The UCL Open Science and Scholarship Awards are a joint programme between the UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship (OOSS) and the local network chapter of UKRN, the UK Reproducibility Network. Together we are delighted to be running these awards for the third year and are proud to say that the quality and volume of applications has only continued to grow year on year.

We would like to invite you to join us in celebrating our award winners during the Open Access Week festivities. At the awards presentation on Wednesday 22 October we will be presenting all of the awards as well as hearing from a selection of winners and honourable mentions about their research. There will also be the opportunity to network with our winners at a reception sponsored by UCL Press.

And without further ado – our award winners! Each category has an overall winner and two honourable mentions.

Category – Activities led by non-academic staff

• Winner: Vassilis Sideropoulos, Senior Research Technical Professional, Department of Psychology and Human Development, IOE — Leading the IOE Open Research Practice Community and an open research training programme
• Honourable Mention: Nikoloz Sirmpilatze, Research Software Engineer, Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, Faculty of Life Sciences — Technical lead of ‘movement’, an open-source Python package for analysing animal body movements
• Honourable Mention: Samarth Pimparkar, Research Technician, Clinical and Movement Neuroscience, Faculty of Brain Science — Contributions to building open-source resources that preserve and share valuable patient-derived material

Category – Activities led by undergraduate or postgraduate students:

• Winner: Yinan Chen; Eric Chen; Adelina Xie undergraduate students at the Department of Statistical Science, Faculty of Mathematical and Physical Sciences — Developers of open peer-review system for statistical science undergraduate coding assignments
• Honourable Mention: Chaeyeon Lim, MSc student at the UCL Interaction Centre, Faculty of Life Sciences — Lead-developer of NatureNest
• Honourable Mention: Ka Ying Ivy Chan, MSc student at the Faculty of Brain Sciences — Introducing the OSF to fellow master’s students

Category – Activities by academic staff (including post-docs) or PhD students: Open-source software/analytical tools

• Winner: Deyu Ming, Lecturer in Mathematics and Data Analytics, School of Management, Faculty of Engineering — Lead developer of ‘DGPSI’
• Honourable Mention: Michal Ovadek, Lecturer in European Institutions, Politics and Policy, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences — Lead developer of ‘eurlex’
• Honourable Mention: Pietro Lubello, Research Fellow, Energy Institute, Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment — Lead developer of the Kenya Power System Model and the Kenya Whole Energy System Model

Category – Activities led by academic staff (including post-docs) or PhD students: Open publishing

• Winner: Adam Crymble, Lecturer of Digital Humanities, Department of Information Studies, Faculty of Arts and Humanities — Co-founder and first chair of Programming Historian
• Honourable Mention: Anastasia Kokori, PhD student in the Astrophysics Group, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Faculty of Mathematical & Physical Sciences — Founder and coordinator of ExoClock
• Honourable Mention: Annabelle South, Principal Research Fellow in Research Impact and Communication, MRC Clinical Trials Unit, Faculty of Population Health Sciences — Innovating how results of clinical trials are shared with participants

Category – Activities by academic staff (including post-docs) or PhD students: Enhancing open science and reproducibility capacity in the academic community

• Winner: Martin Mokros, Lecturer in Earth Observation, Department of Geography, Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences — Chair of the COST Action 3DForEcoTech
• Honourable Mention: Dongyi Ma, PhD student in the Connected Environments Lab, Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment — Founder of UrbanHeatSense IoT initiative
• Honourable Mention: Lewis Jones, NERC Independent Research Fellow, Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty Mathematical & Physical Sciences— Founder of the Palaeoverse

The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities.

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Guest post by Miguel Xochicale, Senior Research Engineer at UCL, leading work on open-source technologies from robotics to AI tools designed to improve healthcare.

In this blog, I would like to reflect on the journey so far, the challenges and rewards of trying to build something meaningful with modest means, and to look ahead with ambition to explore how open-source AI and robotics can help shape the next generation of healthcare.

In October 2023, I was honoured to receive the UCL Open Science & Scholarship Award in the category ‘Professional Services Staff Activities’. This was in recognition of initiating a half-day workshop titled ‘Open-source software for surgical technologies’. I had the privilege of hosting seven distinguished speakers, with an audience of around twenty participants. Hence, that first workshop became the springboard for subsequent events in 2024 and 2025, each growing gradually in terms of co-organisers, speakers, activities, and participants. What started as a small gathering with limited resources and time has begun to take shape as the early foundations of a community that we would like to keep building.

The 2025 workshop took place at the 17th Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics, organised by the Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery at Imperial College London and held at the Royal Geographical Society, London, UK.

The workshop has grown steadily across 2023, 2024 and 2025. 2023: A half-day workshop with 7 speakers from software engineering and academia, 25 participants, and 4 organisers. 2024: A full-day workshop featuring 10 speakers from academia and industry, 6 posters archived on zenodo, 30 participants, and 3 co-organisers. 2025: A full-day workshop with 13 speakers and 7 panellists from academia, industry and regulatory backgrounds. It included 6 posters, each with a two-page abstract, supported by 6 organisers and 2 volunteers. The event sold out, with all 52 seats filled.

The challenges of leading such workshops require careful planning well in advance, ideally starting a year beforehand. This includes checking the availability and interest of co-organisers, aligning the agenda, and building relationships with new speakers and collaborators from different institutions and industries, thinking that such relationships should extend beyond purely scientific or engineering goals, fostering an environment where people also enjoy working together. In organising such workshops, we were always careful to balance responsibilities so that no one felt overwhelmed.

However, despite these considerations, our most recent workshop was scheduled too tightly, leaving little space for meaningful conversations or questions. From this, we learnt the value of tailoring the workshop to the audience, setting clear aims for the community, and creating win–win situations for everyone involved.

