Staff Awards 2022 winners announced at Liverpool World Museum

Staff from across the University were recognised at the Staff Awards 2022 ceremony, which took place at Liverpool World Museum.

Around 300 staff attended the event with University of Liverpool alumna, Mairead Smyth, senior reporter and presenter for BBC North West Tonight and Politics North West.

The awards received a record number of just over 460 nominations across the institution.

Outstanding Contribution During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In light of recent challenges, a special award was introduced this year – ‘Outstanding Contribution During the COVID-19 Pandemic’. This category received the largest amount of nominations across the awards with 113 nominations of fellow colleagues.

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Dr Shona Moore (pictured above) from the Department of Clinical Infection, Microbiology and Immunology was awarded individual winner in this category and was recognised by colleagues for her tireless work as a postdoc throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. When the pandemic first started to emerge, Shona began collecting some of the very first samples from the Royal Liverpool University Hospital.

Whilst many colleagues were at home trying to stay safe she came in to work in order to process these samples in the high containment lab. Shona has been on site at the University throughout, processing thousands of laboratory samples in the fight against COVID. Colleagues nominated her for her energy, dedication and passion for research which has been inspiring.

COVID-19 Community Testing Pilot

The Team Winner for ‘Outstanding Contribution During the COVID-19 Pandemic’ was the Liverpool SMART COVID-19 Community Testing Pilot Evaluation team (pictured below) from the Institute of Population Health.

The Liverpool SMART team was set up rapidly in November 2020 to evaluate the city’s community testing pilot. With only a week’s notice, Professor Iain Buchan organised a multidisciplinary team from across the University to analyse the systems and data for this world-first scheme to establish the efficacy of lateral flow tests to identify those infectious with Covid-19 but who didn’t display any symptoms. The work of this team was critical to the successful national roll-out of the ‘test-to-protect/release/enable’ approach.

MicroAge team – Mission to the International Space Station

The University of Liverpool MicroAge Team (pictured below) won two awards for ‘Public Engagement’ and ‘Partnership of The Year’.

In partnership with Kayser Space Ltd and the UK Space Agency, The University’s MicroAge experiment was successfully launched to the International Space Station in December 2021. Supported by the UK Space Agency and other partners, the project is using space to understand what happens to human muscles as we age, and why.

The whole team have worked hard on this project for over three years, with a huge commitment to public engagement that has included the development of a MicroAge app where people can keep up to date with the progress of the study with timely updates and links to helpful information, podcasts, activity packs and information on healthy ageing, exercise and other aspects of the study.

The project reached millions of people through TV, radio and online news media. During the week of the rocket launch the project received more than 360 pieces of UK and international media coverage.

Unsung Hero

PGR Student Experience Team Leader, Lisa Crimmins from the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences was awarded ‘Unsung Hero of the Year’ Award. During the past 2 years,  Lisa has been going above and beyond, putting the wellbeing of her team above all else and routinely picking up work from several members of the team to provide support and providing exceptional line management managed with compassion, tact and diplomacy.

Lisa’s utmost commitment to providing the best possible PGR experience has meant that she has provided critical pastoral support to significant numbers of PGRs and academic supervisors.

University of Liverpool alumna, Mairead Smyth (Left), senior reporter and presenter for BBC North West Tonight and Politics North West, presented the awards with Professor Dame Janet Beer (right) on hand to congratulate fellow colleagues. 

Commenting on the awards, Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dame Janet Beer, said: “I would like to congratulate all our finalists and winners on their achievements. As a University, we are privileged to have such talented, innovative and motivated staff, who make all the difference to our students, our research partners and other stakeholders globally and in the city of Liverpool. I would like to thank all those who took the time, thought and effort to nominate colleagues for an award this year.”

Professor Beer added: “The magnificent efforts of all colleagues across the University over the course of the pandemic, in the face of both significant personal and professional challenges – to keep delivering the best possible experience for our students; to further research in COVID-related areas across the full range of our disciplines; and to support the NHS, the city and the City Region as a whole, all the while keeping the University safe and operational – have been inspirational and a source of great pride for our whole community.”

The full list and details of all the winners and shortlisted colleagues have been published on the Staff Awards intranet site, which is also accessible from the front page of the staff intranet.

Full photos from the evening will be also be available shortly (Pictures by Gareth Jones).

 

Below are some of the highlights on Social Media celebrating the evening:

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