2011 Max Perutz Science Writing Award shortlist announced
26 July 2011
Twelve exceptional essays have been shortlisted from over 100 entries for this year’s Max Perutz Science Writing Award, the MRC’s annual writing competition.
MRC-funded PhD students were asked to write 800 compelling words about their research in a way that would interest a non-scientific audience. This year’s essays, as ever, were written with passion and skill, covering an array of topics, from strokes to sleeping sickness, blood pressure to bipolar disorder.
The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony on 7 September where they will receive the £1,000 first prize and later have their essay published in the Guardian. The runner-up will receive a prize of £500 and commendations will also be awarded to a further two writers.
The judging panel included MRC chief executive, Sir John Savill; Guardian science and environment correspondent, Alok Jha; science writer, author and broadcaster, Georgina Ferry; director of the MRC Clinical Trials Unit, Professor Mahesh Parmar; and last year’s Max Perutz winner, Nicola Illingworth from Newcastle University. All judges noted the exceptionally high standard of this year’s shortlisted entries.
The 2011 Max Perutz Science Writing Award shortlist:
• Samuel Bjork, PNAC Division, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology: “Are You Chicken?”
• Amy Capes, Division of Biological Chemistry and Drug Discovery, University of Dundee: “Putting Sleeping Sickness on the Radar”
• Olly Donnelly, Department of Molecular Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester USA: “Hunting out the enemy”
• Byrony Graham, Lymphocyte Development Group, MRC Clinical Sciences Centre: “How to proof read a genome”
• Liam Mason, School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester: “Risky pleasures in the bipolar brain”
• Alice Neal, Institute of Child Health, University College London: “The Power of One”
• Frances Pearson, The Jenner Institute, University of Oxford: “This won’t hurt a bit (…trust me, I’m a Nanotechnologist)”
• John Rushton, The Centre for Molecular Medicine, University of Edinburgh: “In science no one can hear you scream”
• Neshika Samarasekera, Division of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Edinburgh: “Racking our brains”
• Neil Sharma, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham: “Taming the Butterfly – Understanding treatment-resistant thyroid cancer”
• Michael Wallace, Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine: “Making statistical sense of an imperfect world”
• Alastair Webb, Stroke Prevention Research Unit, University of Oxford: “A Volatile Pressure”
