7 February 2025 – Dr Gabriel Okello won the Early Career Researcher award at the prestigious Cambridge Awards for Research Impact and Engagement earlier this week.
Gabriel is The King's Global Sustainability Fellow in Air Quality and NCDS, supported by AstraZeneca. His work applies multidisciplinary, collaborative approaches to tackle air pollution in rapidly urbanising African cities.
The Cambridge Awards for Research Impact and Engagement, formerly the Vice-Chancellor's Award, are held annually to recognise exceptional achievement, innovation, and creativity in developing research engagement and impact plans with significant economic, social, and cultural potential.
Following a successful five years, Gabriel has secured some seed funding to drive and facilitate more impact driven research incorporating multi-stakeholder engagement through the soon-to-be-launched Climate and Health Africa programme.
Gabriel said: “This project exemplifies the power of multidisciplinary collaboration to address complex societal cross-cutting challenges like air pollution. By combining scientific evidence with local knowledge and fostering partnerships across sectors, we’ve co-created contextually relevant and scalable solutions with transformative potential.
“The process has taught us the value of understanding local contextual factors, building trust, working with people from various sectors, adaptability, and the importance of integrating scientific evidence with local knowledge.”
Some of the wide-reaching outcomes of the research include:
- Supporting the co-development of Uganda’s first-ever Air Quality Standards
- Supporting the acceleration of e-mobility through evidence-informed approaches. The number of electric motorcycles has increased from 200 to over 3,000, and battery-swapping stations have grown from 25 to 115. Government incentives have further spurred sector growth
- Co-creation of The Clean Air Network, a multi-regional community of practice which supports air quality solutions across Africa
- Working with incredible colleagues at Makerere AirQo to provide continuous real-time air quality data that is empowering communities, researchers, and policymakers in various cities in Africa.