We also recognised that funding and sponsorship are essential. They can help cover costs such as materials (souvenirs, t-shirts, stickers), support for guest speakers, and sponsorship for students from around the world. Just as importantly, they would allow us to be compensated for the time we dedicate to organising these events.

What started as a half-day workshop in 2023 on open-source software for surgical technologies has quickly grown into a movement. By 2024 and 2025, it had developed into full-day workshops, “Healing Through Collaboration: Open-Source Software in Surgical, Biomedical, and AI Technologies”, bringing together co-organisers, speakers, and volunteers dedicated to shaping the future of healthcare with open-source AI and robotics. Each year, the community grows, the insights deepen, and the vision becomes sharper. We are now looking for like-minded collaborators, sponsors, and co-organisers to help drive this effort forward. The momentum is here, together, we can redefine what’s possible for open-source innovation in healthcare. By pooling our skills, resources, and passion, we have the chance not just to advance technology, but to transform patient outcomes and make healthcare more open, accessible, and equitable worldwide.

Get Involved!

Help us continue building a vibrant community, by following our GitHub organisation, starring our repositories including the website for workshops, creating issues or pull requests to improve materials, or contributing to the writing of our white-paper in its GitHub repository.

We are always looking for like-minded people who share our vision of open-source software, hardware and technologies benefiting everyone, everywhere. If you are interested in driving healthcare forward with open source, please get in touch with me or join our Discord server for networking, discussions, and event updates. Recorded talks will also be available on the symposium’s YouTube channel. Many more opportunities to get involved are on the way.

Author Biography:

Miguel Xochicale specialises in medical imaging, MedTech, SurgTech, biomechanics, and clinical translation, and is currently exploring physical AI and embodied AI, with a strong focus on open, accessible innovation. Miguel aims to turn cutting-edge research into real-world solutions with lasting impact. Key areas of his work include: End-to-end real-time AI workflows for surgery; Eye movement analysis for neurological disorders; AI-assisted echocardiography; Sensor fusion combining wearables, EEG devices, and medical imaging; Generative AI for fetal ultrasound scans; Human–robot and child–robot interaction in healthcare and low-resource settings; Physical and embodied AI with multimodal data. He is committed to transforming healthcare through safe, scalable, and open AI solutions. If you are interested in collaborating, whether in research, academic-industry partnerships, or developing AI-powered healthcare software, let’s connect.

The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities.

Follow us on Bluesky, LinkedIn, and join our mailing list to be part of the conversation!

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As part of our Open Access Week celebrations, we were delighted to host the second annual Open Science & Scholarship Awards presentation. This event gave us the opportunity to gather in person, congratulate the awardees, and celebrate their achievements after announcing the winners a few weeks ago.

The event began with certificate presentations, followed by a showcase of the award-winning projects.

First, Enny van Beest and Célian Bimbard, who received an honourable mention in the Open Source Software/Analytical Tools category, shared their project UnitMatch. Designed to track neurons across extensive Neuropixel Recordings, this software accelerates the analysis of large datasets, proving a valuable resource for researchers handling high volumes of neural data.

Next, winners of the Student category, Sophie Ka Ling Lau and Divya Balain, presented Diverse Voices, a website emerging from their project on the impact of COVID-19 on East London communities. Sophie and Divya, both Master’s students from UCL’s Departments of Brain Sciences and Life Sciences, respectively, created this collaborative platform to share insights gained from their research.

In the Advocating for Open Science & Community Building category, Joseph Cook shared his work with the UCL Citizen Science Academy, housed within the Institute for Global Prosperity. The Academy empowers citizens to participate in research projects, offering a structured learning programme and a certificate that recognises their contributions and learning.

The Professional Services Staff category award went to the Understanding Disability Project, presented by Eirini-Christina Saloniki and William Lammons. This project combines lived experiences with broad representation to document perspectives of people living with disabilities across North Thames, aiming for a comprehensive view that highlights the unique challenges they face.

Finally, in the Open Publishing category, Emily Gardner discussed her work with the NCL Mutation Database. This essential resource supports Batten Disease research and therapeutic development, with Emily’s work ensuring metadata accuracy and database reliability for researchers.

In the Open-Source Software category, we also recognised Alessandro Felder and the BrainGlobe Initiative, a collaborative project focused on creating open-access tools that support neuroscientific research worldwide. Although Alessandro couldn’t attend the ceremony, we were proud to recognise this initiative’s impressive accomplishments. Founded in 2020 to advance the handling and analysis of neuroimaging data, the BrainGlobe tools have been downloaded over 2.7 million times around the world!

After the presentations, the audience had a chance to network and enjoy refreshments provided by UCL Press, the event’s generous sponsor.

We would like to extend a special thank you to our other honorable mention recipients: Beth Downe, Gabrielle Pengyu Shao, Deborah Padfield, Dr. Adam Parker, Hengrui Zhang, Mathilde Ripart, Justyna Petke, Claire Waddington, and Fan Cheng. Representing a range of departments, teams, and centres across UCL – from the Slade School of Fine Art to the Dementia Research Centre – we were thrilled to celebrate your work and dedication to advancing open science across disciplines. Thank you for being part of this event!

Our heartfelt thanks go to UCL Press for their support, the Office for Open Science & Scholarship team for organising the awards, and Sandy Schumann and Jessie Baldwin, UKRN local network leads, for managing the submission and peer review process. Special thanks go to Paul Ayris, Head of the UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship, and David Shanks, UCL’s Institutional Lead for Reproducibility, for their continued support of these awards.

Watch this space for the next Open Science and Scholarship Awards!