Research impact category: award winner and runners up

Winner: Queen Mary University of London

Project: Pale Red Dot: the search and discovery of

Proxima b

Are we alone in the universe? Humanity has been fascinated by the idea that life may exist elsewhere. The discovery in August 2016 of an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone orbiting Proxima Centauri – the closest star to the Sun – excited the public and scientists alike.

The team of 30 scientists from eight countries, led by Dr Guillem Anglada-Escudé from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), suggested the planet, called Proxima b, may also be the closest possible home for life outside the solar system.

The project, dubbed Pale Red Dot, ran between January and March 2016. The observations took place at southern hemisphere observatories – Proxima Centauri was monitored continuously for 60 consecutive nights and simultaneously followed up by two other observatories. The team used innovative multi-disciplinary approaches to find that Proxima b orbits its parent star every 11 days and has a temperature suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface.

Alongside the project the university delivered an outreach campaign to communicate planet-hunting to the public in real-time. This campaign was delivered in partnership with the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) education and Public Outreach Department (ePOD) and featured blog posts from leading exoplanet experts. It used the search for the nearest possible Earth-like planet as a hook to give the public the opportunity to see how science is done in modern observatories, and how teams of different astronomers work together to collect, analyse and interpret data.

The study received media coverage in all continents. It generated more than 1,000 individual news clips since August 2016 and 4,200 news stories within a week of publication. The paper has also been cited nearly 50 times.

At a university level, the discovery of Proxima b has also resulted in more applications to study astrophysics and aerospace engineering at undergraduate level, and astronomy at postgraduate level – in some cases the number of applications doubled compared to this point in the recruitment cycle in the previous year.

Runner up: Heriot-Watt University

Project: The Homelessness Monitor – driving change, transforming lives

Heriot-Watt University’s (HWU) state-of-the-nation homelessness monitor research project provides independent, in-depth analysis of homelessness across the four UK countries, looking at the impact of recent economic and policy developments.

It has been pivotal to pioneering new homelessness prevention legislation – the homelessness reduction bill – now being considered by the House of Lords, and to which the government has already committed £61m of funding.

Over the past 18 months, five homelessness monitor reports have been published – one for each UK nation and a Great Britain overview. Though led by HWU, the monitor was developed in partnership with high profile charities such as Crisis and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and two other leading universities in the housing field, the University of York and the University of New South Wales.

The monitor has broken new ground by applying high-level policy, economic, legal and quantitative expertise to a ‘social’ topic that, in the UK, has tended to be the preserve of narrowly qualitative research. It is also innovative in combining multiple sources of data – expert interviews, a national local authority survey, and analysis of economic, administrative, and household survey data.

The project has received praise from both front line staff and campaigners. Lord Richard Best OBE, a British social housing leader and member of the House of Lords, said: “I have found the Homelessness Monitor to be an invaluable tool, not least in helping me to take on the task of piloting the Homelessness Reduction Bill through the House of Lords. I commend its lead author Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick, who also chaired the Crisis Expert Panel that developed the recommendations on which the bill is based.”

Runner up: Coventry University

Project: Unravelling the Mediterranean Migration Crisis (Medmig)

In 2015, more than one million people crossed the Mediterranean to Europe in search of safety and a better life. Thousands died along the way. Governments, NGOs and most of the Western world faced an urgent, overwhelming challenge with hardly any useful evidence on which to base their response.

The Medmig project, led by Coventry University, set out to better understand the dynamics of migration in the Mediterranean region by providing the first large scale, systematic and comparative study of the backgrounds, experiences, aspirations and routes of refugees and migrants in Italy, Greece, Malta and Turkey. As a result, the study brought much more clarity and evidence to a volatile and perplexing political situation.

The project found that the representation of movement of migrants and refugees as linear journeys is misleading – many interviewees had spent months/years living elsewhere before travelling to Europe. Some 76% of migrants and refugees in Italy and Malta had experienced physical violence, while 77% interviewees forced to leave due to conflict, violence and human rights abuse. The researchers found a complex and overlapping relationship between forced and economic drivers of migration to Europe

In September 2016 the research was presented at ‘Protecting human rights in the context of large movements of migrants and refugees’, held at the first ever UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants, at the UN Headquarters. The findings have also been used by professionals working on the front line. Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF), for example, used the findings of the research to train its staff working in the field, including those involved in search and rescue efforts in the Mediterranean.

Medmig was part of the £1m Mediterranean migration research programme, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Department for International Development, which was launched in response to the ongoing migration crisis in Europe. The total project budget was £168,000.