https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.126.11

The Physiological Society Prize was awarded to Miquel Serna Pascual from King’s College London, UK at STEM for BRITAIN. Miquel also won the Gold Bioscience Prize.

On 7 March 2022, early career research scientists, politicians and a panel of expert judges attended Parliament for STEM for BRITAIN, a major scientific poster competition and exhibition. The event is organised by the Parliamentary & Scientific Committee to give members of both Houses of Parliament an insight into the outstanding research being carried out at UK universities by early career researchers.

The Physiological Society Prize was judged by a panel of physiologists, including Chair of The Society’s Policy Committee Chair, Professor Mike Tipton, and Chair of Communities Committee, Dr Lucy R Green.

Speaking after presenting the award to Miquel, Professor Tipton said:

“The Physiological Society is proud to support STEM for BRITIAN, which gives the opportunity for early career physiologists to talk directly to politicians about their research.”

“Every year we award The Physiological Society Prize to an early career researcher in physiology whose research stands out for being novel, robust and important. This year was no different. I was really impressed by the first-class science on display. It was also fantastic to see Miquel win the overall competition prize; this is a testament to Miquel’s excellent research and also shows how critical physiology is for understanding disease processes.”

Miquel’s poster on research about “Hidden disease signs in the pattern of breathing” discussing how to improve diagnostics for respiratory diseases was judged against dozens of other scientists’ research in the only national competition of its kind.

Miquel was shortlisted from hundreds of applicants to appear in Parliament and is studying a PhD in Bioinformatics. He is applying a novel mathematical method, termed Symmetric Projection Attractor Reconstruction, to analyse large amounts of biomedical waveform data. From this data, Miquel can search for patterns to help inform clinicians about early changes in the human body in response to treatment or disease.

On winning The Physiological Society Prize, Miquel said:

“It was a great experience to present my research in Parliament and to get feedback and questions from both academics and policymakers. I thank The Physiological Society for my award and The Parliamentary and Scientific Committee for awarding me the Biological and Biomedical Sciences Award. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my research team and my supervisor Dr Manasi Nandi, King’s College London, UK, for making this project possible.”