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The annual MPLS Impact Awards aim to foster and raise awareness of impact by rewarding it at a local level, preparing the ground for the impact case studies that will be needed for REF 2021, and future similar exercises. Awards comprise a pay award of £1,000 (minus taxes) made to the individual.

A composite image of some of the award-winning technologies

Nominations for the awards were invited under four award categories:

  1. Commercial Impact: To recognise researchers at any career stage for research that has had significant commercial/economic impact since 1 August 2014.
  2. Social Impact: To recognise researchers at any career stage for research that has had significant social impact since 1 August 2014.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.

 

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