The MRC CEO Award Scheme recognises contributions from employees for outstanding effort and commitment to both their work and the MRC as an organisation.For the third year running, a tremendous number of nominations were received from across the MRC. We would like to congratulate Dr Muhammed Afolabi, Principal Investigator at MRC Unit The Gambia, who received a runner-up award in the category of ‘Driving Change’.

The awards are a great achievement and recognition of the contribution made by staff to the overall success of the MRC. The award ceremony was held on 7 October at the London Head Office, where Professor Sir John Savill announced the category results and presented prizes to the winners and runners up. The award recognises the significant contributions of Muhammed's PhD study which focused on development and evaluation of a locally appropriate multimedia tool for delivery of consent information to low and non-literate research participants.

Muhammed also developed an audio digitised questionnaire to measure participant comprehension of informed consent. The tools have been shown to improve participant understanding of informed consent and consequently the ethical conduct of clinical trials in The Gambia.

Congratulating Muhammed on the receipt of his award, Professor Umberto D’Alessandro, Director of MRC Unit The Gambia said: “Muhammed certainly deserves this recognition thanks to his commitment to research and his ability to overcome obstacles. I would like to congratulate him for this fantastic achievement and I wish him well for new exciting research projects.”