Award for Outstanding Contribution to Translational Medicine
Calling for nominations for the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Translational Medicine.
The AoP is seeking nominations for this prestigious prize to acknowledge the outstanding contribution made by UK or Irish researchers to Translational Medicine. The prize will be awarded annually to a researcher whose work has made huge translational impact in any discipline medicine. This may be a single activity or a life-time’s work with high impact.
The award is open to clinicians or scientists, and the nominees do not need to be members of the Association of Physicians to be eligible.
The awardee will be presented with the prize at the annual meeting of the Association of Physicians and will be invited to lead a round table discussion at the meeting.
Nominations will close on 31st August.

Congratulations to Professor Sir Doug Turnbull
Congratulations to Professor Sir Doug Turnbull who was announced as the 2025 recipient of the Association of Physicians’ award for an Outstanding Contribution to Translational Medicine. Adrian was presented with the award at a ceremony during the annual meeting held in London 3-4 April, 2025.
Sir Doug Turnbull is Emeritus Professor of Neurology, Newcastle University (UK). Professor Turnbull was Director of the Wellcome Centre for Mitochondrial Research and Director of the MRC Centre for Ageing and Vitality. He was the clinical lead for the NHS Highly Specialised Service for Rare Mitochondrial Diseases of Adults and Children.
Professor Turnbull’s research focused on understanding the role of mitochondria in health and disease. This has led to a new understanding of the importance and complexity of mitochondrial DNA disease, the development of a novel method to prevent the transmission of mitochondrial DNA disease (mitochondrial donation).

Congratulations to Professor Sir Adrian Hill
Congratulations to Professor Sir Adrian Hill who was announced as the 2024 recipient of the Association of Physicians’ award for an Outstanding Contribution to Translational Medicine. Adrian was presented with the award at a ceremony during the annual meeting held in Newcastle 23-24 May, 2024.
Adrian is the Director and Founder of the Jenner Institute and Mittal Professor of Vaccinology at Oxford University. His group has been one of the leaders in the development of adenoviral and other vaccines against infectious diseases and he has tested these in extensively in clinical trials in Africa and Europe. In partnership with the Serum Institute of India and AstraZeneca the Jenner Institute developed rapidly a ChAdOx1 vector-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine which saved an estimated 6.2 million lives in 2021 alone. His lab has also designed a new malaria vaccine, R21/Matrix-MTM, which has recently reached licensure, again in partnership with the Serum Institute of India and also Novavax Inc. In 2021 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and appointed an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in Queen Elizabeth’s Birthday Honours. The nomination acknowledges the major contributions Adrian has made to vaccinations globally.


Congratulations to Professor Sir Stephen O’Rahilly
Congratulations to Professor Sir Stephen O’Rahilly who was announced as the 2023 recipient of the Association of Physicians’ award for an Outstanding Contribution to Translational Medicine. Stephen was presented with the award at a ceremony during the annual meeting held in Liverpool 20-21 April, 2023.
The nomination acknowledges the major contributions Stephen has made to the understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying human disorders of energy balance and metabolism. His work first established that mutations in single genes could result in severe human obesity and that these defects largely acted through the disruption of central satiety mechanisms. These findings have altered clinical approaches to the evaluation of the obese child and have identified a subtype of obesity amenable to dramatically effective therapy. His studies of patients with extreme insensitivity to insulin have also provided new insights into human insulin action and its disruption in states of insulin resistance.
