Additional prizes for scholars in the Doctoral School 2025 Competitions

Each year the UCL Doctoral School opens entries to six different competitions, helping students use creative ways to showcase their research through a diverse range of media including images, posters, vlogs and podcasts. Winners will be awarded a cash prize of £400, with runners-ups awarded £100 each. 

The competitions include the popular ‘Research Images as Art/Art Images as Research’ Competition, where science- and arts-based UCL graduate students and academics staff are invited to submit aesthetic images associated with their research. Others include the Vlog Competition, which invites researchers to present their research ideas through social media platforms such as Youtube and Instagram, and the Podcast Competition, which celebrates how researchers can use podcasts as an accessible way to present their work to the general public.  

This year the UCL Student Funding Office is funding an additional winning prize of £400 and a runner-up award of £100 to eligible scholars who enter one of the six competitions. To be eligible for the Student Funding Office Competition prize, scholars must be in receipt of one of the following scholarships: 

• Research Excellence Scholarship (RES) 
• Research Opportunity Scholarships (ROS) 
• Graduate Research Scholarship (GRS) 
• Overseas Research Scholarship (ORS) 
• Cross Disciplinary Scholarship (GXD or RXD) 

Last year’s highest ranked entry was by scholar Liam Swanson, which was eventually shortlisted in 55th place in the ‘Research Images as Art/Art Images as Research’ Competition.  

“Teams of surgeons, cardiologists, technicians, nurses, anaesthesiologists, and more, work together every day to reconstruct the hearts of infant children, born with structural defects called congenital heart disease. Thanks to immense strides in medicine, modern repair techniques mean that these defects may no longer be life-threatening and children can grow to live full lives. Not long ago this would be considered miraculous. 

“In this scene I picture a to-scale, 3D printed model of the heart of a new born patient with congenital heart disease, and reimagine the medical team as a construction and decoration team undertaking one of humanity's greatest, but more quiet achievements – rebuilding a broken heart.” 

Entries for all six competitions are now open, and further information can be found on the UCL Doctoral School competition page.  

View the winners from the 2024 UCL Doctoral School Research Images Competition here.