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CPACT Malcolm McIvor Prize winner 2026

Awards - 22-07-2026

Malcolm McIvor was one of the key people in ICI who helped establish CPACT in 1997 and he played a prominent role in project supervision during the early stages of CPACT’s activities. Malcolm enjoyed his engagement with CPACT and has generously endowed a prize to be awarded annually to a researcher in recognition of that individual’s achievement in process analytics and control technologies. The prize recognises excellence in terms of scientific achievement, creative thinking and/or engagement between academia and industry.

The CPACT Chair and the selection panel, comprised of academic and industrial members of the CPACT Industrial Management Board, decided that this year’s winner was Oliver Pennington from the University of Manchester.

Oliver said "I am absolutely delighted and deeply honoured to receive this award in recognition of my research exploring industrial applications of machine learning. I would like to sincerely thank my PhD supervisor, Dr. Dongda Zhang, for nominating me and for his invaluable guidance, encouragement, and support throughout my research journey. I am also incredibly grateful for the support provided by everyone at CPACT, KEIT Industrial Analytics and the TOSI team at AstraZeneca as they have all played key roles in facilitating my early research career. I am excited to continue building on this work and I am looking forward to further engagement with the CPACT community."

Congratulations Oliver!