Viki Male is the winner for 2022, recognising her dedication to ensuring that pregnant people were able to access evidence-based information on the COVID vaccine, as well as campaigning and advocating on their behalf.

Viki joined Clare in 2004 as an undergraduate Natural Scientist, specialising in immunology and virology. She stayed in Cambridge for a PhD on immune cells in human pregnancy before moving to London for a job as a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College. Viki then secured funding for her own lab which now focuses on understanding how the uterine immune system is involved in the physiological processes of pregnancy.

During the pandemic, Viki was involved in collating and communicating information on the effect of SARS-CoV2 infection and COVID vaccination on fertility, pregnancy and breastfeeding, and in research on how COVID vaccination affects the menstrual cycle.

Graham Serjeant left Clare in 1960 for the London Hospital Medical School and after qualifying in 1963 and three years of house jobs at the London, the Royal United Hospital, Bath, and Hammersmith Hospital, left the UK for Jamaica where he and his wife Beryl, a medical technologist, planned to spend one year. They quickly became involved sickle cell disease and 48 years later are still there, having directed the Medical Research Council Laboratories Unit at the University of the West Indies in Kingston until retirement in 1999.

He now continues working with the Sickle Cell Trust (Jamaica). Much of his work has been directed to understanding the variability of this condition and the development of cost-effective therapies appropriate to countries with limited resources. This experience has proved valuable to many other developing societies and he travels frequently to Brazil, Africa, Saudi Arabia and India. He was awarded the CMG in 1981, the CD (Hon) in 1995, and the Order of Jamaica in 2015.

Natalie is trained in surgery and emergency medicine and has been working in the field full-time for Médecins Sans Frontières. Her work has taken her to some of the most dangerous and challenging places in the world, such as the Philippines, Pakistan, Syria, Central African Republic and Ethiopia.

Whether she is establishing field hospitals, running clinics or coordinating medical activities in refugee camps, it is certainly a varied job. Last year Natalie worked in Aleppo in Syria, where apart from addressing the obvious trauma needs from the on-going daily bombing, she also became involved in primary care, vaccination, blood transfusion, chronic disease and dialysis, and obstetric care.

Although war-related injuries were a major problem in these regions, Natalie realised that outside the capital Bangui, far more people were dying of normal African diseases – malaria and ill health. She and a colleague started running clinics in the villages – seeing 600-700 children in a morning – and eventually setting up a paediatric hospital for malaria in the isolated town of Bocaranga. She moved from CAR to Ethiopia, to coordinate MSF’s medical programmes for refugees from South Sudan in April this year.

The winner of the 2011 Alumnus of the Year Award is Najam Sethi (1967), an award-winning Pakistani journalist, a convinced democrat, an advocate of moderation in foreign policy, and an opponent of religious extremism and violence.

Mr Sethi is the editor-in-chief of The Friday Times, a Lahore based political weekly and was previously the editor of Daily Times and Daily Aajkal newspapers. He is currently the Editor in Chief of Geo News where he hosts a popular political program: “aapas ki baat”. He is also the only journalist in Asia to receive three international press freedom awards in a decade.

The winner of the 2010 Alumnus of the Year Award is John Thompson (1959), in recognition of his work in the township of Masiphumelele near Cape Town.

From building one house to hundreds, providing children in creches with sanitation and getting fully involved in improving the teaching system to helping out with every aspect of the township, John's pragmaticism makes what is a huge endeavour, a life's work, sound straightforward.

The winner of the 2009 Alumnus of the Year Award is Stephen Jakobi (1956), founder of Fair Trials International and a tireless campaigner against miscarriages of justice around the world.

In 1992 there was public outrage over the case of Karen Smith, a British citizen who was arrested in Thailand for drug smuggling. She was tried without proper legal representation or a chance to fully defend herself, and shortly after this Stephen set up his company under the name Fair Trials Abroad (FTA), successfully winning a pardon for Ms Smith.

Much of the company's work forcuses on finding people who may have commited a crime under a foreign jurisdiction and face a trial in which they are to be denied a proper defence. In these caes FTA secures proper legal representation for them, often with great results.