Outstanding staff celebrated at FoNS Prizes for Excellence ceremony

Staff were recognised for their outstanding contributions to the Faculty at its annual celebration event last week.

The annual prizes for excellence recognise outstanding contributions to education, student support, equality and diversity, outreach, and health and safety within the Faculty, and honour staff and students who have gone above and beyond in their departments.

Hosted by Professor Richard Craster, Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, with awards presented by Dr Mike Tennant, Vice-Dean for Education, the celebration event saw winners named across each of the five award categories.

The Jan de Abela-Borg Prize in Health & Safety

The Prize is given in recognition of excellence in promoting and implementing safe practices across the Faculty. This year it was awarded to Ciprian Diaconita and Mohammed Rafique (FoNS Digital Services Team) for designing and implementing a suite of safety applications used across the Faculty that simplify important safety processes and ensure effective regulatory oversight of key areas in safety management systems.

Highly commended in this category were Christopher Hutchinson and Ivan Carromero Manzano.

Prize for Excellence in Teaching

This Prize was awarded to Rosanna Mundy (Department for Life Sciences) for her superb performance in delivering high-quality, interactive teaching for students.

Highly commended were Maria Vinograd, Efthymios Costa and Riccardo Passeggeri.

Excellence in Student Support

The Student Support Prize recognises those staff or students who have made a significant impact through the provision of outstanding support for teaching and learning, or for students' wellbeing, or the development of activities and initiatives that significantly enhance the student experience.

This year's Prize was won by:

• The Mathematics Student Experience Team (Sai Nathan, Olivia Adu-Bofour and Ahmed Aynan) who went above and beyond for their students, through organising cohort-wide events, providing individual support and ensuring all students feel a sense of belonging to the Department.
• Amelia Barron (Department of Life Sciences) has transformed undergraduate student support through her outstanding ability to build relationships between students and staff and implement technological solutions.

Cristebel Groves, Agnieszka Damasiewicz Niccolai and Stefaniia Medvetskaia were highly commended.

Excellence in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

This Prize recognises those staff or students who have delivered a project or initiative that significantly contributes to the enhancement of equality, diversity and inclusion across the Faculty. 

Congratulations to Issy Rabey, Amy Thorton and Amaya Calvo Sanchez for their outstanding leadership in supporting the Women & Non-Binary Network Mentoring Scheme in the Department of Physics, fostering an inclusive community, and strengthening the pipeline of women in physics at Imperial and beyond.

Tilly Collins, Cristina Banks-Leite and Sai Nathan were highly commended in this category.

Excellence in Outreach

This Prize recognises those members of the FoNS community who have delivered inspiring outreach and/or engagement activities with schools, community groups, and/ or the general public.

Due to the strength of nominations in this category, two winners were named:

• Alexandra Blenkinsop (Department of Mathematics) demonstrated outstanding leadership in furthering Imperial's outreach by designing, coordinating and delivering a short course on Modern Statistics and Machine Learning for Global Health.
• Jasmine Ajaz (Department of Physics) was also recognised for her outreach project supporting year 12 students to develop workshops which they then delivered to year 8 students, which will have a profound and lasting impact for all of the students involved.

Highly commended were Sai Nathan, Simon Foster and Claudia de Rham.

The celebration event also featured interactive research demonstrations and activities from staff and PhD students across the Faculty.

Commenting at the event, Professor Richard Craster said: "It's great to recognise the achievements of our staff and students and celebrate the fantastic work that goes on every day across the Faculty. Congratulations to all our prize winners, and thanks to our demonstrators too for showcasing their work."

Find out more about the Prizes for Excellence.