On Tuesday 17 March, students, staff, and guests gathered to celebrate this year’s winner and honourable mentions, whose dissertations showcased impressive originality and real-world impact in crime science.
The awards, open to all undergraduates in the Department of Security and Crime Science, challenge students to develop actionable solutions to current crime issues. These can range from knife crime and football hooliganism to emerging threats such as AI-driven and drone-enabled crime.
During the ceremony, the winner received a £500 prize for their outstanding work. The event also gave opportunity for the recipient to present their research to an audience of students and staff, reinforcing the real-world impact of their ideas.
Winning dissertation
This year’s prize was awarded to Niki Callista for her research examining how threat modelling frameworks can address the cybersecurity challenges facing smart grids.
In a systematic literature review of 54 studies, her research found that critical blind spots persist: only 16.7% of threat modelling frameworks addressed insider threats, fewer than one in four integrated regulatory standards, and most models lacked real-world validation.
Niki’s research highlights the urgent need for adaptive, regulation-aware security models that can help policymakers and energy regulators protect critical infrastructure before vulnerabilities are exploited.
I hope that Niki's excellent research will prompt those who run smart grids to get up to speed on the risks to themselves and to national resilience posed by criminals and hostile state actors. This is where crime science is at its best, not just responding to crime but stopping crime before it can happen. It’s pragmatic work like Niki’s that makes the world a safer place and upholds the spirit of the prize.
