A Night of Inspiration: Inside the WiNUK awards 2025
- Ellie Jackson
- Dec 18
- 5 min read
It has been just over a month since the WiNUK 2025 awards, hosted on the 7th of November at the Great Hall, Kings College London. We had a fantastic evening celebrating the successes of Women in Neuroscience from the past year. The evening started with cocktails and a warm welcome from WiNUK founder Lizzie English, before diving straight into the recognition: rising star awards, presented by Dr Cara Croft. These initial awards honoured women making exceptional strides in their early career stages, and were won by undergraduate Aiman Muhammad, postgraduate Margherita Zenoni, Dr Hannah Jackson (interview here), a postdoctoral researcher, and Dr Sage Boettcher, an early group leader. The recognition awards also included the award for research support, presented by Dr Franziska Denk. Research support staff are vital members of the neuroscience community who often go unseen, so it was wonderful to be able to honour Dishaa Sinha with this recognition.
We then moved to the outreach and development awards, celebrating individuals who make a difference to the neuroscience community in all manner of ways. The Industry and Innovation award, presented by Professor Fiona Ducotterd, celebrated Dr Anna Andreou's academic-industrial collaborations in developing treatments for migraine and facial pain, whilst the mentorship award, presented by Dr Fábio Ribeiro Rodrigues, was awarded to Dr Helen Nuttall for her commitment to creating a wellbeing-centred research culture which helps her lab members grow. The award for Neuroscience Communicator of the Year was presented by Dr Paige Miranda from our sponsor, The Transmitter, and was presented to Dr Rachel Honeyghan-Williams, who uses tabletop roleplaying games, books, and music to help educate people about neuroscience, as well as being a fierce champion of equity in science. Our final award for this section, for Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion, was presented by Dr Lilian Hunt on behalf of the Wellcome Trust, another one of our amazing sponsors. Dr Yolanda Ohene was our winner, for her work on medical imaging research to better serve historically marginalised groups, amongst her work for many other EDI initiatives.
Between the awards presentation, we welcomed two fantastic keynote speakers to share their work and experiences. Professor Selina Wray gave a fantastic talk all about her progression from her first job in a William Hill (betting shop) in Barnsley through to her current professorship, sharing the highs and lows along the way, including a neurone disco! We also had the pleasure of hearing all about Dr Carole Torsneys’ research into sex differences in chronic pain using pre-clinical models, demonstrating that equity is important at all stages of the research pipeline. We also had some fantastic catering from the Kings’ College hospitality team, to keep everyone fuelled for the rest of the event.
Our final set of awards for the evening celebrated leading researchers of the year across subspecialties of Neuroscience. Dr Sarah Rodrigues, representing our sponsor Alzheimers’ UK, presented the first award for neuropathology and ageing to Dr Emily Lane-Hill, for her interdisciplinary work combining electrophysiology, molecular and computational techniques to look at the role of Tau proteins in dementia. Next up, Dr Katie Long presented Dr Kate Baker with the award for Cognition and Neurodevelopment for her work identifying a new rare genetic neurodevelopmental disorder, Baker-Gordon syndrome, and revolutionising care for affected children. The interdisciplinary neuroscience award, presented by Dr Anjali Bhat, was won by Professor Valentina Escott-Price, whos’ breakthrough techniques combining mathematics and neurosciences has had a transformative effect on our understanding of the genetics of Alzheimer’s disease. Our final award of the evening, for sex and gender research in neuroscience, was presented by Dr Rosin NicAmhlaoibh, representing our final sponsor, the UK Dementia Research institute. Professor Ruth Dobson (interview here) was our final winner, for her research and advocacy in Multiple Sclerosis research and care, with a key focus on supporting pregnant people and advocating for women's health.
Of course, this event would not have been possible without the team of dedicated volunteers, and fittingly, the event ended with a shout out to their commitment. When I first joined the WiNUK events team back in July this year, awards preparation was already in full swing and I was thrown straight into helping organise allergen-friendly catering and contacting judges with scoring sheets. From that point on, we were full steam ahead with writing programmes, contacting nominees, ordering trophies, and getting everything ready to make the event the best it could be. This effort involved nearly every volunteer in the WiNUK team in some capacity, and without them, events like this really couldn’t be possible. As much as the awards are to celebrate wins in the field, I think one of the biggest wins for neuroscience at the moment is the committed group of women making events like this possible, driven by the passion to make STEM more accessible and equitable for everyone.
Now, as a scientist, I love a statistic, so I couldn’t resist breaking the event down into a few numbers:
6 months of planning - from venue hire and securing sponsorships right down to picking colours for programmes and choosing the wine, our volunteers spent countless hours getting the event just right!
Over 150 nominations, submitted by people from all over the UK for outstanding individuals at all career stages, from undergraduates through to professors.
38 judges; a group of dedicated and talented people, hand picked for their expertise and influence in their field, who meticulously assessed and scored each nomination.
18 on-the-day volunteers, keeping the event running like a well-oiled machine.
2 keynote speakers, Dr Carole Torsney and Professor Selina Wray, sharing their knowledge and expertise.
113 event attendees (and 10 online attendees!), joining us in London to celebrate a stellar year of scientific achievements across neuroscience.
42 finalists, representing the finest in their fields.
And finally, 13 winners!
What numbers can’t quite capture, however, is the buzz of the event. Seeing attendees ditch their lab coats for glittery dresses and heels, the celebration whenever a winner was announced, the conversations and connections people made, made the event feel really special. Following social media posts from the event and feedback emails from attendees, it is clear that this was a shared feeling by many people in the room, with Winner Margherita Zenoni describing it as “such a special celebration - inspiring, beautifully run and full of warmth”, and winner Dr Yolanda Ohene sharing that it was “lovely to hear about all the fantastic work that women and allies in neuroscience are doing across the country”. Sometimes, when you’ve spent all day staring down your microscope or you’re knee deep in data analysis, it can be easy to lose sight of the bigger picture: your reason “why”. For me, this event was a perfect reminder and a celebration of everything that is wonderful about our field. Simply put, a room full of passionate people, trying to make the world a better place, one small step at a time.
This article was written by Ellie Jackson and edited by Rebecca Pope, with graphics produced by Ishika Joshi. If you enjoyed this article, be the first to be notified about new posts by signing up to become a WiNUK member (top right of this page)! Interested in writing for WiNUK yourself? Contact us through the blog page and the editors will be in touch.