This Monday, 9 December, saw the return of Bake Your Doctorate, our annual competition for doctoral students to represent their research in a cake. 12 doctoral students dusted off their aprons and produced some fabulous creations which they showcased in The Edge to fellow researchers and members of staff.

From reservoir monitoring to sex ratios, and wing vortices to skeleton shoes, entrants really went to town to represent their PhDs in a cake, using Victoria sponge, jelly, fondant, vegan biscuits, choux buns and even chocolate reindeer. The finished creations represented a wonderful cross section of the brilliant research going on right across our university.

Big bake-off congratulations for a wonderful effort to all the participants:

We were delighted to welcome Richard Bertinet, from The Bertinet Kitchen, to campus as our Head Judge, joined by Dean Veall, from the Public Engagement Team. They clearly had a difficult decision choosing between the culinary PhDs, but were unanimous in their choice of winner.

Naomi Heffer, (PhD Programme in Psychology) was given The Judges Choice Award for her multi-sensory cake 'Putting the Pieces Together: Multisensory Integration of Emotion in Anxiety Disorders'. Using a jigsaw piece concept to represent Smell, Sight, Touch and Hear, Naomi used coffee beans, popping candy and marbled sponge to bring each sense to life.

Fellow researchers and staff also voted for their favourites at the event and agreed with the judges, awarding Naomi The People's Choice Award, crowning her double winner for 2019.

Commenting on her win, Naomi said:

It's amazing! I'm so excited to have won. Bake Your Doctorate is a really great opportunity to tell lots of people about your research - people have never been so interested in multisensory integration...!

Claire Tanner (PhD Programme in Biology and Biochemistry) was runner up with a table full of birdie cupcakes titled: 'Do sex ratios affect the mating system and parental care in shorebirds?' Both Naomi and Claire bagged a signed book from Richard and Naomi also took home a 1-1 lesson from The Bertinet Cookery School.

Thank you to everyone who took part and/or helped to make Bake Your Doctorate 2019 a success. See you next year!

Take a look at all the photos from Bake Your Doctorate 2019 in our Flickr album.