Congratulations to Dr Amy Orben from the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, who has been awarded a £1.9 Million UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship. The fund is UKRI’s flagship research fellowship, targeting the most innovative scientists and researchers across the country to allow them to secure the UK’s status as an ongoing global science superpower. 

 Amy’s work will help pinpoint how social media use might be linked to mental health risk in teenagers, a time when we are especially susceptible to developing mental health conditions. She will use a range of innovative techniques to study technological designs, such as the quantification of social feedback through ‘like’ counts, that could be problematic and therefore a target for future regulation. As a UKRI Future Leader Fellow, Amy will also collaborate flexibly with youth, policymakers, and charities to swiftly address pressing questions about social media and technology, helping safeguard young people from the moment her fellowship starts.

 Amy said, “I will use my Future Leaders Fellowship to develop the basic and applied research pipelines that will allow me to produce ground-breaking outputs that cut through the current uncertainty and provide the evidence needed to progress policy and practice in the UK and internationally.”

https://www.ukri.org/news/75-new-future-leaders-fellows-and-upcoming-rounds-announced/