Prize Medal
Nominations for the 2028 Prize Medal are now open. The deadline for submissions is 14 June 2026. Details of the nomination process and award criteria can be found below.
Award criteria and guidance
The Prize Medal recognises the highest-class researchers who have made an impact in microbiology and beyond.
Nominations should include:
- Evidence of a significant, global impact in microbiology, with demonstrable impact beyond the field.
- Evidence of mentoring and training others.
The form will ask you to:
- Outline the distinction of the candidate’s work and global contribution to microbiology.
This section should include significant discoveries in the candidate’s field, invention or development of new tools and technologies, or evidence of great originality or foresight.
- Describe the impact of the candidate’s work within and beyond microbiology.
This section should include how the nominee’s work has had an influence in their field and across the breadth of microbiology and other disciplines and note whether there has been, or if there is the potential for, a translational aspect to their work in industry, policy or wider society.
- Provide examples of academic and professional citizenship.
This section could include contributions to public engagement work, teaching and mentoring. Please include links to work and projects where appropriate.
Nominations could also provide the nominee’s ORCID iD or a link to their Google Scholar page.
Nomination information
The deadline for submissions is 14 June 2026.
Nominations for the Prize Medal are welcome from any member of the Microbiology Society, regardless of membership period or category. Nominees do not have to be members of the Society.
Please click the 'Nominate now' button below and log in to your MiSociety account to submit a nomination. You will need to enter some text into all mandatory fields before being able to save a draft of your nomination. Once saved, you will be able to return to edit it; however, once a nomination is submitted, it cannot be amended. You may therefore prefer to collaborate via an offline version and copy it across when ready for submission for ease.
The recipient of the Prize Lecture will receive £1,000 and be expected to give a lecture based on their research at the Microbiology Society's Annual Conference. They will also be strongly encouraged to publish the lecture in one of the Society’s journals, whichever is the most suitable. This decision will be at the discretion of the Editors of the journals.
Unsuccessful nominations will be reconsidered for a further two years, pending confirmation/update of the nomination by the nominators each year. If the period expires and the nomination remains unsuccessful, individuals may be nominated again after a one-year period. This is in place to protect the nominee, as they may wish to withdraw from the process. The Society office will contact you each year in order to update the nomination.
The Microbiology Society is committed to ensuring equal access to opportunities to participate in our activities, and therefore we are asking members who nominate our Prize Lectures to ensure their Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Questionnaire answers are up to date. While it is voluntary to disclose information about yourself, your responses will be instrumental in supporting us to make the Society more inclusive. All of your responses to this questionnaire will be treated as confidential, in line with our privacy policy and data protection laws. Any reporting of the data will be anonymised and will be used to monitor and review the diversity and inclusivity of the Society and its activities.
Previous winners of the Prize Medal
Visit our Youtube channel playlist to watch previous Prize Lectures.
Additional information
All supplementary material required by the rules of the award must be provided at the point of nomination. If you foresee any problems meeting the advertised deadline, please contact [email protected].
We welcome nominations from groups of members. Please contact [email protected] if you would like to be put in touch with someone to help.
The Microbiology Society supports equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and asks that members making nominations consider the entire talent pool available. You can find out more about our policy and see our most recent data on the EDI page.
For questions about the Prize Medal, please contact [email protected].