Open Lab research recognised by national awards

From Young Digital Leader of the Year to Project of the Year - here's a round-up of some of the awards we've won in 2020.

Digital Leaders 100 awards

Open Lab graduate Reem Talhouk won Young Digital Leader of the year in the Digital Leaders 100 awards in October, not only that but she was one of three nominees from the whole awards who received the most votes.

Reem’s PhD research working with refugees in settlements in Lebanon was highly praised by the judges, as she took the top spot out of 10 other nominees.

Reem graduated from Open Lab this year, receiving the Newcastle University Medical Sciences Doctoral Prize for his thesis. She now works as a Research Fellow at the School of Design and Centre for International Development at Northumbria University.

Escape to the Future, an immersive escape experience Open Lab built with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies was nominated in the Digital Leaders 100 in the Cross Sector Digital Collaboration category. It was also nominated in the Game for Change awards in the Best XR category.

Get PPE project of the year

The Get PPE project – led by Rachel Pattinson and Tom Nappey in Open Lab – won Project of the Year (NGO) at the Dynamo awards.

As part of the GetPPE project, Newcastle, Northumbria and Sunderland developed the ‘Hannan snap visor’ which could be produced using die cutting technology rather than laser cutting, which meant it could be produced more cost effectively than previous designs.

Almost 6,000 visors were produced and distributed to NHS trusts and the design was made freely available through Open Source Design, so that anyone, anywhere, with the relevant facilities could download it and use it to make the full face visor.

Women in Tech

Rachel Pattinson won a TechWomen100 Award for her work supporting and managing digital research and social innovation programmes at the Lab. From 2020 onwards alongside managing the Digital Civic’s CDT, she will be supporting the brand new Centre for Digital Citizens - £3.7million EPSRC funded project run by Newcastle University and Northumbria with over 30 partners.

Rosie Bellini was nominated in the TechWomen100 Awards for her PhD research including her work with many national domestic violence charities in their work to help support behaviour change for people who use abusive behaviours.

Recent paper awards

That’s not all, Open Lab researchers have also won a number of paper awards at recent conferences.

Rosie won a Best Paper award at CSCW for “So-called privacy breeds evil”: Narrative Justifications for Intimate Partner Surveillance in Online Forums”.

Arlind Reuter won the Stirling Prize for her interactive poster on the Later Life Audio Radio Co-operative at the British Gerontology Conference.

Colin Watson’s PIP Kit won Best Poster at the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering PGR Conference.