Senate report – major awards and achievements

05 Nov 2025

Congratulations to our colleagues for the recent major achievements and major funding, reported in the latest Senate report (October 2025).

Major awards and achievements secured by the University since the last Senate report include: 

Major Achievements and Awards  

Colleagues who received Research Funding Awards included: 

• Dr Andrew Jones (School of Health Sciences) has secured £5.5m from UK government for analysis of the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System.  
• Professor Abbie Jones (School of Engineering) is leading a £3.3m EPSRC programme grant ‘Enabling a Lifecycle approach to Graphite for AMR’. 
• Professor Rob Lucas (School of Biological Sciences) is leading a £3.3m Wellcome Discovery Award Award. 
• Dr Tim Foster (School of Engineering) and colleagues in the School of Environment, Education and Development have secured £3m from The Gates Foundation to transform how irrigation is monitored across Sub-Saharan Africa. 
• Dr Douglas Dyer (School of Biological Sciences) has secured a £2.8m Wellcome Career Development Award.  
• Dr Jon Lim (School of Medical Sciences) is leading a £2.4m MRC Prosperity Partnership.  
• Professor Melanie Giles (School of Arts, Languages and Cultures) in collaboration with Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales has been awarded £1.25m from the AHRC for the Chariots and Cynefin project.   
• Our University has three of 31 projects funded under BBSRC’s ALERT scheme, which ensures UK bioscience researchers have access to the latest mid-range equipment and technical expertise. The projects are being led by Dr Richard Collins (Senior Cyro EM Scientist School of Biological Sciences), Dr Peter March (Senior Experimental Officer School of Biological Sciences) and Dr Joanne Konkel (School of Biological Sciences). 
• Three new ERC awards have been secured. Professor Peter Pormann (School of Arts, Languages and Cultures) has secured an ERC Advanced Grant for ‘Gesius’ Commentaries on Galen Recovering lost works through a mixed-method approach’. Dr Siobhan Hearne (School of Arts, Languages and Cultures) has secured an ERC Starting Grant for ‘Laboratories of Humanitarianism: Aid, Intervention, and the End of the Soviet Union, 1985-2000'. Dr Andrina Alexandra Xenia Nicola (School of Natural Sciences) has secured an ERC Starting Grant ‘Towards constraining the pillars of our cosmological model using combined probes.’  
• Professors Mike Shaver and Neil Dixon (both School of Natural Sciences) will lead UoM’s involvement in two EPSRC and DSIT funded national research hubs on sustainable manufacturing. 

Elected Fellows 

• Professors Anupam Nanda (School of Environment, Education and Development), David Richards and Liz Richardson (both School of Social Sciences) have been elected as Fellows of the Academy of Social Sciences in recognition for their excellence and impact, and their advancement of social sciences for the public good. 
• Professors Kathryn Abel and Matt Sutton (School of Health Sciences) and Tony Day (School of Biological Sciences) have been elected as Fellows of the  Academy of Medical Sciences in recognition of their contributions to advancing medical science, groundbreaking research discoveries and translating developments into benefits for patients and the wider public.  
• Professor Timothy Devinney (Alliance Manchester Business School) has been elected as a Fellow of the British Academy.  
• Professor Nav Kapur (School of Health Sciences) has been awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Practitioners in recognition of his outstanding contribution to general practice.  

Fellowships 

• Dr Michael Bottery (School of Biological Sciences) has been awarded a Wellcome Fellowship.  
• Dr Lorna McWilliams (School of Health Sciences) has received a CRUK Development Fellowship. 
• Professor Laura Jefferson (School of Health Sciences) has been awarded an NIHR Advanced Fellowship. 
• Dr Thomas Cridge (School of Natural Sciences), Dr Rebecca Hall (School of Biological Sciences) and Dr Jayadev Vijayan (School of Engineering), have each secured a Royal Society University Research Fellowship. 
• Dr Ceri Hughes (Alliance Manchester Business School) has been awarded a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. 

