected, and learning is implemented in the brain.
Dr Zlatić was awarded the Royal Society’s Francis Crick Medal in 2020.
Read more about our new FRSs:
University of Cambridge website: Cambridge researchers elected as Fellows of the Royal Society 2025
Royal Society website: Exceptional scientists elected as Fellows of the Royal Society
Image: Pictured left to right: Dr Gregory Jefferis, Prof Claire Spottiswoode and Dr Marta Zlatić