Royal Academy awards celebrate engineering pioneers

Amongst the winners of the academy’s annual array of trophies are Professor Dame Julia Higgins  - a senior research fellow at Imperial College London - who has received the Sir Frank Whittle Medal for her sustained excellence in designing, analysing and modifying polymer materials.

Prof Higgins is internationally recognised as one of the preeminent polymer engineers of her generation, and her work has provided some of the tools to help design processes and control properties for these difficult to mix materials.  Her work is also very relevant to the current problems of recycling plastics and why so much effort has been put into separating the different plastic materials in our waste bins.

The awards also honour the contributions made by engineers nearer the start of their careers, and this year’s Sir George Macfarlane Medal - a trophy established to celebrate just that - went to Sorin Popa, CEO of Pathfinder Medical, for the development of  a novel device that allows haemodialysis and even arterial bypasses to be performed without invasive surgery.