MAPS Faculty ECR Forum Awards 2025 Winners Announcement

The MAPS ECR Forum Awards 2025 celebrated the extraordinary success achieved in the five areas, including research, teaching, community work, EDI, outreach and communications, by early career researchers (ECRs) in departments across the faculty. The panel was hugely impressed by the high-quality applications received from PhDs, PDRAs, Research Fellows and other early career researchers. With so many strong applications, selecting just ten winners across the five categories proved to be a difficult task. We are delighted to announce this year’s awardees:

Research Excellence Award

• Elias Rugen, PhD, Dept of Earth Sciences
• Carmen Nab, PDRA, Dept Earth Sciences      
• Sam Van Stroud, Research Fellow, Dept of Physics and Astronomy
• Ryan Brady, PhD, Dept of Physics and Astronomy        

Teaching Excellence Award

• Yiran Tao, PhD, Dept of Science and Technology Studies
• Winnie Sae-Seung, PhD, Dept of Chemistry

Outreach and Communication Award

• Robyn Mottram, PhD, Dept of Earth Sciences
• Anastasia Kokori, PhD, Dept of Physics and Astronomy

Community Work Award

• Em O’Sullivan, PhD, Dept of Science and Technology Studies
• Enric Sole Farre, PhD, Dept of Mathematics

Many congratulations to the above winners! 

Dr Cian O’Donovan, who just stepped down as the Forum Co-Chair after three years of service, said, “For the third year running these awards highlight some of the outstanding work being done by early career researchers at MAPS. The award winners, and indeed the dozens of submissions we received, evidence the huge contribution ECRs make to research culture and university life. More than that, these awards emphasises the contributions made to society.  

“Highlighting this contribution has never been more important.  The university sector is facing profound uncertainty and early careers are more precarious than ever. The work our award winners do shows why UCL needs to strengthen support for our ECRs in these turbulent times.”

As a winner of the Community Award, Em O’Sullivan, a PhD student from the Department of Science and Technology Studies, said, “I am extremely honoured to receive this award. The biggest strength of academia is its ability to give people knowledge to help them make a positive difference in the world. I would like to thank all the community organisers I’ve worked with who generously donate their time in the pursuit of social change, and the MAPS ECR Forum for recognising and championing these projects!”

Prof Andrew Wills, Vice Dean for Research of the MAPS Faculty , thanked the MAPS ECR Forum for organising the Awards and commented, “Many congratulations to the winners of the MAPS Faculty ECR Awards! We’re thrilled to recognise these exceptional researchers whose work spans from glacial geology and particle physics to inclusive teaching and global citizen science. These rising stars are pushing boundaries across disciplines while making meaningful contributions to research, education, public engagement, and community building. 

“Their dedication to both scientific excellence and real-world impact exemplifies the innovation and leadership that defines the next generation of researchers.”

All the winners received their certificates and prizes, and will also be invited to attend the MAPS faculty awards ceremony that is being planned to take place in December 2025. 

More on the winners and their amazing work…

Elias Rugen, PhD, Dept of Earth Sciences
Winner of Research Excellence Award
Elias led a research project that successfully established a precise age for a glacial deposit in Scotland - a task scientists have pursued for over a century. These new age constraints have confirmed the deposit as one of the most complete and best-preserved records of “Snowball Earth,” a pivotal event when the planet was almost entirely covered in ice. The research was published in the Journal of the Geological Society and attracted extensive media attention, including featuring on BBC Breakfast, live interviews on BBC World News and Australia’s ABC, multiple radio appearances, and articles in major international newspapers. 

Carmen Nab, PDRA, Dept Earth Sciences    
Winner of Research Excellence Award
Carmen’s research challenged a long-standing assumption in the field of radar altimetry, that has been the basis for several long-running European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA satellite missions. She also developed a new methodology for evaluating satellite-based sea ice thickness products, and a new method for implementing uncertainty calculation in an ice-ocean data assimilation framework, which is currently being used in the Met Office’s operational forecasting model.

