Introducing your Oxford University Boat Club Presidents for The CHANEL J12 Boat Race 2027: Kyra Delray and Alex Sullivan.
Kyra is a two-time Blue, tasting defeat in 2025 before that historic Dark Blue victory in 2026. She is studying for a DPhil in Health Data Science, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), linking data from wearable tech to physical and mental health.
Before coming to Oxford, she has been to the World Rowing Championships three times for Great Britain. Kyra started rowing at Nottingham Rowing Club, and is at Wolfson College.
Kyra says: “I’m working on causal machine learning with the Department of Statistics as well as the wearables group at Oxford. Our aim is to better understand the causality of time series and wearable data to short and long term health outcomes in machine learning models.
“We’re working to utilize the rise of digital health data – smartwatches, smartphones and apps, and find what is the cause and effect of mental and physical health. We’re examining movement, sleep and cardiovascular patterns as well as mood, illness and injury.”
Brisbane-born Australian Alex Sullivan is a 2026 Blue and is studying for a DPhil in Engineering, having completed his undergraduate degree at Harvard University.
“I remember watching The Boat Race with my father back in Australia before starting rowing myself. I think there was a protest that year which made me realise how big an event the race was and how many people watched it.”
His DPhil explores solutions to sharing data from energy smart meters in households, whilst upholding privacy of users. Alex is at Oriel College.
Alex says: “Even in those days or weeks when it feels like nothing is going right, something will suddenly just click for a few minutes or a session, and the rowing just feels effortless. Those moments are what inspires me about sport and are why I keep rowing.
“I do my best to relish the long hours of training because, from experience, the time you spend doing the simple things with the team is what you miss most when the season is done.”
(Alex at 7, third from left)