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UCL Centre for Digital Public Health in Emergencies wins ‘Team of the Year’ award!
9 December 2020
Following praise for their ‘My Lockdown Journal’ app, as well as other COVID-related projects, the UCL Centre for Digital Public Health in Emergencies (dPHE) won ‘Team of the Year’ at the Rising Star Awards, run by Computing Magazine.
Following a number of recent award nominations, including a ‘Highly Commended’ at the UK IT Industry Awards and ‘Innovator of the Year’ for Prof. Patty Kostkova by the Women in Tech Excellence Awards for the second year running, the UCL dPHE received ‘Team of the Year’ at the Computing ‘Rising Star’ awards. The team were commended for how they have risen to the COVID-19 challenge, against competitors including QuantumBlack labs, Bytes for Heroes, and One Million Mentor Team.
The Rising Stars Awards celebrate emerging talent in digital, looking to recognise and identify the sector's future leaders, as well as shining the spotlight on the organisations and individuals that help to foster and develop new talent in the industry. Open to anyone with less than 10 years in the IT space, or companies who are making a significant contribution to recognising and rewarding new talent, the Rising Stars Awards are an opportunity to focus on all of the positives to come from peoples' hard work and determination over the last year. The Awards are about celebrating and recognising the achievements of those at the beginning of their career in the sector - shining a spotlight on their success and championing the organisations that do the most to develop new talent in the digital industry.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 crises, the dPHE Director Prof Patty Kostkova mobilised the team to help fight the pandemics through technology. dPHE set up three new COVID-19 IT digital initiatives, leveraging the unique skill sets in the team by everyone pulling together. Creatively repurposing IT components from existing IT projects, the team rapidly launched a new digital health app My Lockdown Journal app, supporting citizens in the lockdown, informed by the multi-part, 5000+ participant survey called ‘Zoom or Not to Zoom’ running since early April 2020. The pilot app was launched in June 2020 and received wide media coverage including Mail Online and iNews.
Since February 2020, dPHE is also running study analysing Twitter discourse to understand changing public attitudes towards government policies in multiple languages in collaboration with the World Health Organization and Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona.
UCL dPHE also work extensively on COVID-19 in Brazil leveraging long term research partnerships investigating the Zika virus - the consortium developed a machine learning prediction model and deployed thermal drones to assess mass gatherings to enable early warning for the authorities in Northeast Brazil.
The Director of UCL dPHE Prof Patty Kostkova said:
“I am thrilled and immensely proud of my team! dPHE sweeping awards in 2020 is a result of long-term efforts and personal contribution of each staff member as well as the new hires and interns who worked together without ever meeting in person. The dPHE team spirit and mutual support during the pandemics was simply contagious.”
Apart from professional impact and personal fulfilment, the team’s successful efforts were widely recognised: Professor Kostkova, was nominated for Digital Leader of the Year 2020 and Innovator of the Year 2020 by Women in Tech Excellence 2020. For this innovative project, she also received the prestigious ‘Coronapersona’ profile at Science Business with 100,000 readers / month. The team recently celebrated winning the Highly Commended Award by the UK IT Awards 2020 – Healthcare Project of the Year for the innovative GADSA decision support mobile app increasing antibiotic prescription guidelines compliance in Nigeria.
John Leonard, Research Director at Computing/Delta, commended the team on their work:
“We were looking for a team coming together to solve a business challenge, clearly setting out their purpose, process and the end result. This entry was excellent, not just due to the subject matter, but also for the many examples of teamwork, shared vision and mission, the passion for delivery against the odds, and the amazing range of initiatives. Some excellent project descriptions demonstrate the range of skills that this team has, and despite what seems to be a high-pressure environment, the overall impression is a team that enjoys, and takes pride in what they do.”
In addition, the team’s IT Technical Lead, Georgiana Birjovanu, was awarded “Highly Commended Rising Star of the Year – Large Organisations”. Georgiana is also a finalist in the Graduate of the Year 2020 in Women in Tech Excellence 2020 awards. She is a UCL CSMEng graduate who managed a team of UCL Computer Science interns, and received her commendation ahead of nominees from BT, University of Surrey, Sky and many more.