Prizes for early career researchers 2022

Four researchers have been honoured with a Research Output Prize for Early Career Researchers. One award for each Research Theme is made each year to recognise and celebrate research achievements.

Professor Dominik Zaum, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation, said:

“Congratulations to all four winners. As in past years, we had a very strong field of outputs by our Early Career Researchers. The entries and winners highlight the breadth and depth of excellent research is being undertaken across the University.

“The success of these award winners is both a reflection of their own outstanding achievement, and of the research environment in their Schools and Research Divisions that have supported and enabled their research.”

The awards for each research theme are:

Agriculture, Food & Health

Winner: Anika Salim (Pharmacy) for her paper with joint first author status. ‘Neutrophil Gelatinase-Associated Lipocalin Acts as a Robust Early Diagnostic Marker for Renal Replacement Therapy in Patients with Russell’s Viper Bite-Induced Acute Kidney Injuries’, by S. Senthilkumaran, K. Patel, A. Salim, P. Vijayakumar, H.F. Williams, R. Vaiyapuri, R. Savania, N. Elangovan, P. Thirumalaikolundu-subramanian, M.F. Baksh and S. Vaiyapuri Toxins (Basel). 2021 Nov 12;13(11):797. doi: 10.3390/toxins13110797. PMID: 34822581; PMCID: PMC8620021.

Anika said, "being awarded the ECR prize is a great honour and humbling experience. I am passionate about reducing the impact of snakebite on rural impoverished communities around the work. This prize means a great deal as it highlights how our research is helping to change lives and improve clinical outcomes for snakebite patients around the world."

Anika (second left) with her lab team

Summary

Snakebite-induced acute kidney injury (AKI) is frequently observed in patients following bites from vipers such as Russell’s viper in India. Currently, the levels of a blood serum marker called creatinine are used to determine the necessity for renal replacement therapy (haemodialysis) in severe cases of AKI where kidney failure is likely. However, it takes up to 48 hours to ascertain whether creatinine is changing sufficiently to warrant haemodialysis, during which time the clinical condition of the snakebite victim can have severely deteriorated. Early diagnosis of AKI and decision on the necessity for RRT in snakebite victims is critical in saving lives, reducing long-term complications, and minimising treatment costs arising from expensive haemodialysis.

This paper describes the suitability of a novel blood serum candidate called Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) as a robust early marker for AKI in snakebite patients. We demonstrate the clinical significance of plasma NGAL as a marker for haemodialysis following AKI using a large cohort (309) of Russell’s viper victims without any pre-existing health conditions. NGAL levels upon admission were positively correlated with creatinine levels at 48 hours in different stages of AKI. Overall, NGAL acts as a robust early marker to ascertain the need for haemodialysis following Russell’s viper bites. The quantification of NGAL can be recommended as a routine test in hospitals that treat snakebites to decide on whether to implement haemodialysis at early time points, thus improving the clinical management of snakebite victims.

Environment

Winner: Georgios Margazoglou (Maths & Statistics) for his paper as first author: ‘Dynamical Landscape and Multi-stability of a Climate Model’, by G. Margazoglou, T. Grafke, A. Laio and V. Lucarini (2021), Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 477 (2250), p.20210019.

Georgios said, "I am deeply honoured and grateful to receive the 2022 ECR Output prize. My special thanks to Valerio Lucarini whose energy and enthusiasm fuelled our research, as well as Tobias Grafke and Alessandro Laio for the excellent collaboration. Of course, many thanks to the Centre for the Mathematics of Planet Earth, the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, and the Reading Academic Cluster for the provided resources and support."

Georgios (left) with Valerio Lucarini

Summary

The Earth's climate is a multi-stable system, where several competing potential or actual states co-exist. Transitions between such states occur at so-called tipping points, which are, broadly speaking, organised in a multiscale fashion. They are present at different spatial and temporal scales, and can affect a geographically limited region (e.g. Amazon forest dieback, or permafrost thawing) or the entire climate system (e.g. an ice age). Understanding and anticipating tipping points is one of the major challenges of contemporary science in the ongoing climate crisis. This publication investigates the dynamical landscape of the Earth’s climate system and seeks to understand its global stability properties. The competing states and the transition paths between them (driven by noise) are studied by combining a top-down approach based on statistical mechanics and a bottom-up approach based on methods of data science. This allows us to reach an unprecedented understanding of the nonequilibrium nature of the climate system and to provide a general framework for studying multi-stable complex systems.

Heritage & Creativity

Winner: Nicola Abram (English Literature) for her monograph on Black British Women’s Theatre: Intersectionality, Archives, Aesthetics, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.

Nicola said, "I'm thrilled to have my book recognised with this Prize, and I hope winning widens awareness of Black women’s vibrant contribution to British culture. In my research and writing I've been sustained by the encouragement and advice of colleagues in the Department of English Literature - and there would be no book at all without the generosity and trust of the theatre practitioners themselves."

Nicola Abram

Summary

Black British Women’s Theatre: Intersectionality, Archives, Aesthetics looks beyond published plays to the wealth of material held in archives of various kinds, from national repositories and themed collections to individuals’ personal papers. It finds there a cache of unpublished manuscripts and production recordings distinctive for their non-naturalistic aesthetics. Close analysis of selected works identifies this as an intersectional feminist creative practice. Chapters focus on five theatre companies and artists, spanning several decades: Theatre of Black Women (1982-88), co-founded by Booker Prize-winning writer Bernardine Evaristo; Munirah Theatre Company (1983-91); Black Mime Theatre Women’s Troop (1990-92); Zindika; and SuAndi. The book concludes by reflecting on the politics of representation, with reference to popular postmillennial playwright debbie tucker green. Drawing on new interviews with the playwrights/ practitioners and their peers, this book assembles a rich, interconnected, and occasionally corrective history of black British women’s creativity.

The book was awarded the 2021 Theatre Book Prize by the Society for Theatre Research and was described by judge Cleo Sylvestre as ‘an extremely comprehensive study’ based on ‘forensic research’.

Prosperity & Resilience

Winner: Neha Hui (Global Development) for her paper as lead author with Uma Kambhampati (2021) ‘Between Unfreedoms: The role of caste in decision to return among indentured workers’, Economic History Review, Oct 2021.

Indian indentured labour migration followed slavery in providing cheap labour to British plantation colonies. This migration was distinguished from slavery by the offer of a subsidised trip home at the end of the indenture period. However, despite this subsidy, only about a third of the workers returned to India. In this article, we consider the role of caste and gender in the return decision using data from ship registers for more than 16,000 Indian indentured workers in British Guiana between 1872 and 1911. We find that women and individuals from very low castes were significantly less likely to return home in comparison to other groups, indicating that however bleak the conditions of indenture, they were preferable to those back home for some groups. The paper uses a unique and large dataset compiled from archival material from British Guiana and contributes to the scholarship on historiography of development.

P&R Theme runner-up: Peter Coe (Law) for his monograph on Media Freedom in the Age of Citizen Journalism, London: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021.