President's Awards for Excellence celebrate Imperial staff

Winners of the 2016 President's Awards for Excellence in Education and Research

The 2016 President's Awards for Excellence in Research and Education were presented at a celebration event held earlier this week.

The awards, announced in June, celebrate the achievements of staff in a number of areas across research and education.

Speaking at the ceremony, Professor Alice Gast said: “Our winners embody Imperial’s mission to achieve excellence in research and education in science, engineering, medicine and business for the benefit of society.

“In our strategy we say that we will share the impact and achievements of our staff across all disciplines, functions and activities so that their work and contribution to our mission is recognised and celebrated. This evening is one of our efforts to do this.”

The awards recognise excellence in both education and research across nine categories.  Within each category, those awardees judged to have made particularly exceptional contributions are selected to receive the President’s Medal.

Award Winners

Dr Chrystalla Orphanides receiving her award from Professor Nick Jennings and Professor Alice Gast

Dr Chrystalla Orphanides, from the Department of Medicine, received a President’s Award for Excellence in Research Support.

She said: “It was a real honour to win. I think this is the first time someone from the Department has been nominated in this category and I’ll be encouraging my colleagues to nominate in the future.

“My role is around creating initiatives to support our academics in the department to maximise research funding. Part of that has been supporting staff applying for Welcome Trust Investigator Awards and we now have 15 of them. The most of any department in the College.”

Nominations were made by staff and students from across the College, with the winners of each award decided by selection panels overseen by the Acting Vice-Provost (Education) and Vice-Provost (Research).