Tuesday 22 May 2018
The SACAs award ceremony took place on Monday 14 May and winners for the eight categories were announced.
This year saw the highest number of nominations ever received, with 1,868 student nominations recognising excellent teaching and support from staff across the College. Over 900 individual members of staff were nominated for an award, so getting our shortlist for each category was no easy feat!
Your winners for 2018 are...
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Best Supervision Professor Marisa Miraldo, Business School |
"Marisa is, by far, one of the most dedicated supervisors I have encountered. I was fortunate to meet her during my MPH at Imperial College London in 2014, where I was her student for my MPH dissertation. Until that point, I had not considered a PhD. After being taken under Marisa's wing, I saw the appeal and understood what research was needed. As my research interests were interdisciplinary (public health, health economics and environmental economics), she had connected me with my second supervisor to ensure I had covered all necessary disciplines to undertake my research interests. After completing my MPH, I had decided that if I were to pursue my doctoral studies it would be under Marisa (and only Marisa - wherever she worked)." |
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Best Tutoring Dr Graeme Wilson, Faculty of Medicine |
"Graeme is an incredibly committed senior tutor and always easy to approach and speak to. His genuine care and concern for his students is evident from the amount of time, energy and efforts that he readily puts into trying to help and support every one of us. For a full-time consultant in a busy London hospital, it always amazes me how patient and generous he is with his time and energy. He always gives me plenty of time to think about my options, so I never feel rushed or under pressure to make decisions." |
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Best Graduate Teaching Assistant Hormoz Ramian, Business School |
"Hormoz allowed myself and my cohort to not only survive but excel in a fast-moving and difficult Econometric course mandated for our PhD programme cohort. He went above and beyond what he was asked to do by scheduling review sessions, extra practice sets, and extra teaching tutorials where we were free to ask him any questions. He also marked and provided superb feedback for us on our problem sets which he was not even mandated to do. He is a great teacher, person, and has definitely gone beyond his duty." |
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Best Teaching for Undergraduates Dr Anna Regoutz, Materials |
"Her lectures are clearly and logically structured, with clear and distinct objectives. Her lecture slides act as great notes, but are well delivered. She strikes a great balance between providing information that is relevant and sufficiently basic to create a strong foundation of understanding, and relating her content to current research and applications. Her lectures use a combination of traditional lecturing and interactive problem-solving. She always welcomes questions and gives answers that actually provide clarity and insight. She is very approachable and has a good sense of humour that is present in all her interactions with students. She has an unfailing enthusiasm for lecturing, or perhaps more accurately - educating." |
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Best Support Staff Clare Drysdale, Electrical and Electronic Engineering |
"Clare is a wonderful resource in the EEE undergraduate office. She organises the industrial placements for third year students, and helps them find ones as well. She has set up a website where companies can advertise their openings and she contacts former employees asking them to take on new students... She has also taken a leading role in the work being done for the female undergraduates in the department in the last years. She set up a welcome lunch for the female freshers, inviting older years as well to answer questions and discuss life at Imperial in general. She also looked at gender discrimination happening in the department, getting anonymous responses about comments and behaviour from staff and other students. Last year that was taken further by helping to set up Sparky LadiEEs, a society for the female undergraduates, run by themselves but with support from her." |
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Best Innovation Dr Giskin Day, School of Professional Development |
"Giskin has long been a champion of innovative teaching, always striving to bring new pedagogical approaches to the way students are taught at Imperial. Her recent work on the Imp-ER-ial initiative follows in this vain. This concept aims to design and develop escape rooms that aim to instill knowledge in participants. I have had the pleasure of participating in two such escape rooms (one about the library and another on faculties), and thoroughly enjoyed the process plus I was surprised at just how much I learnt without consciously trying! Giskin thoroughly deserves this nomination for how willing she is to try new, exciting innovative ways of teaching students at Imperial." |
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Best Feedback Dr Luc Vandeperre, Materials |
"What really stands out is his quick and comprehensive feedback. Me and my fellow students received detailed and constructive feedback which substantially improved my scientific writing and data presentation. This year, he continued the same high-quality feedback in the design study project, for which we had two major pieces of coursework so far; a written report and a presentation. For both we received feedback in a matter of days, which significantly helped our design process. Not only does he provide the feedback faster and in more detail than most others, he manages to maintain the high quality for all Materials students amidst his cutting-edge research, always being relaxed and nice throughout. The quality of his student support combined with his friendly and approachable nature make him one of the most popular and well-liked academics in Materials." |
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Best Teaching for Postgraduates Dr Fidelis Perkonigg, Computing |
"I have never had a professor who cares as much about their students' learning experience as Fidelis. He is energetic in lectures, working hard to keep students engaged, and is readily available for help outside of class. Fidelis' teaching style/skill demonstrates the clear advantage of an in-person education, and is one of the reasons I am glad I decided to do my MSc at Imperial. It has been wonderful having Fidelis for OOP and Software Engineering, and I greatly look forward to having him teach my Networks and Distributed Systems course." |
