Science at Heart and Lung School Prize 2022

Science at Heart and Lung: Imperial College London School Teams Prize

The National Heart and Lung Institute together with the British Heart Foundation’s Centre of Research Excellence at Imperial College London is offering School Team Prizes to engage future scientific leaders with cardiovascular and respiratory health and research. These Prizes are supported by the British Heart Foundation and the Asthma UK Asthma UK - British Lung Foundation partnership. We are inviting sixth form students to form teams to compete for a financial prize in one or other of the two streams - “Lung Disease” or “Heart and Circulatory Disease”.

Instructions

Your team’s challenge is to design an ePoster which illustrates a strategy for combining hard sciences with biomedicine to reduce the number of disabilities and deaths caused by lung or heart and circulatory diseases. The judges will be looking for forward vision based upon realistic trends in science and engineering, rather than summaries of existing care pathways. We encourage students to consider:

  • Lung, heart and circulatory diseases are leading causes of death and chronic ill health around the world.
  • Scientific progress comes from a multi-disciplinary approach, bringing different specialities together to challenge thinking (medicine, biology and sciences such as physics, chemistry, computers, mathematics, engineering).
  • Health outcomes are also determined by environmental factors, and multidisciplinary science has a role in reducing inequalities.
  • We do not expect the ePoster to cover the whole breadth of lung or heart and circulatory disease – a focus on a particular aspect is preferable.
  • Teams can choose whether to address a UK or global issue(s) in the ePoster.
  • The development and implementation of advances need skills not just in science, but in design and communication.
  • The judges will be looking for innovative ideas, a striking ePoster design and original illustrations.
  • Pitch the ePoster to communicate to non-experts, for example fellow sixth form students.
  • Teams are free to choose the design of the ePoster but are advised to describe clearly what problem they are addressing, the anticipated innovation(s), and steps along the way to implementation.

 Teams

  • A team should have no more than six members.
  • The age(s) and year(s) of study of students is open.
  • Teams should ideally be composed of members with complementary skills, for example with strengths in biology, mathematics, computing, design and communication.
  • Each educational organisation can only submit one ePoster to the Lung stream and one to the Heart/Circulatory stream, and so may wish to hold an internal selection.
  • The competition is restricted to Teams from United Kingdom.

 If you would like a printed version as a hand-out or to display on School noticeboards please click here

 Selection process

All submissions will undergo an initial round of short-listing.  

Scoring will be as follows, with each category carrying a maximum of 10 marks:

  • Relevance of the problem that has been identified to lung or heart and circulatory health. Is the problem important? Is it well defined?
  • Suitability of the scientific approach to providing the solution – does the approach make the most of what technology is available now or likely to be available in the reasonably near future?
  • Novelty and vision of the approach.
  • Feasibility of the proposal – is it possible?
  • Insight into how the approach can be shown to work (e.g. through clinical trials) and then implemented.
  • Affordability of proposed solution and potential for general availability.
  • Consideration of the degree to which the proposal will be acceptable to the public.
  • Poster layout.
  • Quality and originality of the illustrations.
  • Evidence of teamwork.

The top ten teams will be invited to present their ePosters to a multi-disciplinary audience online.

First, second and third prizes of £3000, £2000 and £1000 will be awarded in each stream to schools for supporting science-related activities. The top five teams will be invited to present their ePosters at the Imperial Festival in 2023. There will be opportunities for finalists to have mentoring meetings with scientists at Imperial College London. Selected ePosters will feature on the Imperial College website. Selected teams will have an opportunity to write for the British Heart Foundation’s science blog.

Submission

To submit, please complete the form below. The ePoster should be submitted by a teacher responsible for ensuring no more than one submission from the school.

It is permissible for the ePoster to contain a link to any essential supplementary material, for example such as an app.

The file should be suitable for a hard copy print out 94cm (height) x 180 cm (width). 

Deadline: midday 30th June 2022

Shortlisted applicants will be notified in late August and the poster presentations will take place in the later part of September via Teams.

For queries, please email bhf-schools-heart-prize@imperial.ac.uk 

Watch a webinar introducing the 2021 Prize (https://youtu.be/m336jt_NPyo?t=6). We anticipate an updated webinar covering this year’s prizes later in the year.

Prizes for 2022

This year's prizes were awarded to:

 Heart and Circulation Prize
Lung Prize

The first, second and third prizes were £3000, £2000 and £1000 for supporting science-related activities. Feedback and mentoring meetings with Imperial Staff were arranged for each of the finalist teams.