Southampton professors to receive prestigious Wolfson Research Merit Awards
The Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science, has awarded Professor Hywel Morgan, Deputy Director of the University’s Institute for Life Sciences, the Wolfson Research Merit Awards for his outstanding research work.
Jointly funded by the Wolfson Foundation and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the scheme aims to provide universities with additional support to enable them to attract science talent from overseas and retain respected UK scientists of outstanding achievement and potential.
Professor Hywel Morgan, a professor of Bioelectronics and Deputy Director of the University’s Institute for Life Sciences, received his award for his research into ‘Low cost Thin Film Transistor electronic systems for Healthcare and Diagnostics’.
Professor Morgan’s research focuses on the fusion of low cost electronic devices with microfluidic systems for next generation miniature diagnostic systems. The aim is to develop sophisticated yet inexpensive analytical devices that have a wide range of applications, from allowing doctors to make faster and more accurate diagnosis, to answering fundamental research questions about disease.
Professor Morgan says: “I am thrilled and honoured to have received this award from the Royal Society and Wolfson Foundation. It will allow me and my group to push forward our research in this very exciting and fast moving interdisciplinary field.”
Professor Tim Minshull from Ocean and Earth Science was also recognised and is a marine geophysicist who uses sound waves to study the structure of the Earth’s crust beneath the oceans, was awarded for his research into ‘The ocean-continent transition at magma-poor rifted margins’. His current main research focus is on the processes by which continents break apart.
Working with an international team of collaborators, Professor Minshull is studying these processes using sound waves generated at the ocean surface that travel deep into the Earth beneath and then return to sensors placed on the ocean floor. His current research focuses on areas west of Spain and west of Ireland, where the crust has thinned so much that seawater has penetrated and reacted with the mantle beneath.
Professor Minshull says: “I am delighted to receive this award and very much enjoy the stimulating research environment in Ocean and Earth Science Southampton that has made it possible.”