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The Rayleigh Award is NPL’s most prestigious scientific award, presented annually to the author(s) of the most outstanding NPL paper published in the previous calendar year. The award is highly competitive, and papers are judged on their creativity and novelty, the extent and quality of the scientific investigation, their potential impact, and their clarity and accessibility. The Rayleigh Award is named after Lord John William Strutt Rayleigh, Chairman of the Government Committee that recommended the formation of NPL in 1897.
This year’s award was selected from a total of 357 peer-reviewed papers co-authored by NPL in 2022. The 2023 winners and NPL authors are Hans Becker, Edmund Dickinson, Xuekun Lu, Graham Smith, and Gareth Hinds, for their paper Assessing potential profiles in water electrolysers to minimise titanium use, Energy Environ. Sci., 15, 2508 (2022). External co-authors include Ulf Bexell, Sebastian Proch, Claire Moffatt, and Mikael Stenström of AB Sandvik Materials Technology (now Alleima).
The winning paper reports ground-breaking work that demonstrates a viable scientific basis for substitution of platinum-coated titanium components in polymer electrolyte membrane water electrolysers with much cheaper materials such as carbon-coated stainless steel. This could reduce the capital cost of this green hydrogen technology by up to 50%, while decreasing reliance on critical raw materials.
The Rayleigh Award Committee also awarded ‘Highly Commended’ to NPL’s Giuseppe Marra, Paul Gaynor, Sean Mulholland, Georgios Vagenas, Jacques-Olivier Gaudron, Jochen Kronjäger, Ian Hill, Marco Schioppo, Irene Barbeito Edreira, and Katherine Khatry for their paper Optical interferometry–based array of seafloor environmental sensors using a transoceanic submarine cable Science, 376, 874 (2022). For the first time, it is demonstrated that existing trans-oceanic telecommunication cables can be used to implement arrays of individual environmental sensors that could be used to give prior warning of natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis. External co-authors include David Fairweather (University of Edinburgh), Valey Kamalov, Mattia Cantono, and Jorge Castellanos (Google LLC), Brian Baptie (British Geological Survey), and Cecilia Clivati and Davide Calonico (Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica).
In addition, the outstanding contribution from an early career author went to Andrea Briones for their paper An SI-traceable reference material for virus-like particles, iScience 25, 104294 (2022). The work presents the first SI-traceable material for virus-like particles, benefitting directly researchers and manufacturers in vaccine development and gene delivery. External co-authors include Gustavo Martos, Magali Bedu, Tiphaine Choteau, Ralf Josephs, and Robert Wielgosz (Bureau International des Poids et Measures).
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27 Jul 2023