Powering Britain's
Battery Revolution
Powering Britain's
Battery Revolution
We’re delighted to announce the winners of this year’s Faraday Institution Community Awards 2025. Join us in celebrating members of the community who demonstrate excellence and behaviours in line with our mission and values – and who go above and beyond.
Picture: Award winners at the Faraday Institution Conference 2025. From left to right: Dr Stephen Price, Dr Gabriel Perez, Dr Gaurav Pandey, Dr Ashok Menon, Dr Chunghong Lei, Prof Louis Piper, Dr Jake Yang, Isabel Antony, Arthur Fordham, Brandon Frost, Marcus Tuchel, Roksana Jackowska, Kevin Coutinho MBE, Prof Colin Herron CBE, Dr Mona Faraji Niri, Prof Martin Freer (Faraday Institution CEO).
Congratulations to our winners
The Innovation Award recognises an individual or teams that have made a significant contribution via the development of an outstanding innovation. The category received a number of very strong nominations in 2025 and as such we recognise the achievements of two groups.
The winner of the Innovation Award 2025 goes to a team led by Professor Louis Piper, WMG, University of Warwick, with contributors from Diamond, ISIS and Finden
This group has pioneered X-ray methods to study industrially relevant pouch cells during operation in laboratory settings, and extended the operando platform for deployment to the study of multi-layer cells at national facilities including Diamond and ISIS, including using neutrons. The insights the techniques have enabled have catalysed progress across the FutureCat and Degradation projects and shaped the battery development strategy of a number of large and small industry organisations.
This innovative research has been disseminated broadly and is internationally recognised. It is a model of highly-collaborative, translational science that has forged new academic-industrial pathways and empowered the battery community with a diagnostic innovation with clear practical utility.
Key contributors are Prof Louis Piper, Dr Ashok Menon and Dr Gaurav Pandey of WMG, Dr Gabriel Perez of ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, Dr Philip Chater of Diamond Light Source, and Dr Stephen Price of Finden. Many congratulations to the team for this achievement. We look forward to seeing the further application of these important techniques.
From left to right. Top: Dr Louis Piper, Dr Ashok Menon and Dr Gaurav Pandey. Bottom: Dr Philip Chater, Dr Gabriel Perez and Dr Stephen Price.
Read more about the innovative technique.
As part of the ReLiB project, the team at Leicester has developed a promising methodology for the sustainable, low-cost, short-loop recycling of lithium-ion battery black mass using oil nanoemulsions to separate out active cathode and anode materials for use in future battery manufacturing. The novel, patent pending technology is an elegant and promising alternative to existing capital-intensive and lengthy recycling routes and has attracted early industry interest.
Join us in congratulating the team: Dr Jake Yang, Dr Chunhong Lei, Professor Andy Abbott and Professor Karl Ryder. We look forward to following the developments and the further techno-economic analysis and scale up studies needed to commercialise the technique.
Left to right. Top: Dr Jake Yang and Prof Karl Ryder. Bottom: Dr Chunghong Lei and Prof Andy Abbott.
Read about the team’s patent pending technology.
The Innovation Award was kindly sponsored by Withers and Rogers.
The Collaboration Award recognises outstanding examples of research progress through multi-university, multi-disciplinary and/or academic-industry collaboration.
The winners of this award are the FACET team: Arthur Fordham and Brandon Frost (UCL) and Roksana Jackowska and Marcus Tuchel (University of Birmingham)
This outstanding group of PhD researchers demonstrated exceptional initiative in addressing unanswered research questions relating to the formation process – one of the most underexplored challenges in battery manufacturing.
FACET demonstrates what can be achieved by early career researchers when innovation is driven by trust, openness, and scientific curiosity. Knowledge-sharing between labs (including in Australia), co-development of protocols, and open exchange of data have made this a model for effective, diverse teamwork. The collaboration generated not only novel scientific methods and data, but new commercial possibilities and lasting international partnerships. The FACET project team exemplifies the collaborative, entrepreneurial, and impact-driven ethos that the Faraday Institution champions.
Please join us in congratulating the FACET team.
From left to right. Top: Arthur Fordham and Brandon Frost. Bottom: Roksana Jackowska and Marcus Tuchel.
Read more about the success of the collaboration.
The Collaboration Award was kindly sponsored by Prosemino.
The 2025 Researcher Development Champion is Kevin Coutinho MBE, Chair of the Windsor Fellowship
Kevin Coutinho MBE
This award has been made in recognition of his transformative leadership in embedding inclusive practices and policies within academic institutions, significantly advancing equality, diversity and inclusion in research environments.
