The BSI Public Engagement Award recognises outstanding contributions to public engagement within immunology.
This award acknowledges and rewards immunologists who show a strong commitment to engaging with the public about immunology and have carried out exceptional outreach work to inform, enthuse and engage the public. The winner will have developed and delivered successful engagement activities reaching diverse audiences and achieved demonstrable impact and legacy. The winner will be an inspiration to others through sharing their experiences and a role model for immunologists who carry out public engagement.
In 2023, this award went to Professor Sheena Cruickshank at the University of Manchester for her work raising awareness of the importance of immunology in our daily lives. She dedicated substantial time and effort to tackling misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, with her public engagement activities including media appearances, social media activity, podcasts, citizen science, festivals, curating exhibitions and delivering public lectures. Several of her online articles have accumulated over one million readers.
The BSI is committed to ensuring diversity amongst its award recipients. We encourage eligible candidates from all sectors of the Society’s membership to apply, especially those from underrepresented groups.
Eligibility
- Must be a current BSI member
- Can be at any career stage
- Open to individuals working in all fields and sectors within or related to immunology, including academia, health service, industry, public organisations and charities
- Open to individuals only, not a project or team, based in the UK or internationally
- Retrospective applications are welcome, for work carried out over the last 24 months
- Topic upon which public engagement has been conducted must be immunology-related
- Professional science communicators, outreach officers, public engagement staff and anyone working in outreach and engagement at 0.5 FTE or higher are not eligible for this award.
How to nominate
Nominations are now open and can be submitted via our nominations portal.
To read more about the BSI Immunology Awards and 2023's winners, click here.
How are the awards judged?
Once the nomination deadline has passed, nominations that fulfil the award’s eligibility criteria will be judged by a panel of experts. They will be assessing a number of factors including:
- The quality and impact of the nominee’s engagement activities
- The quality and impact of the nominee’s engagement skills, with a particular reference to engaging with diverse audiences
- The nominee’s willingness and ability to engage on challenging/complex immunology topics
- The nominee’s ability to engage and inspire the public
- Evaluation/participant feedback from engagement activities
- How the nominee has learnt from, developed and improved their engagement techniques
- The nominee’s personal development, how they champion public engagement and inspire others
The 2025 BSI Public Engagement Award judges:
- Professor Matthias Eberl, Cardiff University, BSI Public Engagement Secretary
- Professor Sheena Cruickshank, University of Manchester, winner of the BSI Public Engagement Award in 2023
- Dr Victoria Male, Imperial College London, winner of the Outstanding Ambassador for Immunology Award in 2023
The recommendation from the judging panel will be taken forward to the BSI Nominations Committee for ratification.
Further information
If you are nominating someone other than yourself, the BSI will contact the nominee within 30 days of the nomination being received to obtain consent from them to hold their personal information. If we do not receive consent from the nominee within this 30-day period, we will be unable to hold their personal information and we will not be able to process the nomination further.
If you are self-nominating, by submitting an application you give us consent to hold the personal information provided in the form below in relation to processing your nomination for the Public Engagement Award.
We take your data security extremely seriously. We keep it safe, treat it with respect and we will never sell or share your data to any third parties for marketing purposes. To find out more information you can read our Privacy Policy and Data Protection Policy on our website. If you have any queries, please contact dp@immunology.org.
If you are interested in sponsoring the BSI Immunology Awards Ceremony, please contact Becky Dempsey at b.dempsey@immunology.org, for more details.