Sandra Ortega-Martorell scoops big award at RKE Conference

The LJMU Research and Knowledge Exchange Conference culminated in 10 prizes being awarded for excellence.

A record 170 nominations were judged by 10 panels for the awards which additional to an overall best project include Rising Star, Impact Story and a new Open Research award.

Winner of the VC’s Excellence in Research Award was Professor Sandra Ortega-Martorell, of Computer Science and Mathematics, who leads a £10m Horizon project to use AI to model trends on diagnosis and treatment of heart patients.

Our other outstanding winners were:

Open Research – Dr Andy Jones (Psychology) who researches consumer behaviour.
Support of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion – Dr Laura Dixon (Liverpool Business School).
Excellence in Sustainabiilty – The Absolute Chemistry Team (Dr Victoria Brennan, Dr Andrea Mallaburn, Dr Rory McDonald).
RKE Support – Gemma Reed (RIS) and Professor Zoe Knowles (SES) for the Engage Programme.
Impact Story – Dr Lorna Brookes (School of Education) and Sarah Hogarth (Screen School) for 8 Hours There & Back.
Public Engagement with Research – Dr Andrea Livesey (HSS).
Rising Star – Dr Huanhuan Li (Engineering).
Postgraduate Supervisor – Dr Craig Hammond (School of Education).
VC’s Excellence Award in Knowledge Exchange – Intelligence & Surveillance Team, Mark Whitfield (Public Health Institute).

Around 200 colleagues attended the event, which was hosted by Professor James Crossland and his team at APSS and also attended by the Vice-Chancellor Professor Mark Power and Chair of Governors Mike Parker.

Three excellent keynote speakers were Serena Kennedy KPM, Chief Constable of Merseyside; Laura Pye, Director of National Museums Liverpool; and Claire McColgan CBE, Director of Culture and Tourism for Liverpool.

Professor Keith George, Pro Vice-Chancellor for RKE, summed up a successful year which saw RKE income rise to £17.4million with almost 4,000 academic papers published across the institution.

We’re doing some fantastic things, breaking down silos, notably the creation of four new interdisciplinary centres which bring together people from different academic fields – the Forensic Research Institute, the Liverpool Institute for Research in Education, the Liverpool Research Institute for Climate and Sustainability and the Liverpool Centre for Olympic Research on Inclusion.

Our problem-solving approach means we are creating a culture where engineers talk to artists and so on, which is exactly the integrated approach we aim for.