Thank you also to all of our speakers and to those of you who submitted posters for the poster competitions.
Poster competition winners
Each faculty ran a heat of the PGR poster competition, the shortlisted posters were judged by an independent panel. The winners will each receive a contribution of £500 for their research endeavour.
Our Postgraduate Research competition winners are:
- Aya Awad, Faculty of Business
- Hava Sokoli, Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences
- Suppattra Maneein, Faculty of Engineering and Science
- Peter Soar, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Science
Our Early Career Poster competition winners are:
- Emmanuel Mogaji, Faculty of Business
- Poppy Gibson, Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences
- Susan Shorter, Faculty of Engineering and Science
Award winners
Inspiring Researcher - for a notable contribution by an undergraduate or postgraduate research
- Jack P Wardle, (UG)for devising and refining a novel low-cost shadowgraphy method for quantifying layer quality in the 3D printing of metal powders
- Teddy Gan, (PGR) for redeveloping the electromagnetic solver in Thermoelectric Solidification Algorithm (TESA) for additive manufacturing processes
Outstanding Achievement in Research - to recognise a meritorious award, activity, ground-breaking output in terms of originality and impact or other related factor, measured in terms of external recognition.
- Dr Kevin Lam, for his seminal contributions to world-leading synthetic electrochemistry, an environmentally friendly and efficient approach to achieving a wide range of nonclassical bond disconnections under mild reaction conditions
- Dr Andrew Kao, for his pioneering work in modelling the crystalline structure of metallic alloys and the influence of magnetic fields on evolution during solidification
- Dr Olga Martin-Ortega, for her wide-ranging research on modern slavery and human trafficking in the global supply chain, and its impact on Government policies and policy approaches
- Dr Lesley Dibley, for being lauded by the Crohn's and Colitis UK charity as the rising star of Irritable Bowel Disease research due to her ground-breaking work on faecal incontinence, stomas and stigma, and the needs of gay and lesbian people with Crohn's and Colitis
- Dr Trevor Thompson, for his impactful research on non-pharmaceutical alternatives to pain medication, a major study on the safety of long-term use of antidepressants and a study on alcohol and pain, which gained an Altmetric score exceeding 1000
- Dr Kefei You, for her generation of high-quality research outputs, its impact on foreign exchange trading and policy makers such as the Chinese Central Bank
- Dr Alberto Botta, for his research into the effects of structured financial products on macroeconomic variables such as inequality and stability, and his collaboration with the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz
- Prof Stevenson, for his sustained and excellent publication record, numbering 10 in 2019, focussing on the biological and ecological role of plant chemicals
- Dr Fernando Naclerio Allyon, for his contributions to the understanding of the importance of nutrition, strength and conditioning in sports science
- The Natural Resources Institute, for an exceptional year in research and enterprise, new projects worth nearly £19M in 2018/19 including the award to what is believed to be the largest Research England's Expanding Excellence in England Award, which will grow NRI by 20 academic FTEs, 2 support staff, 15 associated PhD students, 2 new laboratories and a new greenhouse. And of course, the recent Queens Anniversary Prize for Further and Higher Education for NRI's work on smart, innovative pest management, recognising a significant and diverse body of work covering our research and impact around blackfly, rodents, chemical ecology and work on the mosquito trap
Excellence in Pedagogical Research - recognising scholarly investigation related to the dissemination and practical application of research results
- Dr Crystal Tsay, for her research on gamification that provided the university with evidence-based recommendations that were implemented on PPD modules this academic year
Outstanding Achievement in Enterprise - to recognise a meritorious activity or award, significant in income value, prestige or possible impact, measured in terms of external recognition
- Professor Karen Cleaver, for her ongoing working relationship with the Metropolitan Police on diverse areas such as domestic abuse, gang culture and county lines relating to the movement of drugs by vulnerable youth from urban areas to county towns
- Dr Josh Davis, for his extensive work with national and international police, government agencies, businesses, and academic partners on facial identification and recognition
- The Wolfson Centre, for extensive and wide-ranging knowledge exchange activities in the additive manufacturing and bulk solids handling fields, that saw a 30% increase in enterprise income last year
