Judges Biography

Syngenta ABSW Science Writers' Awards

HISTORY

Judges

Louise Dalziel

Louise, who has a background in zoology, has been producing radio programmes for various different networks in the BBC for 20 years, having joined BBC Scotland on the Martin Goldman Fellowship. Early in her career, Louise worked on Tomorrow's World, and has initiated and produced a wide range of programmes, from a long running, light-hearted quiz called The Litmus Test to award winning drama and pre-recorded features and documentary programmes. Louise grew and developed a small science unit within the Radio Features Department at BBC Scotland, with producers working in both Edinburgh and Glasgow. A winner of three ABSW awards, Louise left the BBC in April to set up her own company, Matchless Content.

Dr Evan Harris MP

Evan is Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon. He qualified in medicine from Oxford in 1991, and worked as a hospital doctor and in public health until his election in 1997. He is currently the Lib Dem Science Spokesman (2005-) and serves on the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee (2003-) and the Joint Commons/Lords Select Committee on Human Rights (2005-). Evan has a long-standing campaigning record supporting science and evidence-based policy. He has a specialist interest in medical ethics, previously serving on Oxfordshire Health Authority's Research Ethics Committee, and since 1999 has been an elected member of the BMA’s Medical Ethics Committee. He is Honorary President of the Liberal Democrat Campaign for Lesbian and Gay Rights (DELGA) and an honorary associate of the National Secular Society.

Sue Nelson

Sue is a Radio 4 presenter, writer and former BBC science correspondent for News 24, Breakfast and The One O’clock News. She is co-author of How to Clone the Perfect Blonde, has written for most national newspapers and currently writes dramas alongside journalism and broadcasting. Two of her screenplays were recently made into short films: the scientific thriller Roses are Red was shortlisted for SciFilm 07; while Little Devils was nominated as Best Film in the 2007 Creative East Awards and will be seen in six countries and 19 cities - including New York and LA - during this summer's International Festival of Cinema and Technology. Sue has a background in physics, is a popular events facilitator and also media trains scientists as part of Boffin Media. A recipient of an ABSW award for radio, Sue has been shortlisted on several occasions and has invaluable advice for those who miss out on a top prize: drinking helps.

Dr Sophie Petit-Zeman

Sophie is Head of External Relations at the Association of Medical Research Charities and a freelance writer and journalist. She migrated from neuroscience and mental health research to communications and journalism, specialising in health, science and social care. An award-winning writer, she has worked for all the UK broadsheets, a host of specialist journals, for the NHS, and private and voluntary sectors in the UK and abroad. Sophie has published two books: a partfiction, part-fact critique of the NHS, Doctor, What's Wrong? Making the NHS Human Again (Routledge, 2005) and How to be an Even Better Chair: sensible advice from the public and charity sectors (Pearson, 2006).

Professor David Wark FRS

Dave was born and raised in the United States, attending Indiana University and Caltech before spending three years at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 1990 he moved to England where he became a Lecturer at Oxford University and a Fellow of Balliol College (and began the long, difficult journey required to learn the rules of cricket, drink less-than-cold beer, drive on the left, and spell the word colour to accommodate local custom). He is now a joint Professor at Imperial College London and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Dave's research has focussed primarily on the physics of neutrinos, a journey that has involved experiments in the US, the Soviet Union, Canada, France, and Japan with collaborators from all over the world. These experiments played a key role in proving that neutrinos have mass, forcing a rewrite of the Standard Model of particle physics and maybe opening a path to a solution of one of the great mysteries in physics - why is there matter in the universe and very little antimatter? He won the Institute of Physics' Rutherford Prize, is Chair of the European Physical Society High Energy Particle Physics Division and is an accomplished speaker and contributor to science documentaries. Dave has recently been elected a Fellow of The Royal Society.

Dr Ted Nield

Prior to entering the world of journalism, Ted gained a PhD in geology at University College Cardiff and worked as a consultant carbonate sedimentologist. As a science journalist, he has written for most broadsheet newspapers and popular science magazines, and also published two palaeontology textbooks with Pergamon Press. Ted joined The Geological Society of London in 1997. He is editor of the Society’s monthly magazine, Geoscientist, and website, www.geolsoc.org, editor of the Society’s annual report, and obituaries editor. He also specialises in the public relations of membership organisations and the public perception of science through film and television drama. Ted has recently signed with Granta to write a popular science book on the Supercontinent Cycle and the history of the idea of lost supercontinents called Supercontinent – our once and future world to be published in 2007. He is Chairman of the ABSW and Chair, Outreach, International Year of Planet Earth.

Tim Radford

Tim was born in New Zealand, where he trained as a journalist on the daily New Zealand Herald. He arrived in Britain in 1961, and apart from a brief period in the UK government information services between 1968 and 1973, has spent his professional life in weekly, evening and daily newspapers. He joined The Guardian in 1973, and has been (among other things) letters editor, arts editor and literary editor. Tim was science editor of The Guardian, editing the science pages since their launch in 1980. Tim has won five ABSW Science Writers' Awards, including the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award, which was presented to him on his alleged retirement in 2005.

Martin Redfern

Martin studied geology at UCL and has worked at the BBC for 30 years, mostly in radio science broadcasting, first for the World Service and now in the merged Radio Science Unit that provides science programmes for World Service and Radio 4. His work has ranged from live news coverage of space missions to major documentary series on geology and archaeology. He has won three ABSW Science Writers’ Awards, for Mission to Turkana (Hydatid disease in Kenya – 1985); Marking Time (a dramatisation of John Harrison’s battle for the Longuitude prize – 1992) and in 2004 for The New Space Race. He ventured, briefly, into television in the 1980s but finds the scenery better on radio. In his spare time Martin has written a few print articles and books, including the Kingfisher books of Space & Planet Earth and The Earth – A Very Short Introduction, dug over his Kentish vegetable patch a few times and emptied a bottle or two of wine. He is thrilled to be visiting Antarctica next year.

Andrew Sugden

Andrew has a degree in botany from Oxford University where he also earned his doctoral degree in tropical rain forest ecology in 1980. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Cambridge University in 1985. Andrew’s research emphasised tropical rain forest ecology, especially in the mountains of Colombia and Venezuela. His subsequent publishing career has included positions as founding editor of the international monthly review journal, Trends in Ecology & Evolution, from 1986 until 1999. He also served as co-editor of the history-ofscience quarterly, Endeavour, from 1996 until 1999, founding editor of Trends in Plant Sciences, and managing editor at Elsevier Trends Journals. Since that time, he has served as Science’s senior editor responsible for ecology and evolution and, from the journal’s European headquarters in Cambridge, as international managing editor.

Michael White

Michael White has been writing for The Guardian for over 30 years, as a reporter, foreign correspondent and columnist. He was political editor from 1990-2006, having previously been the paper’s Washington correspondent between 1984 and 1988 and parliamentary sketchwriter between 1977 and 1984. He has reported from over 50 countries. Michael was born in Cornwall and read History at UCL.