Queen's Award for Technological Achievement, presented in person by the Queen on her second visit to the university, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh and the Duke of Kent, chancellor of the university.
The university was awarded a 2002 Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher & Further Education for its research and development on optoelectronic devices and ion beam applications. In July 2007, the university was awarded Fairtrade University status by the Fairtrade Foundation. The university won a 2011 Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher & Further Education for its research into the fields of safe water and sanitation. In 2013, the Electronic Engineering Department of the university won the 2013 Elektra Award University Department of the Year, and judged to be the most innovative and successful in Europe. The university won The Sunday Times University of the Year award 2016. The university won a 2017 Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher & Further Education for "Leading research and teaching in food and nutrition informing public policy on diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis and other dietary related issues".
== Notable academics and alumni ==
=== Notable alumni ===
=== Notable academics ===
Academics to work at the university include Alf Adams, pioneer of the strained quantum-well laser; Jim Al-Khalili, the nuclear physicist, author and broadcaster; Aleks Krotoski, the technology journalist and broadcaster; Martin Sweeting, founder of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd; Nigel Gilbert, the sociologist pioneer in the use of agent-based models in the social sciences; Joao Santos Silva, who has made fundamental contributions to the gravity model of trade, and Martyn Barrett, who led the development of the Council of Europe's Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture and is a lead expert for the Council of Europe's Education Policy Advisers Network.
The current Director of the university's Advanced Technology Institute, Ravi Silva, is known for his work in Nanotechnology. In 2003, he was awarded the Albert …
