Open Research Awards
Recognising colleagues and students who have helped to make research more open.
The Newcastle University Open Research Awards recognise colleagues and students who have used open practices to make research more accessible, transparent or reproducible, and demonstrate an understanding of the aims of open research.
The awards are open to all students and colleagues working in any research-related role, at any stage, within any area of the University. We encourage applications from researchers from any discipline, including those where open research is not yet the norm, and who may use qualitative, quantitative or creative practice methodologies.
The winners are announced at an annual celebration event and will be presented with an exclusive, custom-made award created by the University's glass blowing workshop, as well as certificates and letters of commendation to recognise their contribution to building a more open research culture.
These awards were made possible thanks to Newcastle University’s Enhancing Research Culture Project Fund in support of our Research Culture Action Plan.
The winners of Open Research Awards are listed below. We plan to run awards will again in 2026 and details of how to enter will be added here in due course.
Open Research Award Winners
Open Research Awards 2025
Winner
- Srikanth Ramaswamy for 'Accelerating NeuroAI Discovery: Open Science for Integrating
Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence'
Second prize
- Isabel Smallegange for 'DEBBIES: Building an Open Life History Database to Predict Animal
Responses to Environmental Change'
Third prize
Commendations
- Jess Adams, Elaine Lopez, Natasha Mauthner for 'Open Research as co-creation in a Participatory Action Research
project' - Xinyu Zhu for 'Translating Openness: Bringing Open Research Practice into
Theoretical Linguistics'
Nominations
- Shangze Xu - for their contributions to open access publication, sharing of methods, data and code, engagement in open peer review, and introducing students to open research practices.
-
Yujiang Wang, Callum Simpson, Vytene Janiukstyte, Jonathan Horsley, Karoline Leiberg, Beth Little, Harry Clifford – group nomination for their valuable contributions to the preparation and release of the largest open data set of MRI scans from people with epilepsy.
Open Research Awards 2024
Winner
Second prize
Third prize (joint)
- Joshua Horton for 'Supporting an open science, open source, open data approach to force field design and drug discovery with the Open Force Field Initiative'
- Chris Moreh for 'Teaching Quantitative Methods Reproducibly'.
Commendations
- Ben Hawthorne for 'Open research and ecological networks: an early career researcher’s experience'.
- Phil James for '(The First) Ten Years of the Newcastle Urban Observatory'.
- Glyn Nelson for 'Establishing Open Standards for Quality control and Reproducibility in Light Microscopy'.
Nominations
- Pradeep Dheerendra for open-sourcing code and data supporting the work of the auditory cognition research group.
- Alison Hutchinson for the development of an open-source database of wildlife crime legislation.
- Janet Kerwin for editing the Human Developmental Biology Resource Atlas.
- Heather McKenna for outstanding support with open access publication.
- Sadegh Nadimi for advancing particle characterisation through open hardware, software and data.
Open Research Awards 2023
Winner
- Jordan Cuff, Research Associate, Natural and Environmental Sciences for "Untangling the web of mistrust in arachnology with open research practices."
Second prize
- Melissa Bateson. Professor of Ethology, Biosciences for "Measuring Behaviour Better. My attempt to lead the Open Science journey in behavioural biology."
Third prize (joint)
- Mike Diessner, PhD Candidate in Computing for "NUBO – an open-source AI framework for optimisation."
- Chris Hackney. NUAcT Fellow, Geography, Politics & Sociology for "Shedding light on the murky world of sand mining in SE Asia."
Commendations
- Louise Rayne. NUAcT Fellow: Water Security, History, Classics and Archaeology for "Automated Archaeological Change Detection."
- Gareth Richards, Lecturer, Psychology for "Embedding Open Research Practices in Psychology through teaching."
Nominations
- Daniel Hinds. Executive Support Administrator, SAgE Professional Services.
- Bethany Hunter. Research Technician, FMS Professional Services.
Open Research Awards 2022
Winner
Second prize
Third prize
Commendations
- Courtney Neal. PhD Researcher, Population Health Sciences Institute for “If at first you don’t succeed... Using public pre-registration when replicating published research"
- Lenka Pelechova for "Version control for cell engineering – new processes & tools for more open and trustworthy engineering biology"