Celebrating engineering excellence: National awards honour industry trailblazers

14 of the world’s top engineering and technology talent honoured with medals and trophies for services to the industry.

Pioneers in engineering and technology have taken centre stage at the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) 2025 Achievement Awards – where innovators from across photovoltaics, physical computing and quantum technology to digital image transmission and wearable tech were honoured for their outstanding developments and contributions.

The prestigious Faraday Medal is awarded to Professor Martin A Green for his outstanding and sustained work in the field of renewable energy. He is renowned for taking photovoltaics from excessively expensive to now providing some of the cheapest electricity ever seen via combined technological and industrial impact. His group's contributions are described as one of the “Top Ten” milestones in the history of solar photovoltaics. He is Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney and founding director of the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics.

Professor Green said: “It is a great honour to be awarded the prestigious IET Faraday Medal, particularly given the achievements of previous Faraday Medallists. I’m delighted to join earlier Medallists like Heaviside, Thompson, Crompton, Rutherford, Bragg, Langmuir and Mott who have populated my textbooks throughout in my engineering career.”

One of this year’s most significant awards, the Mountbatten Medal, goes to Professor Steve Hodges for developing and promoting opportunities for children to engage with technology via physical computing. A Distinguished Professor in Computing and Digital Systems at Lancaster University, he played a key role in the design and delivery of the BBC micro:bit hardware, and continues to develop related technologies. To date, eleven million micro:bits in eighty-five countries have helped educate over sixty-five million students about information technology and coding.

On winning his award, Professor Hodges said: “It’s been a privilege having the opportunity to take my childhood fascination with electronics and computers full-circle, helping to develop digital systems that are inspiring and empowering millions of today’s children to get hands-on with technology. I am deeply honoured by the IET’s recognition of this impact and grateful to all the talented colleagues and collaborators who made it possible.”

Professor Nasir Ahmed is awarded the JJ Thomson Medal for his invention of the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). The DCT has enabled the development of digital media compression and served as the basis of numerous international standards. Used by billions of people to store and transmit digital images, audio/sound and video, DCT laid the groundwork for Zoom, YouTube, Instagram, and all the other cornerstones of today's image-based online life. He is a Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of New Mexico. On winning, he said: “I am extremely grateful and honoured to receive the prestigious JJ Thompson Medal.” 

The IET Achievement Awards exist to recognise individuals from all over the world who have made exceptional contributions to the advancement of engineering, technology and science in any sector. This can be through research and development in their respective technical field or through their leadership of an enterprise. 

Other notable winners include:

• Muna Daud is awarded the Mike Sargeant Medal for her outstanding invention FlowSense, the world’s first patented period detection product empowering visually impaired women.
• Nick Wirth is awarded an IET Achievement Medal in Sustainability and Climate Change for his work in the field of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) – the first engineer to design an F1 race car solely with CFD.
• Stefano Pirandola is awarded an IET Achievement Medal in Quantum Technology for establishing the ultimate communication rates for quantum key distribution (QKD), quantum teleportation, and entanglement distribution. 
• Dr Junade Ali is awarded the Paul Fletcher Award for his exceptional and ongoing volunteering contributions to the IET’s external communications and press office function – significantly enhancing the IET’s visibility and credibility in the media and informing the public.

IET President Dawn Ohlson said: “We’re proud to celebrate these outstanding individuals and their impact with our Achievement Awards. Each has demonstrated excellence in their field and made significant contributions as trailblazers to the sector. From our distinguished medallists to our exceptional apprentice and technician winners, their accomplishments reflect the very best of our profession and they are remarkable role models for the next generation.”

Samuel Bhuiyan is named the IET’s Engineering and Technology Apprentice winner; Sergeant John Sinclair wins the IET’s Armed Forces Technician Award; and Thomas Dickson is the winner of the IET’s Engineering and Technology Technician Award.

The Achievement Awards are part of the IET’s Awards and Scholarships programme, which celebrate excellence and research in the sector and encourage the next generation of engineers and technicians. All IET awards seek to inspire and reward engineering excellence, including apprentices at the start of their careers, through to reputable, established professional engineers and technicians.

Find out more about the Awards here: Achievement Awards

ENDS

Notes to Editor

Full list of award winners

The Faraday Medal is awarded to Professor Martin Green.

The Mountbatten Medal is awarded to Professor Steve Hodges.

The JJ Thomson Medal is awarded to Professor Nasir Ahmed.

 Achievement medals:

• IET Achievement Medal in Cyber Physical Systems is awarded to in David Flynn.
• IET Achievement Medal in Quantum Technology is awarded to Stefano Pirandola.
• IET Achievement Medal in Biomedical and Healthcare Engineering is awarded to John Rogers.
• IET Achievement Medal in Sustainability and Climate is awarded to Nick Wirth.

Early career: 

• The Mike Sargeant Medal is awarded to Muna Daud.
• The Paul Fletcher Award is awarded to Dr Junade Ali.
• The Sir Henry Royce Medal is awarded to Andrew Ng.

Volunteering:

• The IET Volunteer Medal is awarded to Teck Lee Tan.

Special recognition:

• Engineering and Technology Apprentice Award is awarded to Samuel Bhuiyan
• Armed Forces Technician Award is awarded to Sergeant John Sinclair
• Engineering and Technology Technician Award is awarded to Thomas Dickson 

About the IET

• We inspire, inform and influence the global engineering community to engineer a better world.     
• We are a diverse home for engineering and technology intelligence throughout the world. This breadth and depth means we are uniquely placed to help the sector progress society.     
• We want to build the profile of engineering and technology to change outdated perceptions and tackle the skills gap. This includes encouraging more women to become engineers and growing the number of engineering apprentices.    
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• For more information, visit www.theiet.org.    
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Media enquiries to:

Rebecca Gillick
External Communications Manager
E: rgillick@theiet.org