/ Medals and awards

Gabor Medal

This medal is given for acknowledged distinction of interdisciplinary work between the life sciences with other disciplines.

Nominate here Nomination guidance (PDF)

  • Opening date

  • Closing date

  • Winners announcement

    Exact date TBC

The award

The Gabor Medal is now awarded annually for distinction of interdisciplinary work between the life sciences with other disciplines. The award was created in memory of the engineer Dennis Gabor FRS (PDF), Nobel Prize winner and inventor of holography. The first award was made in 1989. The medal is of silver gilt, is awarded annually and is accompanied by a gift of £2,000. 

Eligibility

The Gabor medal is open to UK/Commonwealth/Republic of Ireland citizens or those who have been residents for three or more years. There are no restrictions on career stage and nominations will remain valid and shall be considered by the award selection committee throughout three nomination cycles. Teams or groups may now be nominated for this award.

Nominations are now open

Nominations are now open and will close on 21 February 2025. 

2024 winner

  • Professor Emily Rayfield

    Professor Emily Rayfield

    The Gabor Medal 2024 is awarded to Professor Emily Rayfield for pioneering a new, cross-disciplinary era of engineering-informed computational palaeobiology.

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Past winners

  • Catherine Noakes
    Awarded in 2023

    Professor Catherine Noakes OBE FREng

    For her pioneering contributions to infection risk modelling and her exceptional leadership in the field through groundbreaking research and a multidisciplinary approach.
  • Graham Medley
    Awarded in 2022

    Professor Graham Medley OBE

    For leading an interdisciplinary team of biologists, clinicians, mathematicians and statisticians who provided SAGE with epidemiological modelling expertise concerning the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Peter Donnelly
    Awarded in 2021

    Sir Peter Donnelly FMedSci FRS

    For his pioneering work in the genomic revolution in human disease research, transforming the understanding of meiotic recombination, and for developing new statistical methods.
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    Awarded in 2020

    Professor David Stuart FMedSci FRS

    For his seminal contributions to understanding virus structure and application to vaccine design, as well as driving the application of engineering and physical science to the life sciences.
  • Alison Noble
    Awarded in 2019

    Professor Alison Noble OBE FREng FRS

    For developing solutions to a number of key problems in biomedical image analysis and substantially advancing automatic extraction of clinically useful information from medical ultrasound scans.
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    Awarded in 2018

    Professor Cait E. MacPhee CBE FRSE FInstP FRSC

    For her seminal contributions to understanding protein aggregation that informed our approach to diseases such as Alzheimer’s and diabetes, and opened up new opportunities for creating self-assembled functional biopolymers.
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    Awarded in 2017

    Professor Richard Durbin FRS

    For his outstanding contributions to computational biology, and their impact across many areas of the life sciences.
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    Awarded in 2015

    Professor Benjamin Simons FMedSci FRS

    For his work analysing stem cell lineages in development, tissue homeostasis and cancer, revolutionising our understanding of stem cell behaviour in vivo.
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    Awarded in 2013

    Professor Christofer Toumazou FMedSci FREng FRS

    For his success in applying semiconductor technology to biomedical and life-science applications, most recently to DNA analysis.
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    Awarded in 2011

    Dame Angela McLean DBE FRS

    For her pivotal work on the mathematical population biology of immunity.
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    Awarded in 2010

    Professor Gideon Davies FMedSci FRS

    For his highly interdisciplinary work into the three-dimensional structures and reaction coordinates of enzymes, which has transformed glycobiochemistry.
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    Awarded in 2009

    Professor Gregory Challis

    For his highly interdisciplinary work, exploiting genomics of Streptomyces coelicolor to identify new natural products and biosynthetic enzymes.