Kevin Coutinho has served as a key member of the Faraday Institution’s Training and Diversity Panel since its inception to which he has brought his extensive expertise. His contributions have been essential in shaping the Faraday Institution’s approach to training strategy, ensuring that career development opportunities are equitable, impactful and accessible across the researcher pipeline. Kevin’s input into strategic discussions around training allocation and support systems for underrepresented groups has made a demonstrable difference to, for example, the diversity of the PhD cohorts, and the vibrancy and resilience of the battery research talent pool in general.
Congratulations Kevin.
The Researcher Development Champion Award was kindly sponsored by Thermo Fisher Scientific.
We have two awards in this category this year – in recognition of an individual’s and a team’s outstanding contribution to public engagement and STEM outreach.
The winner of the 2025 Public Engagement / STEM Outreach Individual Award is Dr Mona Faraji-Niri, WMG, University of Warwick
Dr Mona Faraji Niri
Mona is a longstanding and valued ally to the WMG Outreach Team and has provided consistent and extensive support for outreach initiatives over the last five years, delivered by WMG, the Faraday Institution, Royal Institution, Innovate UK, British Computing Society amongst other organisations. Mona brings her expertise of the new, topical and exciting area of AI and machine learning, which naturally captures the imagination of young audiences, and focuses her outreach efforts around applications to the development of battery technologies and the careers that could lie in the field for the next generation of engineers. Given the under-representation of women in engineering, Mona takes the responsibility of being a role model seriously and strives to show that anyone can succeed. We commend her commitment, professionalism, and passion for STEM outreach and her involvement in a project to deliver systemic change in providing impactful work experience with diversity and inclusion considerations at its core.
Congratulations Mona.
Read more about Mona’s outreach and engagement activities.
The winners of the 2025 Public Engagement / STEM Outreach Team Award are the early career researchers making up the UCell outreach team, University College London
The team has consistently demonstrated tireless commitment and great creativity in engaging the public on the topics of sustainability, battery science, and renewable energy. Their success is a true team effort from a diverse group of early career researchers who are passionate about science communication and their belief in the value of sharing their research with wider society. UCell creates interactive experiences that allow participants to actively explore scientific principles. The team’s engaging, hands-on activities bring cutting-edge research to life for audiences of all ages. They consistently deliver high-quality outreach to thousands – an estimated 14,000 people during the year to June 2025, mainly through their involvement at festivals including Cheltenham Science Festival, Glastonbury, The Festival of Engineering and the Green Man Festival. Their efforts often include powering aspects of festivals, such as performance stages and charging mobile phones, with green energy – using an in-house built hybrid fuel cell / battery device.
Congratulations to the whole UCell team on their achievements: Isabel Antony, Lauren Bennett, Myles Kofi Coke, Matthew Tudball, Josh Cruddos, Arthur Fordham, Thomas Gill, Charles Kirchner-Burles, Alice Llewellyn, Hannah Lynn, Callum Chisnall, Brandon Frost, Shunli He, Ian Malone, Shangwei Zhou, Andrea Friso, William Hayes, Sion Lewis, Syed Gilian.
From left to right: Isabel Antony, Lauren Bennett, Myles Kofi Coke, Matthew Tudball, Josh Cruddos, Arthur Fordham, Thomas Gill, Charles Kirchner-Burles, Alice Llewellyn, Hannah Lynn, Callum Chisnall, Brandon Frost, Shunli He, Iain Malone, Shangwei Zhou, Andrea Friso, William Hayes, Sion Lewis, Rakin Gilani with academic lead Rhodri Jervis.
Read more about UCell’s outreach and engagement activities.
The Public Engagement/STEM Outreach Award was kindly sponsored by PI-KEM.
Please join us in extending congratulations to all the individuals and teams that we have recognised with these awards. Thank you to all those who nominated these groups and individuals.
Our thanks to the panel, Martin Freer (Chair) and Jon Leong (Faraday Institution), Peter Slater (University of Birmingham), Drasti Patel (Breathe Battery Technologies), Juliane Fiates (Newcastle University), Ramin Jannet (Imperial College London) and Oyebola Bello (Innovate UK) for their service in selecting winners.
Thanks also to the representatives of the awards sponsors who reviewed nominations in the awards category they sponsored: Joanna Thurston of Withers and Rogers, Gyen Ming Angel of Prosemino, Colin Rouse of PI-KEM and Kyle D’Silva of Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Who do you value in our community? Whose contribution should be recognised? Which other successes should we celebrate?
Look out for details for nominations for next year’s awards.
Posted on September 10, 2025