We are excited to announce the winners of the Cambridge Excellence Awards 2026!
The Cambridge Excellence Awards recognise and celebrate the outstanding achievements of students, staff and communities across the University. With more than 400 nominations received this year, selecting our shortlisted nominees and winners was an incredibly difficult task.
Every nomination reflected the dedication, talent and impact of individuals and groups who help make Cambridge such a vibrant community. Congratulations to everyone who was nominated, and a special well done to our 2026 winners!
Student Support by a Member of Academic Staff
Winner: Dr Morag Morrison-Helme
Dr. Morag Morrison-Helme has been described as an absolute 'rock' and a 'constant source of strength.' They are celebrated for their exceptional pastoral care, whether fighting to ensure students have everything they need to excel, guiding researchers through complex doctoral journeys, or simply brightening the college experience with their termly social events.
Lecturer of the Year
Winner: Dr Nigel Kettley
Nigel is celebrated for making lectures clear, concise, and incredibly accessible, always grounding their teaching with brilliant real-world examples. Students describe them as a deeply passionate expert who is 'wonderful to listen to.' They bring an infectious enthusiasm, warmth, and a great sense of humour to the lectern. Creating an environment where students feel both supported and stretched. So, for equipping, challenging, and truly inspiring students
Undergraduate Supervisor of the Year
Winner: Owain Salter Fitz-Gibbon
As a supervisor to a large portion of the mathematics department, Owain guides students through everything from Analysis and Group Theory to Quantum Mechanics. They are celebrated for introducing fascinating theorems, and routinely allowing supervisions to overrun to ensure every question is answered with clarity and kindness. One nomination noted, 'They never realise just how kind and great they are, because they just think this is all part of the job.'
Postgraduate Supervisor of the year
Winner: Professor Paul Fletcher
Paul has provided what students describe as a genuinely 'transformative' doctoral experience. They actively engineer career-defining opportunities for postgraduates by initiating global collaborations that ultimately secure thousands of pounds in research funding. Alongside this, they provide fierce academic leadership as well as deep personal empathy during times of difficulty for students.
Undergraduate College Officer of the Year
Winner: Cara Pearson
Cara has demonstrated an extraordinary level of impact, diplomacy, and resilience during their time as Newnham JCR President. They are celebrated for achieving major, structural victories for their community, most notably, successfully convincing their college to pay all casual workers aged eighteen and over at least the National Minimum Wage, alongside securing fair pay increases for younger staff.
Postgraduate College Officer of the Year
Winner: Essi Harbord
Essi is celebrated for their exceptional, inclusive leadership and an innate ability to find and fill gaps in the student experience. Their practical innovations have transformed daily life, from establishing permanent community chats to installing an allotment, a wildflower garden, and a communal borrowing cupboard for items like airbeds and bike repair kits. As one student summarised: 'Their initiatives allowed the MCR community to feel like the family we didn't necessarily have close by.'
Inclusive Practice
Winner: Professor Marie Edmonds
As the first-ever female head of their department, Marie has used their leadership to ensure that EDI is no longer treated as a peripheral issue, but as a mandatory lens through which every single senior decision is made. Making monumental changes, collaborating directly with disabled students to bring physical accessibility to a historic, inaccessible building, and introducing dedicated privacy spaces for working parents and staff. Beyond structural change, they foster an open dialogue around mental health, proving that a supportive research environment creates the best science.
Innovative Teaching
Winner: Dr Ryan Jayesinghe
Ryan is celebrated for designing educational escape rooms, introducing immersive simulations that bring complex concepts to life, and creating demanding, high-impact learning experiences that students describe as exceptional preparation for their future careers. Their innovation is always guided by student needs. When needed Ryan quickly develops entirely new interactive learning experiences from the ground up, complete with realistic role-play and authentic evaluation scenarios. Combining remarkable creativity with a deep understanding of how students learn, they serve not only as an educator but also as a mentor, adapting their approach to individual needs and fostering an environment where students feel confident to take risks, make mistakes, and grow.
Student Support by a Member of Non-Academic Staff
Winner: Georgia Ghai
Georgia had supported students through times when their academic and personal lives had been placed under immense strain by stepping in as a fierce advocate and a pillar of emotional stability. Their nominators describe them as exceptionally kind, extraordinarily generous with their time, and a quiet force for good who works without complaint in a vital corner of the university. As one nomination noted: 'There is no one else in this University that deserves recognition more for what can be a difficult job... recognition is long overdue.'
