Judges

Robin Banerji
director of Banerji Associates

As a senior government communications professional, Robin advised cabinet ministers, senior civil servants, British military chiefs, leading scientists, chairs and chief executives on some of the most high profile issues to hit the headlines over the last 18 years. His experience includes being head of communications for the Commission for Racial Equality, director of press and broadcasting for the Liberal Democrats, head of communications for the Commission for Social Care Inspection, and most recently director of communications for the National Institute for Health Research.
 
Robin left the Department of Health to focus on running his own media and public relations consultancy. With a background in journalism, photography and BBC radio and TV, Robin specialises in helping organisations use new web video, internet broadcasting and social media techniques to engage audiences in more creative, effective and cost-efficient ways.

Dr Philip Campbell
editor-in-chief of Nature

Philip is editor-in-chief of Nature and of the Nature Publishing Group. His areas of responsibility include the editorial content and management of Nature, and assuring the long-term quality of all Nature publications. He is based in London. 

He has a BSc in aeronautical engineering, an MSc in astrophysics and a PhD and postdoctoral research in upper atmospheric physics. He subsequently became the Physical Sciences Editor of Nature and then the founding editor of Physics World. He took on his current role in 1995.

He has worked with the UK Office of Science and Innovation, the European Commission and the US National Institutes of Health on issues relating to science and its impacts in society. He is a trustee of Cancer Research UK. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and was awarded an honorary DSc by Leicester University and Bristol University, and an Honorary Professorship by the Peking Union Medical College. He is an Associate of Clare Hall, Cambridge University.

Caroline Ellis
graphic design consultant

Caroline is the founder of Fundamental a graphic design consultancy. With over 20 years’ design experience, she started her career in packaging and retail graphics working in the UK and Australia. Her career diversified into branding and corporate identity, brochure design and print which is now her main field of expertise. She has run her own company for 16 years and her clients range from charities, retail and small businesses to public sector organisations.

Maria Von Hildebrand
patient and public stakeholder engagement manager, Research Capability Programme, Department of Health

Michael Regnier
science writer, Medical Research Council

Michael read natural sciences at the University of Cambridge before running away to join the theatre, writing plays performed at various venues on the London fringe. In 2005, he decided to combine his love of language and passion for science by studying for an MSc in science communication at Imperial College London. After finishing the course with a brief stint developing public exhibitions at CERN, Michael worked as a science press officer for Cancer Research UK and then the Wellcome Trust, before finding a home as a science writer at the Medical Research Council.

Professor Ray Tallis
emeritus professor of geriatric medicine and author

Ray was professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Manchester and a consultant physician in health care of the elderly in Salford 1988-2006. He has written over 200 research publications in the neurology of old age (epilepsy and stroke) and neurological rehabilitation. He is Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and recent awards include the Lord Cohen Gold Medal for Research into Ageing.

Ray has published fiction (a novel and short stories), three volumes of poetry, and 20  books on the philosophy of mind, philosophical anthropology, literary theory, the nature of art, and cultural criticism. Awarded two honorary degrees: DLitt (Hon Causa) University of Hull, 1997; and LittD (Hon Causa) University of Manchester 2002. Since 2008 Honorary Visiting Professor in the Department of English at the University of Liverpool.

Simon Wilde
associate director – public affairs at National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence

Since graduating from the University of York in 1998 with a degree in biology, Simon has worked in a number of science and health communication roles. He is currently associate director for external communications At NICE, the NHS body responsible for providing guidance on the best way to provide clinical and cost effective healthcare. Before that he was external communications manager at the Medical Research Council, and research communications manager at Hammersmith Hospital in London.