Pioneering Research to be Recognised by New Awards

Connected Nation Pioneers, announced by the Engineering and Physical SciencesResearch Council (EPSRC), will recognise and award exceptional UK doctoral students whose research contributes towards the development of a Connected Nation. The competition is being sponsored by Dstl, Facebook, BT, Samsung, Huawei, Thales, Amazon and NVIDIA.

EPSRC's Chief Executive, Professor Philip Nelson, said: “The increasingly interconnected nature of our society is being driven by developments in science and engineering; these are creating new industries, opportunities and challenges. Helping the UK to flourish as a Connected Nation is one of EPSRC's four prosperity outcomes and having the right skills base to achieve this is crucial. I am very pleased to announce the opening of this year's Connected Nation Pioneers competition and look forward to seeing the presentations. Many of the entrants to our previous Pioneers competitions have gone on to succeed in academia, business and industry.”

Applications from eligible students working in any area of EPSRC's remit are welcome as long as they demonstrate they fit with the prize category descriptions.

Students do not have to be EPSRC-funded but do have to be registered at a UK institution.

The call will run over three stages. Firstly an expression of interest needs to be registered via the EPSRC website by 16:00 hours (BST), Thursday 26 April 2018.

The competition celebrates the transformative and pioneering research of UK-based doctoral students in contributing to up to two of the following category topics:

Safe and Secure Cyber Society

Intelligent Informatics

Making Digital Technology Work for People

Creative Computing for the Digital Economy

Applicants will be assessed per category by a panel of industrial sponsors in three stages:

An Expression of Interest statement (500 words)

A three minute video pitch

An exhibition and pitch presentation

For further information please email PioneersCompetition@epsrc.ac.uk or visit www.epsrc.ac.uk