Congratulations to this year’s winners: Victoria (Kip) Heath and Dr Vinaya Gunasri! Thanks to the generous sponsorship of this competition by Sonic Healthcare UK, both winners will be awarded £500 each. We are also very grateful to the competition’s judges: Dr Shubha Allard and Professor Sarah Coupland.

Kip and Vinaya both attended the recent New Fellows Ceremony where they were presented their certificates by College President, Professor Mike Osborn. They are both very worthy winner of this year’s prize, having shown a consistent commitment and proactivity to promoting pathology. 

Congratulations to Victoria (Kip) Heath and Dr Vinaya Gunasri – the well-deserved winners of the Science Communications prize – whose efforts to actively promote pathology have paid off. Keep up the good work! Sonic Healthcare UK are pleased to sponsor the Science Communications Prize and promote pathology in the UK.

Victoria (Kip) Heath

Kip is a Deputy Trust Lead Healthcare Scientist at Great Ormond Street Hospital. During the course of the year, Kip has completed more than 100 hours of science communication. She was part of the #PathologyROAR project, where she worked with healthcare scientists from seven NHS Trusts and four professional bodies to create a series of 19 videos that raised the profile of pathology careers. These videos are now part of the Health Education England national work experience catalogue. Kip also showcased her science comedy skills at her first international comedy gig at BrightClub Ireland. She was also invited to speak at New Scientist Live in Manchester, where she highlighted pathology careers and the impact of microbiologists during a session on Antibiotic Resistance.

In addition, Kip has gained funding for science communication skills training for pathology apprentices and researchers respectively. She has promoted pathology careers to school students by giving careers talks and providing shadowing opportunities for sixth form students. Each year, she also provides mentoring and interview coaching to 15 or so graduates. You may recognize Kip from some of RCPath’s public engagement activities, namely our National Pathology Week undergraduate pub quiz which she co-hosted.

Dr Vinaya Gunasri

Vinaya is a histopathology registrar undertaking a PhD at Queen Mary University London. Vinaya’s passion for spreading pathology information to audiences of different ethnic background and languages was evident from her application. She wrote: ‘It is recognised in the literature that screening uptake in ethnic minorities in the UK is lower than the rest of the population, partly due to language barriers and embarrassment discussing sensitive procedures. This highlights the need for a translation project such as ours which targeted communities who may not speak English well and are hard to reach.’

Vinaya led a project involving the translation of voiceovers and subtitles for videos (created by Cancer Research UK) on bowel cancer and cervical screening into Sylheti Bengali and Urdu. The videos are now available to watch on YouTube. She worked hard to publicise the videos to relevant communities and charities, as well as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Royal College of Physicians. On World Cancer Day, Vinaya also spoke on live radio to Voice of Islam. She also wrote an invited article for Cysters, a charity working with ethnic minorities to reach target groups within their campaigns.

The RCPath Science Communication Prize will open again for nominations in 2023. Find out more about the competition at www.rcpath.org/scicommprize.