Staff and Student Successes: Autumn 2025
It’s been a fantastic summer for the Department of Bioengineering, with staff and students recognised for their hard work and achievements.
This Staff and Student Successes is packed with highlights, including funding awards, fellowships, competition wins and runner-up places.
We encourage you to read through the full list and, if you spot a familiar name, take a moment to congratulate them. Sharing in each other’s successes is a great way to share pride in the achievements of our staff and students!
UK Future Leaders Fellowship
Congratulations to Dr Sophie Morse, one of the newest Assistant Professors in Bioengineering, who has been awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship. Dr Morse will use the over £2 million award to develop therapeutic ultrasound technologies to delay cognitive decline associated with ageing and neurodegenerative diseases, by modulating the brain’s immune cells.
Sophie said, “This fellowship will allow me to pioneer this non-invasive technology, enable me to acquire key expertise to clinically translate this technology and lead this ambitious anti-brain ageing programme, helping the UK meet its target for people to enjoy more years of healthy, independent life.”
The President’s Awards 2025
The annual President’s Awards for Excellence are awarded to individuals or teams to recognise achievements in four categories: Culture and Community, Education, Research, and Societal Engagement. The President’s Medal is then awarded to an exceptional winner in each category.
This year was a fantastic one for Bioengineering, with three individuals and one team from the department recognised across different categories.
President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching
Dr Angela Kedgley, Associate Professor of Orthopaedic Biomechanics
Angela Kedgley was selected as the winner of the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in recognition of her consistently going above and beyond in her effort to support and inspire her students. Her commitment to fostering inclusive and engaging learning environments was reflected in the overwhelmingly positive feedback from students, who described her as an approachable, patient, and enthusiastic lecturer.
President’s Award for Outstanding Early Career Researcher
Dr Pete Lally, Assistant Professor
Pete Lally was selected as the winner of the Outstanding Early Career Researcher award due to his work in transforming neonatal brain imaging through innovative MRI research that is shaping clinical practice while championing inclusive leadership and outreach across the academic community.
President’s Award for Outstanding Research Team
The RLA Lab, led by Professor Rodrigo Ledesma Amaro
The RLA Lab were selected as the winners of the President’s Award for Outstanding Research Team in recognition of their outstanding research that delivers impact.
Provost Award for Excellence in Health and Safety
Morgan Edmonds, Bioengineering Technician (Teaching)
Morgan was awarded the Provost Award for Excellence in Health and Safety in recognition of her outstanding contribution to implementing Imperial’s new Corestream system as part of her secondment working to coordinate the Faculty of Engineering’s Biological Risk Assessments.
WE Innovate 2025
Congratulations to Dr Magdalene Ho, Shani Katz and Sara Flod from the Almquist Lab, who took second place at Imperial’s WE Innovate Grand Final for their startup Sekhmet Biomed, which is developing ‘super-plasters’ that harvest the patient’s own therapeutic proteins to accelerate wound healing.
The WE Innovate programme, run by the Imperial Enterprise Lab, is a targeted pre-accelerator open to teams led by students, recent alumni, and Early-Career Researchers who identify as women.
Bioengineering Graduate Teaching Assistant of the Year Awards
Over the last academic year, Bioengineering has been collecting feedback from our students about how GTAs have been supporting their learning in study groups and lab sessions. We were very pleased to see a large number of very positive comments highlighting GTAs who have gone above and beyond to support our students and their learning, and as a way of capturing more of this good practice, the department has decided to expand the GTA of the Year Awards to three of our most outstanding GTAs each year.
We are delighted to say that our Bioengineering GTAs of the Year 2025 are:
- Diego Ruiz Sanchis
- Maegan Spiteri
- Maciej Zajaczkowski
Congratulations! The Departmental Teaching Committee were really pleased by the overwhelming positive feedback and comments they received and wished to thank all three for their excellent work over the past year. Maegan Spiteri was additionally nominated for the Faculty of Engineering GTA of the Year and was selected as the runner-up. Congratulations, again!
Design and Professional Practice Project Winners
Congratulations to Ines Meyer, Lee Caspi, Mawin Banluelap, Sanford Chen, Demir Eryilmaz, Zixin Su and Yvonne Cui, who were the winners of the 2024-45 Design Challenge as part of the Design and Professional Practice Project module for first-year undergraduate students.
Their winning pulse oximeter was put together using a SparkFun Pulse Oximeter sensor combined with an Arduino Nano 33 IoT, making use of its WiFi capability to display live readings and graphs on a user-friendly online dashboard accessible from any device.
The device will be used as a showcase for prospective students during Open Days.
Games of Science Competition
Congratulations to Ioana Esanu, PhD student in the vBS Lab, who came first in both the Romanian and English language heats of the Games of Science, a Romanian national science communication competition.
The competition challenges researchers to present their work to a lay audience in a series of timed “duels,” with rounds ranging from 15 seconds up to three minutes. Ioana impressed the jury of Romanian science journalists and communicators with her ability to spark interest and clearly explain her research, winning first prize in both the Romanian and English language sections. Alongside the recognition, she received a €3,000 award to support further training in science communication.
Global Earth Prize
Incoming undergraduate student Tomas Cermak has been named a winner of the global Earth Prize, the world’s largest environmental sustainability award for young innovators.
Tomas, together with a colleague from Slovakia, became the first European team to win the prize with their project PURA. The project combines photocatalysis and cold plasma to create a system that degrades harmful organic pollutants in water, including pharmaceuticals such as antibiotics and analgesics.
Breathrough Science Women’s Health Grant
Marc Soler, a 3rd year PhD student in the Ladame Lab, was recently awarded a £71,000 Breakthrough Science Women’s Health grant from the EQT foundation. This international award recognises Marc’s effort to continuously push the boundaries to close gender health gaps and improve outcomes for women.
This grant will help him to develop new tools to better diagnose gynaecological cancers via a rapid blood test, contributing to better care for women worldwide.
Imperial Union Award Winners
This year, our department is proud to celebrate the success of our students in the Imperial Union Awards. Their dedication to teaching, inclusivity, and student leadership has been recognised across multiple categories.
- Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Winner: Pablo Prieto Roca
- Inclusivity Award Winner: Anson To
- Union Fellowship Winner: Meg Spiteri
