Faculty of Environmental and Life Sciences' Inaugural Lecture series

Join us for an exciting event in room 4013 in the Centenary Building at the University of Southampton, where we will be hosting a series of engaging lectures from newly appointed Professors at the Faculty of Environmental and Life Sciences.

During the event, our Professors will present a lecture to highlight their research, real-world impact and future research directions.

At our event on Wednesday 10th June 2026, Professor Lyn Ellett from the School of Psychology and Professor Owen Rackham will be presenting their research.

Professor Lyn Ellett obtained her PhD in Psychology from the University of Exeter and subsequently completed a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at KCL. She worked full time in the NHS as a Clinical Psychologist for a year and then joined Royal Holloway, University of London as a Lecturer, where she worked for 14 years. Lyn joined UoS in 2022 and is now a Professor of Psychology and Mental Health in the School of Psychology and recently gained Principal Fellowship of the HEA. She also serves as Deputy Head of the School (Education).

She has over 20 years of experience in academic research and clinical practice where she has made internationally leading contributions to understanding paranoia and developing mindfullness-based therapy for people with psychosis.

Professor Owen Rackham is Professor of AI for the Life Sciences at the University of Southampton, where he leads the Data Driven Biology group. He completed his PhD in complexity sciences at the University of Bristol in 2012 and then joined Imperial College London as an MRC Career Development Fellow. In 2015 he moved to Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore to establish his first research group, before returning to the United Kingdom in 2022. He also founded and served as the initial Chief Technology Officer of Mogrify, a data driven cell and gene therapy company based in Cambridge.

His research focuses on what defines human cells and how their phenotype emerges from the interactions between the genome, the transcriptome and the environment. His group combines experimental and computational approaches to create tools that reveal how cells make decisions and how these decisions can be engineered. He is the lead for advanced analytics in the CRUK CD3 cancer early detection programme and has served as a Turing Fellow and as the Theme Lead for Cell and Molecular Medicine at the Alan Turing Institute. He is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. His work has received several awards, including the BBSRC Pioneer Award and the Public Service Award from the International Society for Stem Cell Research.

Info: Professor Steve Darby, Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Environmental and Life Sciences, opens the event.

Info: Paranoia—often experienced as a sense of threat, mistrust or suspicion about the intentions of others —can be understood not just as a symptom of mental health conditions such as psychosis and schizophrenia, but also as a common human experience that exists on a continuum. In this inaugural lecture, Professor Lyn Ellett will show how the findings from her research have helped to challenge the idea of paranoia as an “all or nothing” clinical phenomenon and instead position it as a phenomenon influenced by everyday psychological processes. The lecture will map the journey from the basic science behind how paranoia develops to the design and evaluation of innovative psychological therapies —illustrating how rigorous science can drive compassionate, empowering support for those experiencing paranoia and psychosis.

Info: Cells are extraordinary systems, capable of sensing their environment, regulating themselves, communicating with their neighbours and working together to build and maintain the human body. Their ability to organise during development, and to continue adapting throughout life, is one of the great wonders of biology. The same control systems that guide healthy growth and repair can, under pressure from the environment or subtle molecular changes, drift away from their intended paths. This can lead cells towards disease, but it also highlights how responsive and malleable cellular systems truly are. My research aims to uncover the rules that govern cell identity and behaviour, and to use this understanding to reprogramme cells, restore failing functions and open new possibilities for discovery and therapy. By bringing together large biological datasets and advanced AI, my goal is to help shift bioscience from observation towards engineering.

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