New Fellows Welcomed to Pembroke

In recent months we have been pleased to welcome four new Fellows to Pembroke’s Governing Body, along with the election of one Honorary Fellow.

Professor Antonio Forte

Tutorial Fellow in Engineering Science

Professor Antonio Forte is an Associate Professor in Engineering Science at the University as well as Fellow at Pembroke, where he teaches undergraduate tutorials in solid and structural mechanics. He joins us from King’s College, London, where he founded the Reconfigurable and Adaptive Designs Laboratory (RADlab). He now continues this work within the Solid Mechanics Group in the Department of Engineering Science, developing programmable materials and robotic systems that blur the line between machines and matter.

His research combines mechanics, materials and robotics, specialising in what he calls ‘robotic matter’ as he studies how soft and adaptive systems can sense, move and reconfigure themselves.

Prior to his work at King’s, he was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Harvard Fellow in Applied Mechanics at Harvard University. Inspired by previous interdisciplinary work exploring how ideas from biology and brain science can inspire new forms of intelligent materials, at Harvard he worked on soft robotic systems that can operate without electronics by exploiting the physics of fluids and elasticity.

Antonio explains how he seeks to help students expand their view of mechanics: “for me, engineering is both a science and an art: a way to reveal and reimagine the hidden intelligence of the physical world.”

Dr Or Brook 

Tutorial Fellow in Law

Dr Or Brook joins Pembroke as Fellow and Tutor in Law, also holding the post of Associate Professor of Competition Law at the University, where she is part of the Oxford Centre for Competition Law and Policy. She has previously held an Associate Professorship at the University of Leeds and a Research Fellowship with the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies.

Alongside teaching Contract Law to Pembroke students, Or’s research explores competition law in the EU, the UK and beyond, with a special interest in using empirical methods to understand how law and policy work in practice. With an interdisciplinary background combining law and economics, her research focuses on the boundaries of competition law and its interaction with wider public policy objectives, such as sustainability, digital platforms, financial stability, and labour rights. She also studies what she calls the ‘nuts and bolts’ of enforcement’: how regulators decide which cases to take on, how courts review those decisions, and how competition law plays out in the EU’s multi-level system. Or has had work published in the Modern Law Review, Common Market Law Review, and the European Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (EJELS) and was elected President of the European Society for Empirical Legal Studies (ESELS) for the 2026–27 term.

Or also serves as Director of the UK branch of the Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA) and is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Competition Law and Economics.

Professor Bruce Biccard

Nuffield Professor of Anaesthetic Science 

Professor Bruce Biccard is an anaesthesiologist and Oxford’s new Nuffield Professor of Anaesthetic Science. Before joining the University in September 2025, he served as Professor and Second Chair in the Department of Anaesthesia and Perioperative Medicine at Groote Schuur Hospital and University of Cape Town. He was also Chair of the South African Perioperative Research Group (SAPORG), and he remains Director of the African Perioperative Research Group (APORG), both of which he founded to address poor patient outcomes following surgery.

A proponent of international collaborative research, Professor Biccard is co-Lead for the NIHR Global Health Group on Perioperative and Critical Care. His research focuses on improving perioperative outcomes through decreasing postoperative failure to rescue; decreasing caesarean haemorrhage; decreasing cardiovascular complications; and understanding critical illness. He is a strong advocate for health equity and safe surgery and anaesthesia in Africa.

Martin Bowdery KC (1975, PPE)

Advisory Fellow 

Martin Bowdery, who studied PPE at Pembroke from 1975, is a Kings Counsel at Atkin Chambers. He practises as an advocate, arbitrator, mediator and adjudicator in construction and engineering disputes and has been involved in a number of high-profile cases in the sector. He also sits as a Deputy High Court Judge of the Technology and Construction Court.

Over recent years Martin has offered invaluable support to Pembroke as a member of the Buildings and Sustainability Committee, Governance Committee, and Steering Groups for multiple major projects, including the recent decarbonisation of the Rokos Quad. We are enormously grateful for Martin’s expert advice in recent years, and for his ongoing support in his new position on the Governing Body as Advisory Fellow.

Lisha Patel (1999, Economics and Management)

Honorary Fellow

Lisha Patel, an alumna of the College, is Managing Partner and co-Chief Investment Officer of the Wellcome Trust, one of the world’s largest charitable foundations. She has sat on Pembroke’s Investment Committee since 2012, in this time serving as Chair of the Investment Committee for over 6 years to 2025 and providing invaluable advice and guidance to the Fellowship and colleagues at Pembroke.

​In addition to her role at Wellcome, where she is responsible for all of the Trust’s endowment investment activities, Lisha is an external Investment Committee member for Imperial College London and The Honorable Society of Middle Temple. She has mentored talented students from minority ethnic or lower socioeconomic backgrounds through Sponsors for Educational Opportunity London for over a decade. In her time as an undergraduate at Pembroke, Lisha served as JCR Vice President and as Chair of the JCR Art Fund. We are delighted to recognise Lisha’s many years of service with her appointment as an Honorary Fellow.