New award to celebrate Oxford scientist Dr Ling Felce who died in crash

Dr Felce's husband James said she was "the light" of their family

A new award will celebrate an Oxford University scientist who was killed in a cycling collision.

Pharmacology researcher and mother-of-two Dr Ling Felce, 35, died at the Plain roundabout in Oxford on 1 March.

Described by Oxford University as a scientist "of extraordinary talent", she had been researching immune responses to Covid before her death.

The award established in her name aims to provide financial support to help train new researchers.

Dr Felce developed an interest in computational biology after completing the Oxford Biomedical Data Science Training Programme at the city's MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine.

"Ling was one of the brightest and nicest people we've taught on the programme," David Sims, associate professor of computational genomics and director of the training programme, said.

"She really leveraged it to take her career forward, which was great to see."

The CAMS-Oxford Institute said its Ling Felce Award would offer financial assistance to "support the next generation of world-leading computational biologists".

Dr Felce was born in Malaysia in 1986 and moved to London in 1991 with her parents and sister.

She moved to Oxford in 2005 to study biochemistry and completed a DPhil at Oxford University's clinical pharmacology department. She also represented the university in rugby union and rugby league.

After she died, her husband James described her as "the light of our family" and said she had "so many dreams for herself and her children that she was beginning to realise".

Robert Whiting, 40, from Oxford, admitted causing death by dangerous driving at the city's crown court on 29 July, days before his trial was due to start. He is due to be sentenced on Thursday.