Nominations for the awards were invited under four award categories:
- Commercial Impact: To recognise researchers at any career stage for research that has had significant commercial/economic impact since 1 August 2014.
- Social Impact: To recognise researchers at any career stage for research that has had significant social impact since 1 August 2014.
- Early Career Impact: To recognise Early Career Researchers’ independent engagement with external organisations or end-users, as laying the foundations for future impactful research in social or commercial category.
- Public Engagement with Research Impact: To recognise researchers at any career stage who have achieved significant impact since 1 August 2014 through high-quality public engagement with research activities.
Award recipients
A significant number of nominations were received, and a cross-departmental judging panel was convened to consider the nominations. The panel were impressed with the quality of the nominations that were received and decided to honour 6 researchers and academics with awards, across the four categories.
Commercial Impact
Winner |
Department |
Awarded for |
Professor Byron Byrne |
Engineering Science |
The contribution made by Byron to new design methods for optimisation of monopile foundations that support offshore wind turbines. |
Social Impact
Winners |
Department |
Awarded for |
Dr Cedric Kai Wei Tan |
Zoology |
The contribution made by Cedric to influence the conservation decision to protect the habitat of clouded leopards at Ulu Muda forest. |
Dr Prue Addison |
Zoology |
Prue’s contributions to translate research on biodiversity measurement and management, and support more responsible business practice. |
Early Career Impact
Winners |
Department |
Awarded for |
Dr Abhishek Dutta |
Engineering Science |
Abhishek developed the VGG Image Annotator – a widely used open source manual image annotation software application. |
Dr Craig Thompson |
Zoology |
The contribution made by Craig to the design and development of novel influenza vaccines for both humans and animals. |
Public Engagement with Research Impact
Winner |
Department |
Awarded for |
Dr Sam Henry |
Physics |
Sam has engaged new online audiences with particle physics through the use of fan fiction, and engaged local audiences through science stalls. Watch a video about Sam Henry's work. |