Innovators saluted at 2025 IET Achievement Awards

Among the innovators honoured was renewable energy leader professor Martin A Green who won the institution’s Faraday Medal.

Accepting it, the Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney and founding director of the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics commented: “It is a great honour to be awarded the prestigious IET Faraday Medal, particularly given the achievements of previous Faraday Medallists.

“I’m delighted to join earlier medallists like Heaviside, Thompson, Crompton, Rutherford, Bragg, Langmuir and Mott who have populated my textbooks throughout in my engineering career.” 

Meanwhile, the Mountbatten Medal went to academic Steve Hodges for developing and promoting opportunities for children to engage with technology via physical computing.

The professor in computing and digital systems at Lancaster University participated in the design and delivery of the BBC’s micro:bit hardware; some 11 million micro:bits have been employed to educate 65 million students in 85 countries in information technology and coding. 

“It’s been a privilege having the opportunity to take my childhood fascination with electronics and computers full circle, helping to develop digital systems that are inspiring and empowering millions of today’s children to get hands-on with technology,” said Hodges.

“I am deeply honoured by the IET’s recognition of this impact and grateful to all the talented colleagues and collaborators who made it possible.” 

Four more IET medals were also awarded. These include:

• The JJ Thomson Medal to professor Nasir Ahmed professor emeritus of electrical and computer engineering at University of New Mexico. Awarded for his invention of the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) that enabled the development of digital media compression is credited for paving the way for image-based online platforms such as Zoom, YouTube, Instagram.
• The Mike Sargeant Medal to Muna Daud for her invention FlowSense, billed as the world’s first patented period detection product empowering visually impaired women. 
• The IET Achievement Medal in Sustainability and Climate Change to Nick Wirth for his work in the field of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). 
• The IET Achievement Medal in Quantum Technology to Stefano Pirandola for establishing the ultimate communication rates for quantum key distribution (QKD), quantum teleportation, and entanglement distribution.  

Dr Junade Ali received the Paul Fletcher Award for contributions to the IET’s external communications and press office function “significantly enhancing the IET’s visibility and credibility in the media and informing the public”. 

In addition Samuel Bhuiyan was named  Engineering and Technology Apprentice winner; Sergeant John Sinclair received the Armed Forces Technician Award; and Thomas Dickson the Engineering and Technology Technician Award. 

IET President Dawn Ohlson said: “Each has demonstrated excellence in their field and made significant contributions as trailblazers to the sector… their accomplishments reflect the very best of our profession and they are remarkable role models for the next generation.” 

Find out more about the IET Achievement Awards here: https://www.theiet.org/impact-society/awards-prizes-and-scholarships/achievement-awards

Pic: IET (Alistair Veryard Photography)