The Royal Academy of Engineering has announced 16 winners of its 2020 medals and awards.

Awards given by the Royal Academy of Engineering celebrate engineering excellence and seek to recognise and reward the very best of engineering talent, from those whose achievements have a huge impact on society to early career engineers disrupting their fields of expertise. 

The Department of Computing’s Professor Michael Bronstein, Chair in Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition was awarded a silver medal for an outstanding personal contribution to UK engineering by an early to mid-career engineer resulting in market exploitation. Prof. Bronstein receives the medal for developing "pioneering methods of graph deep learning, a new class of AI algorithms allowing to perform machine learning on complex systems of relations of interactions such as molecules, biological interactomes, and social networks." 

He says: "I am honoured to receive this recognition from the Royal Academy of Engineering, which would not be possible without my students and colleagues.” Bronstein said. “In particular, I would like to mention Federico Monti, my PhD student with whom we have co-founded the startup Fabula AI, and Dr. Pablo Gainza and Prof. Bruno Correia, my collaborators on protein design using geometric deep learning." 

Professor Raffaella Ocone OBE FREng FRSE, Chair of the Academy’s Awards Committee, says: 

“Engineering underpins our daily lives, and these awards acknowledge and celebrate engineers and engineering achievements that are often hidden from public view. 

These engineers help to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges in fields spanning medical, civil, digital, and materials, and deserve to be celebrated for the work they do.”