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Africa patient safety workshop attendees

Towards safer hospital care in Africa: a Christ Church Research Centre project

From operating on broken bones and treating malaria to managing childbirth, hospitals in rural Africa provide essential services to their local populations. Yet such services are rarely provided by specialist doctors, and resources are typically scarce. This can have severe consequences for patient safety, with the few reports available suggesting that harm to patients is common. How might this situation be remedied? 
James Parmeter and George Blundell in front of mountains and a lake

From Christ Church to Christchurch: student singers return from New Zealand

After a near decade-long hiatus, an exchange programme taking undergraduate members of Christ Church Cathedral Choir to New Zealand’s Christchurch Cathedral has been re-established. The lucky student singers this year were bass Choral Scholars (or ‘Academical Clerks’) James (Jim) Parmeter, who now enters his third year studying Theology and Religion, and George Blundell, who begins his second year studying German and Italian. We caught up with Jim and George to learn about their Antipodean adventure. 
Joshua Omolegan and Owen Agnel

Prizes awarded to Christ Church Computer Science finalists

The University of Oxford has awarded prizes to Christ Church’s Joshua Omolegan and Owen Agnel for their impressive performance in their four-year Computer Science integrated masters degrees. Joshua received the Gibbs Prize for having produced the best final-year Computer Science project, while Owen secured the Hoare Prize for the highest overall performance in the Computer Science and Philosophy course. We contacted the two high-achievers to learn more about their research and future plans.
Dr Ilia Shumailov and Professor Yarin Gal

Could machine learning models cause their own collapse?

AI systems have shown remarkable advances in recent years, but an article published today in Nature highlights a potential stumbling block on the horizon for them. The paper’s authors, who include Christ Church’s Dr Ilia Shumailov and Professor Yarin Gal, set out how the ‘indiscriminate’ training of Large Language Models such as ChatGPT and Gemini on model-generated data ‘causes irreversible defects in the resulting models’ – giving rise to a phenomenon the researchers term ‘model collapse’. 
Christ Church Upper Library

A rare acquisition from our 17th-century librarian

Christ Church has acquired a rare book from the collection of its former Librarian, the influential scholar Robert Burton (1577–1640), author of The Anatomy of Melancholy. With the help of a generous grant from the Friends of the National Libraries, Christ Church has been able to purchase Burton’s copy of Michael Scot’s 1603 Mensa Philosophica. 

Today’s College Librarian Gabriel Sewell tells us more about Burton and Christ Church’s exciting new acquisition. 
Dr Marc-André Cormier

Isotopes analysis deepens understanding of plants’ responses to a changing climate

For scientists investigating how plants have evolved and responded to a changing climate and environmental stresses of the past, such as ongoing global warming, the study of isotopic signals is a powerful tool. In a new paper published in leading journal Science Advances, Christ Church’s Dr Marc-André Cormier and his co-authors from Zurich deliver fresh insights into the drivers of hydrogen isotope ratios in plant compounds – insights that reveal how plants react to climatic change and which may improve our picture of the environmental conditions of the distant past. We asked Dr Cormier to tell us more. 
A small group of pilgrims walk past a bend in the river Thames

New St Frideswide’s Way Pilgrimage Walk Launches

We are excited to launch a new walking pilgrimage route from Oxford to Reading along the Thames Path named after Oxford’s patron saint. St Frideswide's Way begins at the shrine in the Cathedral, which once brought medieval pilgrims from far and wide to Oxford. The route follows a picturesque 40-mile stretch of the Thames Path, with stops along the way at 24 different churches in Oxfordshire and Berkshire's riverside towns and villages, including Abingdon, Dorchester, Wallingford, Goring and Pangbourne. 
Dr Nicholas Carter inspecting some lichens

Under the lens: a local landmark’s living stone

Something you might have missed on your latest trip to Blenheim Palace is the rich tapestry of lichens that covers the building’s façades and stone features. What implications do these organisms have for the palace as a World Heritage Site and for its conservation? This is the subject of recent research by Dr Nicholas Carter, Lecturer in Physical Geography at Christ Church, and answered in a new report commissioned by the palace.
Professor Yarin Gal

AI ‘hallucination’ research led by Yarin Gal and team appears in Nature

An article by Professor Yarin Gal, Tutor in Computer Science at Christ Church, and members of his Oxford Applied and Theoretical Machine Learning Group (OATML) has been published today in Nature. The research of Professor Gal, Dr Sebastian Farquhar, Jannik Kossen and Lorenz Kuhn proposes a means of predicting when large language model (LLM) systems such as ChatGPT and Gemini are likely to ‘hallucinate’ – that is, invent intuitively plausible but wholly imaginary facts. 
Dr Chenying Liu holding origami

Dr Chenying Liu wins two national prizes for science engagement

Christ Church Lecturer in Engineering Dr Chenying Liu has received two national awards for her outstanding science communication and research. The British Science Association (BSA) has chosen Dr Liu as this year’s British Science Festival Award Lecturer for Engineering, Technology and Industry, and BIG – the UK’s foremost network of STEM communicators – has presented her with the Josh Award for Science and Showmanship.