Oxford University Boat Club has named Kyra Delray and Alex Sullivan as its Presidents for The CHANEL J12 Boat Race 2027.
Delray is a two-time Blue who tasted defeat in 2025 before the Dark Blue victory in 2026. She is studying for a DPhil in Statistics at Wolfson College, with her research focused on building equitable dynamic treatment regimes and personal recommendations in digital health apps and wearables. She is also developing modelling methods that allow for adjusting for the menstrual cycle in causal effect estimation.
Before coming to Oxford, Delray represented Great Britain at the World Rowing Championships three times, having started rowing at Nottingham Rowing Club.
"I'm working on causal machine learning with the Department of Statistics as well as the wearables group at Oxford," she says. "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."
Sullivan is a Brisbane-born Australian and a 2026 Blue based at Oriel College. He completed his undergraduate degree at Harvard University and is now studying for a DPhil in Engineering. His research looks at solutions for sharing energy smart meter data from households while protecting user privacy.
"I remember watching The Boat Race with my father back in Australia before starting rowing myself," he says. "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."
"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."
