Downing appoints five new Honorary Fellows
Downing College is delighted to announce the appointment of five new Honorary Fellows: Dharshini David, Professor Ravindra Gupta, Baron Anderson of Ipswich, Sir Andrew Popplewell and Professor Mike Lean.
The Master, Professor Graham Virgo said: "I am delighted that five of our alumni have been honoured by the College for their impressive contributions across such varied fields."
Dharshini David is the Chief Economics Correspondent and Presenter for the BBC. She read Economics at Downing, matriculating in 1991.
Following her time at Downing, she worked for the UK’s Government Economic Service and for HSBC Investment Bank.
After getting her first taste of broadcasting at HSBC, she was recruited by BBC News to cover economics, and present programmes from London and New York. After presenting financial and political shows for Sky News and sitting on the consumer finance board of the FCA, she returned to the BBC as Senior Economics Correspondent and Business Presenter for Radio 4’s Today Programme in 2018. She was appointed the BBC’s Chief Economics Correspondent in 2023. She also presents news programmes and documentaries for Radio 4, including “Is Britain the Sick Man of Europe?” which won the Wincott Prize for financial journalism.
Dharshini is the author of The Almighty Dollar (2018) the best-selling guide to the global economy and Environomics (2024) .
She is a regular visitor to College, and most recently appeared in the ‘Your Room, My Room’ feature for CAM Magazine.
Professor Ravindra Gupta is Professor of Clinical Microbiology at the Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Diseases.
A Downing alumnus, he completed his Undergraduate studies in Medicine in 1997. He has maintained links with the College, and in 2022 was recipient of the Oon award, for which he gave a lecture in the Howard Theatre.
Professor Gupta is seen as one of the most influential HIV researchers of his generation, particularly noted for the case of the ‘London patient’. During the COVID-19 pandemic, his team made major contributions to rapid diagnostic methods. His work on SARS-CoV-2 immunology was fundamental to understanding the risk of immune escape and the possibility of new variants developing in immunocompromised individuals. His research team discovered fundamental biological properties of SARS-CoV-2 variants.
Baron Anderson of Ipswich read Law at Downing from 1982-84 as an affiliate student, having read Ancient and Modern History at Oxford.
He is a practising barrister and life peer who was the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation from 2011-2017. He was introduced to the House of Lords in 2018 as a crossbench working peer and was knighted for services to national security and civil liberties.
In the House of Lords, he has been active on a wide range of issues, ranging from national security and policing to constitutional-related matters. He also chairs the conflict resolution charity InterMediate.
Sir Andrew Popplewell read Law at Downing, graduating in 1980. He was called to the Bar at Inner Temple in 1981.
Having taken silk in 1997 and worked as a Recorder for 9 years, he became a High Court Judge in 2011. In October 2019, he was appointed to the Court of Appeal as a Lord Justice of Appeal.
Sir Andrew has an active relationship with the College. He judged a mooting competition involving Downing’s law students held at the Supreme Court in April 2022 and has been a speaker at a Cranworth Law Society dinner.
Professor Mike Lean matriculated at Downing in 1970 and read Medicine and History and Philosophy of Science. During his time at the College, he was captain of both the tennis and squash teams and represented the University at hockey and lacrosse. He completed his medical training at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, and returned to Cambridge for research training at the MRC Dunn Nutrition Unit.
He has transformed the understanding of type 2 diabetes and its relationship to body fat accumulation, and defined effective, sustainable and global responses to the threat from its rising rates.
He is the only doctor on the GMC Specialist Register for Human Nutrition, as well as for Diabetes and Endocrinology and General Internal Medicine. Over five decades he has generated significant and highly cited research evidence, led large-scale landmark clinical trials including the world-renowned ‘DiRECT’ diabetes remission trial, translated results into practice with health economics analyses, created new national and international guidelines, and trained healthcare professionals and key opinion formers. He currently leads a major research programme in Nepal, to establish a sustainable community-owned model, based on local traditional foods, for effective type 2 diabetes prevention and remission in low-income countries.
He has chaired the UK Food Standards Agency’s research committee, directed the national Health Education Board for Scotland and founded the highly successful Department of Human Nutrition at Glasgow University. Adding to awards which include visiting professorships at the Universities of Otago and Sydney, the Diabetes UK Banting Memorial Lectureship and Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, In 2024 he was the joint winner of the Rank Prize for Nutrition, the major international award in the field.
Published 6 September 2024