Engineers amongst winners and commendations announced for Impact, Teaching and ED&I Awards 2025

Seven members of the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division (MPLS) have been recognised for their outstanding research impact at the annual MPLS Impact Awards. The awards celebrate the work of MPLS researchers who have made significant contributions to the economy or wider society at large, through their research. 

Five recipients of Teaching Awards were also announced. The annual Teaching Awards recognise excellence and innovation in education across the Division.

Engineering and Biology students were also commended in the Divisional Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Awards which honour staff and students within the division who have made outstanding contributions to advancing ED&I, celebrating individuals and teams whose efforts are creating more inclusive and supportive environments for us all.

Impact Awards

This year's Impact Award winners were selected from nominations representing MPLS researchers at all career stages. The winners will each receive a £1,000 prize in recognition of their achievements. In addition to the four winning projects, the judging panel made a further two commendations. 

Professor Maurice Fallon and Postdoctoral Researcher David Wisth from the Oxford Robotics Institute won the Commercial Impact Award.

Chair of the MPLS Impact Awards judging panel, Professor Dermot O'Hare, said: "It has been tremendously satisfying to celebrate the outstanding accomplishments of our departmental colleagues, whose research continues to deliver meaningful benefits to both the economy and wider society."

"Our MPLS Impact Awards panel considered nominations of academics, early career researchers, DPhil students, and technicians, across several impact categories, which include: technician, public engagement with research, social, commercial, and policy impact. The calibre of nominations has been exemplary, and the panel recognised the remarkable achievements with awards and commendations across several categories. I remain continually impressed and gratified to witness how our colleagues persist in creating positive change."

"The work we do in MPLS will help change the future for the better. Science is a team activity and it’s great to see its breadth across the Division. I am delighted to congratulate the nominees and winners whose work is already showing its impact outside the University."

Professor Jim Naismith, Head of the Mathematical, Physical and Life Science Division

MPLS Commercial Impact Award

Maurice Fallon & David Wisth

NavLive Limited – a spin-out company developing accurate mapping technology for the architecture and construction sector

Tracking the progress or status of a modern construction project is complex. They are dynamic environments with many active partners or companies. Construction as a sector represents 10% of the world economy but has struggled to modernise and digitise. Cost overruns and delays are commonplace.

NavLive is developing highly accurate handheld 3D mapping technology licensed from the Department of Engineering Science to develop pipelines that allow site owners to quickly build maps and to automatically track the status of their building projects and in doing so identify errors or deviations from their intended 3D plans – reducing waste, avoiding CO2 and keeping projects on track.

The underpinning research, developed 2018-2022 in Oxford Robotics Institute, created 3D tracking algorithms which use incremental 3D smoothing to produce a highly accurate trajectory of the device. The key innovation was to fuse measurements from three different sensors in a lightweight and efficient manner and in real-time: vision (from three cameras), lidar and inertial sensing using onboard computation.

Professor Nick Hawes, Director of the Oxford Robotics Institute, said: "NavLive is a fantastic example of innovation from the Oxford Robotics Institute. It shows the full pathway from world-leading, basic research on localisation and mapping, a topic essential for autonomous robot operation, all the way to commercialisation in a high value application where the underpinning technology brings a new capability to a sector that needs it."

MPLS Teaching Award

Dr Jesus Lizana

Dr Jesus Lizana won one of the Division's five Teaching Awards, which recognise significant contributions to student learning and academic innovation.

Jesus is Associate Professor in Engineering Science and member of the leadership team at the ZERO Institute. Jesus was nominated by a member of staff and the nomination was endorsed by the Department.

The nomination highlights Jesus’s work on the ZERO Teaching and Internship Programme, launched in 2024, which won the CIBSE Award 2025 for Learning and Development and the ASHRAE Award 2025 for Zero Carbon Education. The judges noted the programme’s potential for significant impact on Oxford and observed that the model could be scaled up to operate across more cities and communities. The programme received overwhelmingly positive feedback from students highlighting its effectiveness and relevance.

Jesus has also introduced innovative courses in Building Services Engineering as part of the Master of Engineering (MEng) degree as well as different lectures for MSc programmes at Oxford. He also created the Oxford Student Branch for the ASHRAE University Competition on net-zero design. These courses and initiatives equip future Oxford engineers with the expertise to drive innovation and implement zero-carbon energy solutions for buildings.

MPLS Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Awards 2025

Commended – Best Initiative and Best Team Effort

Ava Chan, along with Naiwen Xiao, Samuel Caton, Daniel Balaam, Moncef Slimani, Yixuan Zhu, Adam Al-Khalidi

This exciting imitative aims to promote diversity and reduce bias in the recruitment process. 81% of employers are aware that unconscious bias influences decision making, yet only 50% of them have some strategies in place to reduce bias. Existing solutions such as blind CV screening and skills-based tests are ineffective in reducing unconscious bias when the recruitment proceeds to the interview stage. To solve this problem, Ava and a multidisciplinary team of student developers from Engineers Without Borders Oxford aim to build a software solution enabling blind video interviews, in which the same face and voice (that are gender and race-neutral) are applied to all interviewees.

Interviewers are therefore unable to discriminate against candidates based on their gender, race, accent, age etc. This helps to reduce bias in the interview process while retaining non-verbal human interactions such as tone of voice, facial expressions and body language. The team have developed prototypes of gender-neutral face and voice changers, with a next step to conduct a blind interview pilot study to investigate if generalization of face and voice across interviewees could effectively reduce bias. If their assumptions have been validated, this initiative has the potential to transform current recruitment practice, ensuring all candidates are evaluated objectively, not disadvantaged by bias or discrimination, and have equal access to opportunities.