Recognition 

• Professor Cary Cooper (Alliance Manchester Business School) has been appointed one of the first Honorary Fellows of the Academy of Social Sciences, in recognition of their significant contributions to the promotion of social science. 
• Professor Lucy Frith and Dr Elaine Dewhurst (both School of Social Sciences) will lead the University’s appointment as the new United Nations Academic Impact Sustainable Development Goals Hub Vice-Chair for Research for SDG10 (Reduced inequalities). 
• Dr Leandro Valiati (School of Arts, Languages and Cultures) has been appointed to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport College of Experts. 
• Professor Sarah Devaney (School of Social Sciences) has been appointed Chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics working group.  
• Professor Andy Westwood (School of Social Sciences) has been appointed to the board of Skills England.  
• Dr Riina Richardson (Division of Evolution, Infection and Genomics) has been elected the next President of the British Society for Medical Mycology (BSMM). 
• Professor Patrick Cai (School of Engineering) and Professor Stephen Liddle (School of Natural Sciences) have been elected to the Academia Europaea.  
• Dr  Meini Su (School of Engineering) has been named one of the Women's Engineering Society's Top 50 Women in Engineering 2025. 
• Professors Carole Goble and Jun'ichi Tsujii (both School of Engineering) and Professors Alex Frangi and Chris Taylor (both School of Health Sciences) appeared in the list of top 100 UK Computer Scientists. 

Awards and Prizes 

• Professor Sadiah Qureshi (School of Arts, Languages and Cultures) has been awarded the Royal Society's Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal and Lecture for the distinguished and internationally recognised specialism in science, race and empire. 
• Professor Gerard Hodgkinson (Alliance Manchester Business School) has been awarded the Richard Whipp Lifetime Achievement award from the British Academy of Management for his contribution to the management research community.  
• Professors Andreja Zevnik, Toni Haastrup and Meghan Tinsley (all School of Social Sciences) have been awarded the British International Studies Association 2025 EDI prize for their transformational Decolonial Praxis project. 
• Professor Natalie Shlomo (School of Social Sciences) has won the 2025 European Survey Research Association Outstanding Service Award for her sustained and higher level contributions to European survey research.  
• Professor Richard Grencis (School of Biological Sciences) has received the BSI Immunology Excellence Award from the British Society for Immunology for his pioneering work in mucosal and parasite immunology.  
• Dr Saba Raza-Knight (School of Medical Sciences) has won the 2025 Braakman Prize from the European Association of Neurological Societies.  
• Dr Bezaleel Mambwe (School of Biological Sciences) received the Best Presentation by a Post-Doc Prize at the British Society for Investigative Dermatology Annual Meeting. 
• Dr Panagiotis Papadopoulos (School of Engineering) and his team have been named finalists for this year’s prestigious Manchester Prize. 
• Professor Sarah Cartmell (School of Engineering) has been awarded the 2025 UK Society of Biomaterials President’s Prize in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the UK biomaterials field. 
• Dr Leszek Majewski (School of Engineering) has been awarded the International Electrotechnical Commission 1906 Award for his technical expertise and international leadership of IEC activities.  
• Four UoM colleagues have won Royal Society of Chemistry prizes for their outstanding contributions to the chemical sciences. Congratulations to Professor Igor Larossa (School of Natural Sciences) who will receive the Robert Robinson prize, Professor Perdita Barran (School of Natural Sciences) who is one of three recipients of the Tilden Prize and Dr Muralidharan Shanmugam (Senior Experimental Officer Manchester Institute of Biotechnology) and Adam Brookfield (EPR Technician for the EPSRC National Service for Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Spectroscopy) who will receive the Technical Excellence Prize.  
• Dr Louise Dennis (School of Engineering) and colleagues have received Computer’s best paper award from the IEEE Computer Society Publications Board.