Sam Van Stroud, Research Fellow, Dept of Physics and Astronomy
Winner of Research Excellence Award
Sam’s research at CERN ATLAS drove significant breakthroughs in particle identification through novel models based on Graph Neural Networks and Transformers. These models achieve a 200-300% improvement filtering background signals, boosting di-Higgs boson search sensitivity by ~30%. To democratise these advanced ML techniques, Sam created the Salt framework, now used by over 100 ATLAS researchers. He has also developed advanced ML models that reconstruct complex events over 50x faster than previous methods with high accuracy. Sam also currently coordinates the ATLAS Machine Learning Forum, delivering award-winning In2Science workshops that introduce underrepresented students to physics and ML, inspiring future STEM researchers.

Ryan Brady, PhD, Dept of Physics and Astronomy
Winner of Research Excellence Award
Ryan’s research has made significant contributions to both astrophysics and molecular quantum mechanics. He created SOLIS, a high-accuracy spectroscopic line list for sulfur monoxide, which was instrumental in two Nature-published JWST studies on exoplanet WASP-39b, marking the first clear detection of sulfur photochemistry in an exoplanet atmosphere. His PhD work also tackled a long-standing theoretical challenge by advancing diabatisation methods for non-adiabatic interactions, leading to more accurate modelling of complex molecular spectra and enabling practical applications already adopted in supernova modelling and planetary science.

Yiran Tao, PhD, Dept of Science and Technology Studies
Winner of Teaching Excellence Award
Yiran is devoted to fostering an inclusive learning environment, drawing on her own experience as an international student. Students find her teaching inspiring and engaging. She ran extra office hours around assessment time and many students found this very helpful and boosted their confidence. She also made important contributions to the decolonisation of the curriculum and teaching innovation, and actively participated in the designing of the “Digital Lab” as a classroom activity and innovative assessment.

Winnie Sae-Seung, PhD, Dept of Chemistry
Winner of Teaching Excellence Award
Winnie’s achievements include designing a complex outreach experiment for Lab_14, creating a new HPLC-focused practical to fill a curriculum gap, and leading a complete overhaul of the first-year lab safety module, including building new resources and a Moodle page. These contributions have improved student engagement, addressed curricular shortcomings, and enhanced safety education for undergraduates.

Robyn Mottram, PhD, Dept of Earth Sciences
Winner of Outreach and Communication Award
Robyn has co-led a co-creation workshop aimed at engaging children from marginalised backgrounds with natural sciences through hands-on, collaborative activities. By delivering field trips to institutions like the Lapworth Museum and the Natural History Museum, Robyn and his colleagues have helped foster curiosity, build strong relationships, and empower children to take ownership of their learning experiences.

Anastasia Kokori, PhD, Dept of Physics and Astronomy
Winner of Outreach and Communication Award
Anastasia founded and leads ExoClock, a global citizen science project supporting ESA’s Ariel space mission by coordinating over 2,000 participants from 70+ countries to monitor exoplanets and refine mission targets. The project has resulted in three major publications—with all contributors credited as co-authors—and a recent paper featuring over 350 co-authors across professional, amateur, and student communities. Through workshops, training, and the creation of ExoClock Unlocked, she has expanded access to scientific research, enabling even those without equipment or prior experience to meaningfully contribute to space science.

Em O’Sullivan, PhD, Dept of Science and Technology Studies
Winners of Community Work Award
Em has spent the past nine years championing the rights and wellbeing of transgender, non-binary, and intersex (TNBI) communities. Em’s contributions include organising Trans Pride Brighton & Hove 2021 with 50,000 viewers, shaping inclusive policy as part of Brighton & Hove City Council’s EDI team, and leading projects like a UCL-funded game jam for TNBI identity exploration. Through public engagement, consultancy, and community coordination, Em has made a sustained impact across the public and non-profit sectors, promoting inclusion, accessibility, and social change.

Enric Sole Farre, PhD, Dept of Mathematics
Winner of Community Work Award
As a student representative for the UCL Department of Mathematics and the London School of Geometry and Number Theory (LSGNT), Enric effectively bridged communication between students and staff while organising social events that strengthened postgraduate community and supported newcomers to London. Beyond UCL, Enric has played a leadership role in the UK mathematical research scene by co‑organising events such as the British Isles Graduate Workshop, ECRM 2022, and the QuING workshop. His efforts have created accessible platforms for early-career researchers and helped amplify the visibility of underrepresented voices, fostering collaboration and exchange across the mathematical sciences.

Links

• MAPS Faculty ECR Forum
• MAPS Faculty ECR Newsletters