It's Official: Cambridge People are Swots

FRIDAY, 6 OCTOBER 2006

Picture credit: Department of Biochemistry

Professor Chris Lowe

Professor Chris Lowe, director of the Institute of Biotechnology, received the title of 'Most Entrepreneurial Scientist in the UK' for his work at the interface of academia and industry. The award was presented by UK SEC, the National Network of Enterprise Centres.Professor Lowe, whose research focuses on pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals and diagnostics, has long been renowned for his work in bridging the gap between the laboratory and the commercial sector. He holds over sixty patents for technologies such as affinity chromatography methods for protein purification and holographic sensors able to detect ions, enzymes, metabolites, antigens and whole cells. His research has led to the creation of seven spin-out companies.Meanwhile, two Cambridge undergraduates won prestigious prizes at the 2006 Science, Engineering and Technology student of the year awards. Petra Vertes, a final-year student from the Department of Physics, was named Best Computational Science student for her research into complex networks, while Tom Offord received Best Aeronautical Engineering student for his work on pulse combustion in gas turbines.Petra's work focused on methods for visualising networks and detecting clusters of densely-connected nodes within them. To do this, she produces high-quality "maps" of the networks, from which clusters can easily be identified. Along with Naaman Tammuz, another final year student at the Cavendish Laboratory, she spent part of the summer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developing this method into a visualization software tool to assist in biological and sociological research.

Cambridge students: apparently quite smart

She said: "I think of this as a symbolic prize which should remind people that undergraduates often already do interesting and new research even if they don't really realise it yet."In other news, several Cambridge researchers have been short-listed for Times Higher awards. Sam Chamberlain and Danielle Turner, at the Department of Psychiatry, are both up for the Young Researcher of the Year Award, while Damien Crowther's group at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research has been nominated in the Outstanding Contribution to Innovation and Technology category. The results of the awards will be announced on 15th November: watch this space.It was also announced yesterday that Cambridge has come second in the Times Higher Education Supplement's ranking of world universities, narrowly losing out to Harvard for the number one spot.UK SECSET AwardsTimes Higher Awards 2006Department of PsychiatryOur previous article on Sam Chamberlain's workCambridge Institute for Medical Research

Written by Emily Tweed