On Thursday 7 December 2023, the University of Malta Rector, Prof. Alfred J. Vella officially presented this year’s Research Excellence Fund awards to four UM academics. These funds shall cover the expenses of one project in each of the following thematic areas: Social Sciences and Education; Engineering, ICT and the Built Environment; Natural Sciences and Knowledge Sciences; and the Medical and Health Sciences. Funds up to a maximum of €60,000 per project are awarded, to be executed over a period of two years.
The Research Excellence Funds are administered by the Research Funds Committee. Award decisions are based on the review reports and scores assigned by independent, external peer reviewers on the project proposals that were submitted through an open call issued last year.
The 2024/2025 Research Excellence Funds awardees are as follows:
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Dr Josephine Milton, from the Faculty of Education, for her project entitled “Addressing Linguistic Diversity in Malta: Teacher Education and Classroom Pedagogy in Early and Primary Educationâ€
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Dr Chris Porter, from the Faculty of ICT, for his project entitled “Developing a low-cost brain-native web browserâ€
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Prof. Alessio Magro, from the Institute of Space Sciences and Astronomy, for his project entitled “A Real-Time FRB backend for the Medicina Northern Cross Telescopeâ€
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Dr Brendon Scicluna, from the Faculty of Health Sciences, for his project entitled: “Understanding the Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Host Tissue Responses during Sepsis and Recoveryâ€
Also present at the award-giving ceremony, UM’s Pro-Rector for Research and Knowledge Transfer, Prof. Simon G. Fabri, said “I extend my heartfelt congratulations to each of the four researchers present today. I am thrilled to note the positive trend in the increasing variety of topics and projects submitted for the Research Excellence Fund, something that highlights the strides we are making towards a more diverse research community, as well as our collective effort in fostering research of local, regional and global significance.
In his short speech, the University Rector, Prof. Alfred J. Vella expressed the importance that research is given within the University’s framework with the community constantly backing for more research to be done in the various fields. Prof. Vella reiterated how education needs to be built upon research for it to be successful. In his concluding remarks, the Rector congratulated the four awardees for their achievements.
