2009 Overview

Awards & prizes 2009

Each year, the University’s staff, students and alumni are recognised for their contributions to society across the academic, cultural, public and private sectors. Here is a necessarily selective account of some of them.

Worldwide Recognition

Drs Emma Wilson, Head of the French Department and a Reader in Contemporary French Literature and Film, and François Penz, Reader in Architecture and the Moving Image in the Department of Architecture, have received the prestigious Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Academiques in recognition of their sustained contribution to the dissemination of French culture and to education. Professor Steve Oliver, Director of the Cambridge Systems Biology Centre and member of the Department of Biochemistry, has been awarded the distinction of being made a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his groundbreaking work exploring the inner workings of the cell.

Professor Sir John Gurdon. Photo courtesy of Mark SimsProfessor Sir John Gurdon has been awarded the 2009 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research award for his pioneering work with stem cells. Professor Gurdon, after whom the Gurdon Institute is named, shares this award with Professor Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University. Together they have opened up new avenues for pursuing aspects of embryonic and adult stem cell research though their discoveries relating to nuclear reprogramming. Professor Gurdon was also a joint recipient of the Lewis S Rosentiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Science 2009.

Other notable awards and acknowledgements have gone to: Professor Stephen Hawking, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, who has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest US Civilian honour; Professor Lord Renfrew from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, who received the 2009 SAFE Beacon Award in recognition of his role as a champion for cultural heritage; Dr Julian Hibberd of the Department of Plant Sciences, who has been named in Nature as one of the ‘Five crop researchers who could change the world’; and Mary Beard, Professor of Classics, who has won a Wolfson History Prize for her book, Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town.

Professor Robert Kennicutt, Director of the Institute of Astronomy, is one of three recipients of this year’s Gruber Cosmology Prize, in recognition of his work in determining that the Universe is around 14 billion years old. Sharing the prize with astronomers Wendy Freedman and Jeremy Mould, his work over the past decade has helped to resolve the long-standing dispute about the value of the Hubble constant, one of the most important measurements in astronomy. Dr Carolin Crawford, also from the Institute of Astronomy, is one of six Women of Outstanding Achievement for 2009 - a title awarded by the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology.

Cambridge University Press and the Britten Sinfonia have won the International category in the Arts and Business Prize, sponsored by the British Council. The award celebrates partnerships that help organisations reach new audiences and make a global impact. Cambridge’s ‘Naked Scientists’ continue to go from strength to strength in their efforts to take science to a wider audience. This year they won the inaugural European Podcast of the Year award for their worldleading weekly science radio programme. They were picked as one of five winners by an international panel of judges who selected from a field of over 750 nominations from ten participating nations.

Ed Hutchinson, a third-year PhD student in the Department of Pathology who completed the University’s Rising Stars public engagement course last year, has been awarded the New Researcher Category of the Biosciences Federation Science Communication Award 2008. The Award recognises research-active bioscientists from UK universities or institutes who make an outstanding contribution to communicating science to the public. Other students who have been recognised for their achievements and contributions include Ben Barry, a PhD student at Judge Business School, who received the Canadian Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case Youth Award in recognition of his efforts to change the face of the fashion and beauty industries. He is the first man to be given this title. A Cambridge student-led opera company has won the prestigious Herald Angel award at the Edinburgh Fringe.The Shadwell Opera is among a small number of student groups to win one of the top annual Fringe awards in recent years.