Shortlist announced for the IET’s £350K Harvey Prize

Five world-leading medical researchers have been announced as shortlisted nominees for the IET's prestigious £350,000 AF Harvey Engineering Research Prize.

The prize is awarded annually in recognition of an outstanding achievement in engineering research in the fields of medical, microwave and radar or laser/optoelectronic engineering, with the prize fund awarded to support further research led by the recipient. This year’s theme is medical engineering and technology.

Included in the 2020 shortlist are:

• Dr Gregoire Courtine: full professor of neuroscience and neurotechnology in the Center for Neuroprosthetics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne. He also works in the department of Neurosurgery at the University Hospital Lausanne (CHUV) where he is director of the Defitech Center for Interventional Neurotherapies (NeuroRestore). His passion for translational neurosciences has fuelled his research in the development of neurotechnologies to improve recovery from neurological disorders.
  
  
• Warren M Grill: Edmund T Pratt, Jr School distinguished professor of biomedical engineering at Duke University. His research interests are in neural engineering and neuromodulation and include model-based design and analysis and quantitative physiology with applications to restoration of bladder function, treatment of movement disorders with deep brain stimulation, electrical stimulation for treatment of pain, and vagus nerve stimulation for regulation of organ function.
  
  
• Professor Chris Hancock: founder of Creo Medical Group PLC with over 20 years’ experience in medical device research, innovation and development. He has dedicated the last 22 years to researching and developing novel therapeutic systems and devices, based on the generation and control of electromagnetic energy at a range of frequencies, to successfully address a number of unmet clinical needs.
  
  
• Professor Dean Ho: provost’s chair professor of biomedical engineering and pharmacology, director of the N.1 Institute for Health (N.1), director of the Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM), and head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the National University of Singapore. At N.1 and WisDM, Professor Ho has led multiple pioneering clinical studies with CURATE.AI to use only a patient’s own data to personalise treatment for the entire duration of care.
  
  
• Professor Stéphanie P. Lacour: holds the Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Neuroprosthetic Technology at the School of Engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Since January 2017, she has been full professor in Microengineering and Bioengineering at EPFL. Bioelectronics integrates principles of electrical engineering to biology, medicine and ultimately health. Professor Lacour's lab challenges and seeks to advance fundamental concepts in man-made electronic systems applied to biology. Specifically, the focus is on designing and manufacturing electronic devices with mechanical properties close to those of the host biological tissue so that long-term reliability and minimal perturbation are induced in vivo and/or truly wearable systems become possible.

Sir John O’Reilly, chair of the IET’s Search and Selection Panel for the Prize, said: “The AF Harvey Engineering Research Prize recognises the outstanding research achievements of the recipient, from anywhere in the world, who is identified through a search and selection process conducted by a panel of international experts from around the globe.

“We are incredibly proud, through the generous legacy from the late Dr AF Harvey to be able to recognise and support the furtherance of pioneering engineering research in these fields and thereby their subsequent impact in advancing the world around us. I’d like to congratulate our five finalists.”

The winner, chosen from the shortlist of five candidates, will be announced in December 2020. The winning researcher will deliver a keynote lecture on their research at Savoy Place, the IET's flagship headquarters building in London, in Spring 2021.

The IET’s AF Harvey prize is named after Dr AF Harvey, who bequeathed a generous sum of money to the IET for a trust fund to be set up in his name to further research in the specified fields.

For more information, visit: www.theiet.org/harvey