Winners of this year’s President’s Awards for Excellence.
The President’s Awards for Excellence have four streams: Culture and Community, Education, Research, and Societal Engagement. Those awardees judged to have made particularly exceptional contributions within each category are selected to receive the President’s Medal.
Addressing the award-winners, Imperial’s President Professor Alice Gast said: “It’s heart-warming and inspiring to hear about all of your achievements, even more so when you have faced uncertainty and overcome challenges. You make Imperial an exciting place to study, a rewarding place to work, a source of solutions, a valued partner and a beacon of hope for the future. I am proud to be your colleague and I am sure I speak for everyone here today when I say, ‘thank you’.”
We spoke to some of this year’s medal winners about their success.
Edward Johns: Presidential Award as Outstanding Early Career Researcher
Dr Edward Johns was awarded the President’s Medal for Outstanding Early Career Researcher. Dr Johns is the Director of the Robot Learning Lab at Imperial College London, where he is also a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) and Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow.
“It’s very exciting to be helping to steer the new field of Robot Learning, and I’m looking forward to one day bringing everyday robots to everyday environments.”
Jackie Bell: Presidential Leadership Award for Societal Engagement
“Working in partnership with Imperial staff and students to develop bespoke engagement programmes that inspire, empower, and educate young people is something I am truly passionate about. Societal engagement is such an important aspect of research, and I am privileged to work alongside world-leading academics who value the work I do in this area. It is a huge honour to receive this award in recognition of the projects I have led this year to expand our reach into the local and wider community.”
Alongside initiatives that support widening participation in Computing at University, Jackie has developed a number of programmes that support staff and students within the Department of Computing to develop their confidence in communicating research, as well as supported other engineering departments with their own engagement strategies.
“In September 2021, with support from Imperial’s Societal Engagement Team, I piloted a community engagement programme called ‘Youth Leader Science Champions’. The aim of this 9-month programme was to empower youth organisations and researchers to engage young people in our local boroughs with science. Through a host of workshops, five researchers from the Department of Computing and six youth workers from four local community organisations were trained to co-design and deliver computer science-based activities that would engage young people aged 13+ with engineering and facilitate conversations about science. The project is still in its evaluation stages, but the impact of confidence in youth leaders and researchers has already been observed as a positive outcome”.
Jackie hopes to deliver a second phase of her accredited Youth Leader Science Champions programme in Autumn 2022, at a time which coincides with the beginning of another project Jackie is leading on behalf of the Faculty of Engineering. This 18-month project, funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering, will support the progression of underrepresented undergraduate students in Engineering from school to year two at Imperial.
Stefanos Zafeiriou: Presidential Medal for Excellence in Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Stefanos Zafeiriou is a Professor in Machine Learning and Computer Vision with the Department of Computing and was awarded the President’s Medal for Outstanding Early Career Researcher.
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Reporter
Mr Ahmed Idle
Department of Computing
