Celebrating the very best of our globally impactful research

The Celebrating Excellence in Research and Impact Awards 2023 celebrated the incredible projects making a difference to people’s lives at a local, national and international level. 

Academics, support staff and representatives from partner organistaions came together for the event which saw 22 awards presented including recognition for research champions, academics raising the visibility of research, projects making an impact on public policy and the best research in enterprise and innovation plus the technical teams supporting the researchers. 

Research celebrated on the night stretched across a huge range of disciplines including improving how the police and other services respond to domestic abuse, analysing Government responses to climate change in South Asia, understanding the impact of remote and hybrid working, developing micro-robots to treat tumours, improving the performance and efficiency of computer chips, investigating how to protect the integrity of elections and dealing with the legal issues around cyberspace. 

The University of Essex is committed to encouraging public engagement so the awards also recognised individuals and teams increasing the visibility of research.

This includes the Ocean Travellers team which has engaged with thousands over the past year through a  video game, lightning lecture and display developed for the Royal Society Science Summer Exhibition. This aimed to raise public awareness of the impact of the changing environment on migratory species in our oceans. 

Driving growth through knowledge exchange is also at the heart of the University’s work so many awards related to research undertaken in collaboration with businesses.

The Best Research Impact in Enterprise and Innovation Award was won by Dr Faiyaz Doctor and Dr  Hossein Anisi for their work with in collaboration with Cody Xiaozhan Yang.

Cody worked as a Research Associate on a successful Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Cloudfm and now works at the company – showing the benefits of close working relationships between the University and business. 

The awards are open to all academics, researchers and doctoral students and signal the University’s commitment to world-class research that makes a difference. 

Pro-Vice Chancellor Research Professor Chris Greer said: “This is a moment to mark the incredible contribution of so many researchers to our mission as a University. 

“We are a University dedicated to making research count and putting it into action to make the world a better place. 

“I am so proud of this research community, which continues to ensure the University of Essex is recognised as a world-leading research centre. 

“Our researchers also work tirelessly to ensure our research makes an impact in the wider world. This year, our strategic focus on developing and investing in our research is seeing us grow this impact.” 

In 2022-23, the University of Essex attracted a new record high of £35.7m for research from funders including the UK’s seven research councils led by UKRI. 

This all builds on the University’s performance in the UK Government’s most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021).

This showed Essex is having an even greater impact than ever before with the number of academics submitted more than doubling to just over 700 and the University ranking in the top 10 for research power in five subjects according to Times Higher Education - sociology, law, economics and econometrics, politics and international studies, and computer science.