David Sims and Charlotte George from the MRC WIMM Centre for Computational Biology were recognised at the Vice-Chancellor’s Awards on Wednesday 8 May for their work with the X-NET project.
X-NET was a finalist in the Research Culture category for their work towards removing barriers for collaborative and inclusive interdisciplinary research. X-NET is a joint project between the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine and the Kavli Institute in Oxford, the MRC Human Genetics Unit (University of Edinburgh), the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit (University of Dundee) and the University of Aberdeen.
The Vice-Chancellor's Awards recognise the achievements and celebrate success across the University – from academics and researchers to professional, technical and support staff, whether they are in colleges, divisions, departments, central services, libraries, museums or elsewhere.
There were 250 award entries across the 11 categories this year, with 1,500 individuals included in the nominations.
The Vice-Chancellor Professor Irene Tracey, CBE FRS FMedSci, presented the awards at a special ceremony at the Sheldonian Theatre on 8 May 2024.
Speaking about the awards, Charlotte said:
'We were delighted to have the work of X-NET recognised in the shortlist for the VC Awards. Over the last two years, X-NET is proud to have consulted with researchers, industry experts and patients to assess the challenges of interdisciplinary working and produce 13 recommendations to UK funders that aim to foster a supportive interdisciplinary research culture that will benefit all researchers through improved communication and skills exchange, driving innovation across disciplines.
As a change in research culture is needed to enable interdisciplinary research to flourish, it was fantastic to see the University recognise and support the hard work that is being done by many to improve research culture. We hope this provides inspiration that it is up to all of us to drive change and efforts to improve research culture can be very rewarding for both our research impact and for those we are training to become future researchers.'
Find out more on the Awards webpage.