We're delighted to announce the winners of the 2025 ISIS Impact Awards.
These awards celebrate the scientific, social and economic impact of the facility's diverse user community.
Science
The winner of the 2025 Science Award is Dr Fabrizia Foglia from University College London for her innovative use of neutron techniques to understand and improve the performance of membrane nanotechnologies for sustainable applications.
Ion-conducting polymer membranes are essential in many separation processes and electrochemical devices, including flow batteries, fuel cells and electrolysers. All of these applications are relevant for achieving Net Zero carbon emissions.
Dr Foglia has made significant contributions to understanding how morphology and local dynamics influence transport in the nanostructures of these membranes for fuel cell and filtration applications. She has been instrumental in expanding the use of neutron techniques in membrane science, including reflectometry, quasielastic neutron scattering and small angle neutron scattering.
For more information read our full case study on Dr Foglia's research.
Economic
The winner of the 2025 Economic Award is Professor Pete Dowding from Infineum for his work using neutron reflectometry to study organic friction modifiers for improving the efficiency of combustion engines.
Twenty percent of worldwide CO2 emissions comes from road and marine transport. Inside the engines of these vehicles, friction can cause both energy loss and damage over time. Organic Friction Modifiers (OFMs) are surface-active molecules (surfactants) that are included in engine oil formulations to reduce friction by approximately 3%.
Improving this friction reduction could lead to improvements in fuel economy with a resulting decrease in global CO2 emissions by up to 50 MT each year, almost as much as the total emissions from global aviation. To reach this target, businesses need to understand how lubricant additives work at the molecular level, enabling better molecules to be designed and synthesised on short time scales. Professor Pete Dowding from the speciality chemicals company Infineum and his collabrators built and commissioned a unique piece of equipment to do just this. Their beamline tribometer enables them to do neutron reflectometry of a sample under conditions that replicate those inside an engine.
For more information, read our full case study on the work of Professor Dowding and his collaborators.
Society
The winner of the 2025 Society Award is Professor Christian Pfrang from the University of Birmingham for his work using neutron reflectometry to investigate the effect of cooking emissions on indoor air quality.
Cooking produces fatty acids, which can accumulate on water droplets in the atmosphere, or on surfaces in the home. From research using neutron reflectometry, Professor Christian Pfrang and his collaborators found that these fatty acids are not easily broken down, and therefore very stable. In the atmosphere, their continued presence can impact the climate. In the home, they can build up and trap toxic pollutants, affecting indoor air quality and therefore health.
With ISIS beamline scientist Dr Max Skoda, Professor Pfrang co-supervised the ISIS co-funded PhD student Ben Woden to create a new sample environment on the Inter beamline for measuring these atmospheric systems.
For more information, read our full case study on Professor Pfrang's work.
