Annual Healthcare Technologies Student and Early Career Awards

Biomedical Engineering Division (BmED) hosted the event on 19 June. Samuel Vennin, Chair of the Young Member Panel, BmED and Chair, Healthcare Technologies Student and Early Career Awards, reports on the day’s events.

More than 35 selected researchers came from all over the country to our London headquarters, One Birdcage Walk.

Each year, the Awards offer to researchers in the early stages of their career an opportunity to showcase their work to business and academics leaders in the wide field of bioengineering. Jury panels composed of a mix of BmED Board members and industrial partners awarded prizes to the best podium and poster presentations.

The event started with poster presentations. In the mixed undergraduate/MSc category sponsored by Triteq, Charlie Weston, University of Leeds won the top prize for his poster on synthetic cancellous bones for the simulation of femoral broaching. Maxwell Munford, Imperial College London, and Jefferson Sanchez, University of Leeds, were the runners up.

The PhD Poster category was sponsored by the NIHR Surgical MedTech Co-Operative. A poster on suspended microfibre patterning as a guide for cell assembly into 3D ‘mini-tissues’ earned Elisabeth Gill from the University of Cambridge the top prize. Alix Chadwell from the University of Salford and Sophie Louth from the University of Birmingham were joint runner up.

Vicon sponsored the prize for Best Medical Engineering Undergraduate Project, won by Shreya Singhal, University of Cambridge. Her presentation focused on the development of a platform for the study of cochlear. Suzette Lust, University College London, and Eleanor Westhead, Imperial College London, also presented their work and won prizes.

The DePuy Prize for Best Medical Engineering PhD Project was awarded to Jinghua Tang, University of Southampton for his biomechanical analysis of lower limb amputee socket interface. Eseelle Hendow, University College London, and Magda Gerigk, University of Cambridge, were the runners up.

The event closed with the annual Prestige Lecture presented by Prof Kevin Shakesheff, from the University of Nottingham, and chaired by Prof Alvaro Mata, Queen Mary University London. Prof Shakeseff’s address, titled "New Materials and Approaches for Regenerative Medicine and Gene Therapy", highlighted three applications where the combinations of new biomaterials and technologies helped addressing key medical challenges from tissue engineering to drug delivery.