UCL Prize Lecture Life and Medical Sciences
The UCL Prize Lecture in Life and Medical Sciences is a prize awarded annually by UCL since 1997.
The prize lecture has become one of the pre-eminent series on contemporary science in Europe and the annual lecture provides an opportunity to debate and celebrate important scientific advancements.
The UCL Prize Lecture in Life and Medical Sciences, generously supported by UCL alumnus Dr Sanjeev Kanoria, was launched in 1997. Previous recipients include Sir Demis Hassabis (founder of Google DeepMind), Lord Patrick Vallance (former UK Chief Scientific Adviser), and Professor Jennifer Doudna (pioneer of CRISPR gene editing).
UCL Prize Lecture 2025
“May the Force Be with You: PIEZO Ion Channels as Essential Pressure Sensors for Touch, Pain, and Beyond”
By Professor Ardem Patapoutian
Nobel Prize laureate Professor Ardem Patapoutian, whose pioneering work revealed how our bodies sense touch and pressure – essential for movement, pain perception, and survival – delivered the 2025 UCL Prize Lecture in Life and Medical Sciences.
Your sense of touch is remarkable. If you run your fingers across a surface, you can sense indentations that are 500 times thinner than a human hair.
Professor Patapoutian explained how he and his team at Scripps Research, California, discovered PIEZO1 and PIEZO2 ion channels - special proteins that act like tiny pressure sensors when you touch something, move, or even feel a hug and how this major breakthrough in 2010 in understanding mechanosensation - the process by which cells detect and respond to physical forces like touch, pressure, or stretch, converting them into signals the nervous system can interpret. has deepened our understanding of pain perception, movement and balance, and blood pressure regulation.
Leading UK scientist Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert, whose research team designed and developed one of the principal Covid-19 vaccines, helping save millions of lives, delivered the 2024 UCL Prize Lecture in Life and Medical Sciences.
The 2023 UCL Prize Lecture in Life and Medical Sciences has been delivered by UCL alumnus Demis Hassabis CBE, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, one of the world’s leading Artificial Intelligence research groups.
Carla Shatz, Professor of Biology and Neurobiology at Stanford gave the UCL Prize Lecture 2022.