SEM Faculty Prize Winners
Each year, the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine at the University of Warwick funds a prize for the best PhD/EngD thesis, and the best output by a Post Doctoral Researcher.
Each department nominates a winner for each prize out of the applications received after a judging process as determined by the Faculty.
For more details about the prizes, the guidelines, and the process, please email SEMAdmin at warwick dot ac dot uk
Post-Doctoral Prize Winners (2025)
Chemistry
Dr Evelina Liarou, Atomic-Scale Imaging of Polymers and Precision Molecular Weight Analysis
Dr Tom Wood, Copper(I) Catalysed Diboron (4) Reduction of Nitrous Oxide
Computer Science
Dr Adam Shephard, AI-based Prediction of Malignant Transformation of Pre-Cancerous Oral Lesions
Dr Chin-wing Leung, To Promote Full Cooperation in Social Dilemmas, Agents Need to Unlearn Loyalty
Engineering
Dr Gerard Colston, Epitaxial trench refill of 4H-SiC by chlorinated chemistry
Mathematics
Dr Pak-Yeung Chan, Gap Theorem on manifolds with small curvature concentration
Physics
Dr Antoine Bedard, Buoyant crystals halt the cooling of white dwarf stars
Psychology
Dr Chiara De Gregorio, Isochrony as ancestral condition to call and song in a primate
School of Life Sciences
Dr Dean Walsh, A new model of endotracheal tube biofilm identifies combinations of matrix-degrading enzymes and antimicrobials able to eradicate biofilms of pathogens that cause ventilator-associated pneumonia
Statistics
Dr Miha Bresar, Subexponential lower bounds for f-ergodic Markov processes
Warwick Manufacturing Group
Dr Ashok Menon, Metal-ligand redox in layered oxide cathodes for Li-ion batteries
Thesis Prize Winners (2025)
Chemistry
Joe Gilkes, Chemical reaction discovery with Kinetica.jl – exploration and simulation of chemical degradation
Dr. Daniel MacKinnon, The Preparation of Polymers to Enable a More Sustainable Future
Engineering
Lakshmi Shenoy, Modelling Defects in Iron and Its Alloys With Machine-Learned Interatomic Potentials
Mathematics
Andreas Koller, A Renormalisation Group Approach to Scaling Limits of Gradient Models with Non-Convex Energy
Dr Peter Lewin-Jones, Liquid Drop Impacts: When Trapped Gas Nanofilms Lead to Bouncing
Arjun Sobnack, Geometric regularity properties of the Curve Shortening Flow
Physics
Andrew Jackson, Simulation, Partitions, and Trust
Psychology
Dr Janelle Kolas, Social media use & abuse: Examining linguistic, cognitive and behavioural aspects of social networking site addiction
School of Life Sciences
Dr Rebecca Bragg, The biology and integrated pest management of the bean seed fly
Statistics
Fan Wang, Contributions to Change Point Analysis in Complex Statistical Models
Warwick Manufacturing Group
Changrui Chen, Semi-supervised Learning in Open World Recognition
Warwick Medical School
Martin McAndrew, Structural and computational studies of type VII ABC transporters
Dr Katy Stokes, From AI Ethics to Technological Solutions: Exploring the Intersection of Biomedical Sciences and Engineering
Post Doctoral Prize Winners (2024)
Chemistry
Dr Anjana Wijesekara, Highly Air Stable Tin Halide Perovskite Photovoltaics using a Bismuth Capped Copper Top Electrode
Computer Science
Dr Judith Lutton, Formation and closure of macropinocytic cups in Dictyostelium
Dr Sima Mehri, Poly-Exp Bounds in Tandem Queues
Engineering
Dr Abdalghani Daaoub, Contacting individual graphene nanoribbons using carbon nanotube electrodes
Mathematics
Kawa Manmi, Oscillation of an ultrasonically driven gas bubble in an asymmetric confined domain
Martin Winter, Rigidity, Tensegrity and Reconstruction of Polytopes under Metric Constraints
Physics
Dr Fernando Abudinen, Search for D∗(2007)0→μ+μ− in B−→π−μ+μ− decays
Psychology
Dr Zhu Jian-Qiao, The Autocorrelated Bayesian Sampler: A rational process for probability judgments, estimates, confidence intervals, choices, confidence judgments, and response times
School of Life Sciences
Dr Emily Lane-Hill, Tau in cerebrospinal fluid induces neuronal hyperexcitability and alters hippocampal theta oscillations
Dr Tailise da Souza, Membrane Targeted Azobenzene Drives Optical Modulation of Bacterial Membrane Potential
Statistics
Dr Lionel Riou-Durand, Metropolis Adjusted Langevin Trajectories: a robust alternative to Hamiltonian
Monte Carlo
Warwick Manufacturing Group
Dr Zhiming Yan, Priority Lithium Recovery from Spent Li-ion Batteries via Carbothermal Reduction with Water Leaching
Thesis Prize Winners (2024)
Chemistry
Dr Fabienne Bachtiger, Understanding Ice Recrystallisation Inhibitors via Molecular Dynamics Simulations
James John Gardner, Simulation of nonadiabatic molecular dynamics at metal surfaces
Engineering
Dr Sophie Pain, Enhancing electronic materials by chemical treatments and nanoscale dielectrics
Mathematics
Dr Joshua Daniels-Holgate, Fine Analysis of Mean Curvature Flow through Singularities
Simon Gabriel, Critical scaling limits and singular SPDEs
Jingbang Liu, Fluctuating Hydrodynamics of Nanoscale Thin Films
Physics
Dr Eva-Maria Ahrer, Low Resolution Transmission Spectroscopy of Exoplanet Atmospheres using Ground-based and Space Telescopes
Psychology
Aleksandra Krogulska, PhD, Does It Ever Make Sense to Stop Learning Earlier? Factors Determining Learning Termination and its Consequences
School of Life Sciences
Dr Chris L B Graham, Uncovering the formation of the Gram-negative bacterial cell envelope, and peptidoglycan synthesis
Warwick Manufacturing Group
Dr Jingkun Chen, Deep Learning-based Medical Image Segmentation with Limited Annotation
Warwick Medical School
Dr Chelsea May Brown, Investigating membrane proteins and the inner membrane of Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Dr Indra Bahadur Napit, Trial of Autologous Blood products to promote ulcer healing in LEprosy (TABLE)