- Dr Sven Kuenzel, for his success in delivering successful outcomes in two KEEP+ projects, on environmentally friendly coffins and Reapsource, an online collaboration platform that enables student to student, student to teacher, and teacher to teacher collaboration
- Dave Hockham, for his local and international impactful work in theatre such as "What About Us: Empowering Community Voices" which aimed to reduce racism and xenophobia in communities by empowering local voices
ECR Research Excellence, the winners of our ECR awards each receive £1,000 to allocate to their university research activities
- Georgios Kampas, a Lecturer in Civil Engineering who has used two small internal REF-related grants to acquire preliminary data on which to base his EPSRC New Investigator Award "Designing for the Future: Optimising the structural form of regolith-based monolithic vaults in low-gravity conditions"
- Giulia Zampini, her research profile spans theoretically informed and innovative research in criminology, social and public policy, participatory projects aimed at community engagement and impact. She is currently showcasing a short film "People and Dancefloors: Narratives of drug-taking" , a participatory action research project that provides a platform to voice drug users' experiences as a step towards opening debate on drug policy
ECR Public Engagement and Communication Award, this award also receives £1,000 towards university research activity.
- Wenjie Cai, whose research focuses on Chinese backpackers, intercultural communications, technology use, and digital detox and wellbeing in the context of tourism, with the hope the research will encourage behavioural changes in the general public about effective technology use, and be adopted by practitioners and interested parties (e.g. tour operators) in their training materials and strategic decision-making (e.g. provide insights of how to design tourism products and marketing strategies to better cater for digital-free travellers
Recognising substantial contributions to our research and enterprise agenda
Our final awards, which included a new award this year, recognise Career Excellence, for people who have made a substantial contribution to the university's research and enterprise agenda over an extended period of time. Starting with our newest award.
Career Enterprise Excellence Award: Dr Robert Berry
Rob Berry Joined The Wolfson Centre for Bulk Solids Handling Technology as a PhD student in 1993 to study the problem of getting reliable discharge from hoppers and silos, resulting in significant improvements to previous design procedures, and improved characterisation techniques for powders.
Over the years, he contributed substantially to the advancement of knowledge of how and why materials like sugar and salt form lumps in storage, and how to prevent this. He helped to develop a device that could be used by non-specialists to measure the flow properties of powders for the purposes of quality control, formulation development and equipment design; the result was the Brookfield Powder Flowability Tester, now used by well over 400 companies worldwide, was awarded the 2014 Prize for Innovation from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and entered on the US R&D magazine "top 100 inventions" in 2014.
Career Research Excellence Award: Prof Robert Cheke
Professor Bob Cheke is Professor of Tropical Zoology at NRI. He was one of the first professors of NRI back in 1997. Bob has 125 records in GALA is one of the most prolific authors. His Google Scholar Profile runs to 255 articles with a h index of 31 and 3658 citations.
One specific example of Bob's work is on controlling the vector-borne disease onchocerciasis on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea. The research team successfully identified a unique endemic form of blackfly, assessed its ability to transmit disease, participated in insecticide trials, mapping of target breeding sites and training of local staff. The true impact of this research is only now being confirmed, as the adult worms responsible for the disease can live for up to 12 years. There is currently no evidence of infection or recent transmission on the island, meaning that the elimination of blackfly in 2005 was successful. Without the affliction of river blindness, productivity of the island's agricultural workers has increased, which further impacts on food security, health and livelihoods.
Career Research Excellence Award: Prof Koulis Pericleous
Prof. Koulis Pericleous has had an illustrious research career, completing his PhD in 1978, then after a couple of years as a PDRA, he spent 10 years in industry before joining the University of Greenwich in 1989.
As an expert in the field of CFD and Multi-physics processes, Koulis has 327 record in GALA. Since 2004, he has brought in over £3 million of external research funding to the university, His research has led to several international patents and the development of commercial software, including Physica and the first commercially used CFD package Phoenics.
