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Eleonore Poli received the PhD Student Award last week

The Vice-Chancellor’s Social Impact Awards are organised by Cambridge Hub to recognise and celebrate the achievements of exceptional University of Cambridge students who work towards making the world a better place.

The PhD Student Awards honour outstanding PhD students who have made an impressive social impact through their work.

Eleonore Poli was one of five exceptional students to receive a PhD Student Award. She is finishing her PhD in Materials & Metallurgy at Lucy Cavendish College. Upon moving to Cambridge, she started volunteering for the Friends without Borders language programme, providing students with the opportunity of learning French, as well as becoming an MPhil student representative. She then became the welfare officer and treasurer for the university handball team. She joined the Global Shapers Cambridge hub, starting first in the blood donation project, before starting her own sustainable fashion project and then becoming the hub co-curator. She also created a temporary COVID-19 oxygen relief project in May 2021 to help deal with the oxygen crisis in India, building a project on the conversion of diving air tanks into oxygen bottles for COVID-19 patients. She founded a sustainability project, the Climate Clock Project, creating a database of sustainable actions to help mitigate climate change. At the same time, she founded CHASM, the community on analogue space missions, providing conferences, workshops and wiki to increase coordination and communication in the field and improve research. She has mentored high school female students who write their first scientific papers and are applying to universities. She is a public speaker, speaking to schools, high schools, universities and the general public on space, sustainability, careers in space and STEM and female empowerment. She is now looking into the use of analogue space missions for the testing and development of space missions for astronauts with disabilities, to increase access to space for all.

Vice-Chancellor, Dr Anthony Freeling says, “I am proud of all the brilliant students at the University of Cambridge who have used their talents, kindness, and compassion to support good causes and improve our communities. Their tireless efforts in making a positive impact have not gone unnoticed. Their work has brought hope, inspiration, and positivity to our communities, and I am incredibly grateful for all that they have accomplished.”