Contribution to Access and Widening Participation
Winner: Kemi Akeredolu
Kemi has been the driving force behind a brand-new widening participation residential. Putting everything into making it a reality, by filming social media videos, driving regional recruitment to reach underrepresented students, and designing the schedule. Their efforts culminated in the launch of the residential programme, which received over a hundred applications. Throughout the residential, their leadership was boundless, coordinating and chairing a powerful panel discussion, teaching a mock supervision and delivering a deeply moving speech at the formal dinner.
Contribution to Equality and Liberation
Winner: Sitaram Thirukumar
As the student representative on their faculty EDI Committee, Sitaram has advocated for more accessible teaching methods, ensuring student concerns are permanently embedded in faculty decision-making. Their devotion to racial equality saw them twice-elected as the BAME Officer at their college, where they organised countless collaborative social events. But their impact stretches even further. During their time as President of the Fitzwilliam Museum Society they launched a transformative mentorship scheme pairing low-income students with industry specialists, even introducing bursary memberships.
Society of the Year
Winner: Cambridge Climate Society
Boasting a committee of over 20 dedicated members, their outputs over the past year alone are staggering. They successfully orchestrated the flagship CamCOP conference, published their own peer-reviewed academic journal to celebrate early-career research, and instituted the first-ever city-wide 'Cambridge Climate Week’ bringing together students, academics, organisations, and the wider community. But what sets them apart is how they multiply their impact. They established a Green Societies Forum to coordinate dozens of student groups and representatives across the university, provided resource toolkits that helped launch over fifteen new college eco-societies, and ran a mentorship scheme connecting more than seventy students with sustainability professionals across a range of sectors. And true to their spirit of community, they even found time to host their annual 'Groove for Green' charity gig, raising a thousand pounds for an important charitable cause.
Contribution to Student Community
Winner: Hannah Betts
As President of Clarissa’s Campaign, established in memory of Clarissa Nicholls, a student who tragically passed away due to an undiagnosed heart condition, they have spearheaded a movement to tackle cardiac risk in young people. This academic year alone, more than fifteen hundred Cambridge students will have received a free, potentially life-saving heart screening because of Hannah’s logistical dedication. From managing last-minute cancellations to ensure not a single appointment is wasted, to organising 40 charity places in the Cambridge Half Marathon, contributing to the Cambridge Festival, and hosting a major panel at the Cambridge Union on sport and cardiac health, their leadership has been relentless.
Contribution to the City
Winner: Adam Balogh
Adam launched the Cambridge Student Community First Responder scheme, where sixteen student doctors were recruited, fully trained, and deployed to respond to local 999 emergency calls on behalf of the East of England Ambulance Service. In their first two weeks alone, the team contributed over two hundred volunteering hours, responding to sixteen emergency callouts. In an astonishing 62% of cases, these student responders arrived before the ambulance crew, providing critical, time-sensitive care when every second mattered. But Adam is not just the architect behind this scheme; they are a dedicated responder themselves. Whether volunteering on critical care ambulances or responding to cardiac arrests via the GoodSAM app while off duty, they lead from the front line.
Academic Rep of the Year
Winner: Cambridge Judge Business School PhD Reps
For many years, a funding policy at their school linked fourth-year PhD maintenance stipends to achieving a specific publication milestone within a small group of academic journals. As the publishing landscape evolved, students increasingly raised concerns about the challenges this created, including its impact on research planning, wellbeing, and financial security. Through detailed cohort analysis, extensive consultation with students, and benchmarking against leading peer institutions, they developed a compelling, evidence-based case for amendment. These Reps worked collaboratively with faculty and university decision-makers to help shape a new approach. As a result, the PhD Steering Committee approved full fourth-year funding for all students. This change will strengthen support for future generations of doctoral students and reflect the very best of student representation.
Outstanding Contribution to University Life
Winner: Cambridge University Islamic Society
Through an unwavering commitment to community, welfare, inclusion, and access, the Cambridge University Islamic Society has created spaces where students feel welcomed, supported, and connected. They hosted daily community Iftars at the University Centre, welcoming 50 to 100 students every single weekday in one of the most heartwarming displays of community anywhere in Cambridge. As well as this, they organised welfare initiatives, educational talks, social activities and celebrations of identity, their work has touched countless lives across our University. Beyond Cambridge, they have gone even further, raising thousands for charity and opening doors for prospective students through outreach, mentoring and access programmes that have changed lives.