St John's academics recognised in 2025 Recognition of Distinction awards

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Date 28 August 2025

Congratulations to the two St John’s academics who have been recognised in this year’s Recognition of Distinction awards, and who now receive the title of full Professor.

Mark Cannon becomes Professor of Engineering Science and Laurence Hunt becomes Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Professor Mark Cannon

Professor Mark Cannon is Tutorial Fellow in Engineering Science. His research is concerned with automatic control of dynamic systems, which involves a mix of physical modelling, optimization theory, statistics and stability theory. The aim is to optimize the performance of dynamic systems, taking into account physical, environmental or economic limits on operation, and also accounting for uncertainty in system models or physical measurements. Particular problems are how to build guarantees of stability and constraint satisfaction into control algorithms and how to keep their computational complexity within reasonable limits.

Professor Cannon's interests include applications in power generation, robotics and process industries as well as econometric systems.

Laurence Hunt-square

Professor Laurence Hunt is Tutorial Fellow in Psychology. His research addresses the cognitive and neural mechanisms by which humans make decisions. This lies at the heart of what it is to be human: we must decide what beliefs we infer about our environment based upon sensory evidence, what goals to pursue, and what actions to take to achieve those goals. Professor Hunt has a particular interest in studying decision-making in temporally extended and naturalistic paradigms, and in developing neuroimaging markers of these paradigms that may have relevance to neurology and psychiatry.

Recognition of Distinction Awards are assessed using three criteria:

  • An ongoing research record which is characterised by a significant influence on the field of study and is of a high order of excellence and of international standing, and the quality of which in terms of research distinction is at least equal to that expected of those appointed to full professorships at other leading international research universities.
  • A record of effective teaching for the University and for colleges, concomitant with the duties of the University post and the college fellowship, where one is held.
  • A record of involvement in University and/or college administration and demonstrable competence in such administration.