We are delighted to announce the winners and runners-up for the Michaelmas Term 2022 Schools Science Writing Competition on the theme of ‘To what extent are the Humanities important to scientists?’
The overall winner of the Hilary Term competition is:
‘Frankenstein: A monster who saved lives‘ by Mridul Shrestha, Year 12 at Lancing College.
Category winners
Year 12-13 category winner: ‘To what extent is Art important to scientists?’ by Maya Shah, Year 12 at Notting Hill and Earling High School.
Year 10-11 category winner: ‘The Future of Science is Like Rice on a Chess Board‘ by Hemlata Pant, Year 11 at Colston’s Girls’ School.
Runners-up
‘Digital Immortality’ by Khondoker Mehedi, Year 12 at King Edward VII School.
‘Xenobots—When Robots Start Living’ by Jacinda Collins, Year 12 at City of London School for Girls.
‘Quantum Computing and Fabricating the Future’ by Zachary Danzig, Year 12 at The Ferrers School.
‘Making Our Hearts Sing’ by Catherine James, Year 10 at Lady Eleanor Holles School.
‘The Great Future Innovations of Small-Scale Science’ by Manaal Khan, Year 11 at Chelmsford County High School for Girls.
‘Literature: one’s window to science?’ by Elizabeth Johnson, Year 11 at Lady Eleanor Holles School.
The Judges
Dr Sir Peter Ratcliffe
Peter J. Ratcliffe, M.D. is a physician scientist who trained as a nephrologist, before founding the hypoxia biology laboratory at Oxford. His laboratory elucidated mechanisms by which human and animal cells sense oxygen levels and transduce these signals to direct adaptive changes in gene expression. For this work he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2019.
He holds appointments as Director of Clinical Research at the Francis Crick Institute, London, Director of the Target Discovery Institute at the University of Oxford, and is a Distinguished Scholar of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Brussels, Belgium.
His personal challenge each year is to complete the Oxford 10km Town and Gown Race in fewer minutes than his age!
Dr Hannah Jones
Dr Hannah Jones studied her PhD at the University of Bath in biophysics, on the thermodynamics of enzyme catalysis. Since 2019 she has worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Oxford, within the Nuffield Department of medicine. There, she applies mass spectrometry based proteomics to investigate a potential drug target for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.
Dr Alexey Kostyanovsky
Dr Alexey Kostyanovsky is Head of the Waynflete Programme at Magdalen College School in Oxford since 2009; beforehand he held the position as Head of Theology. He studied Theology at Moscow and holds a Ph.D. from Manchester University. His thesis was on the interpretation of the Royal Psalms. He has been teaching religious studies and theology in British schools for many years.
Emma Kennedy
Emma Kennedy is a scientist working at the Drug Discovery Institute of the University of Oxford, where she enjoys working in close collaboration with industry. She studied biochemistry at University College London before working in protein production of human disease targets at the ChemBioHub (University of Oxford) and later doing research in protein crystallisation and structural biology at Diamond Light Source. Emma has a deep passion for the interface between science and the arts. In her free time, she enjoys life drawing and completed the 30works30days 2022 challenge, making art in different media inspired by science and structural biology.