Professor Daniela De Angelis, MRC Biostatistics Unit, School of Clinical Medicine

Established Academic Award

Real-time monitoring of the SARS-COV2 pandemic

Daniela De Angelis directs the Cambridge team of statisticians working on Real time monitoring of the SARS-COV2 pandemic. This has provided the official Public Health England real time estimates and projections of the state of the pandemic in England, including: the R numbers; the risk of death after infection; the daily number of current and future infections and deaths; and the total number of currently infected individuals, by age group and England region. These regular outputs are fed directly to the SAGE sub-group, Scientific Pandemic Influenza sub-group on Modelling and have been key to the government’s management of the pandemic.

Dr Jan van der Scheer, The Healthcare Improvement Studies (THIS) Institute, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, School of Clinical Medicine

Early Career Researcher Award

Building solutions together: improving management of maternity emergencies during COVID-19

Jan van der Scheer, a researcher at The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute, found a way to mobilise the ingenuity and expertise of NHS staff to adapt established processes for COVID scenarios. Developing new online methods for working collaboratively and at scale to build solutions together, Jan used THIS Institute’s Thiscovery platform to bring together over 100 maternity unit staff, human factors specialists, and infection control experts. The resulting video and other resources have been endorsed and shared by royal colleges, NHS bodies and professional societies, helping to improve quality and safety of care and to produce a replicable methodology.

Howard Griffiths, Department of Plant Sciences, School of Biological Sciences

Collaboration Award

TIGR2ESS (Transforming India’s Green Revolution by Research and Empowerment for Sustainable food Supplies): UK-India Collaboration is Driving High-level Policy Engagement and Positive Outcomes for Rural Communities in India

TIGR2ESS is a collaborative research programme led by the University of Cambridge, comprising more than 20 organisations and over 30 early career researchers. We are working to find sustainable ways forward for Indian agriculture through engagement with rural communities, female empowerment, academic exchanges, and policy translation. Our research is identifying practical solutions to tackle issues such as depleting groundwater, reduced crop resilience, inadequate nutrition, and limited market opportunities for smallholder farmers. We have shaped policy to support more than 2 million farmers to access markets in Punjab and saved 58 billion litres of water through more efficient irrigation practices.