MRS Honours Leaders and Innovators

GfK NOP, ABA and Research Bods scooped three of the major categories at this year's MRS Awards ceremony held in London last night, while mobile crowdsourcing innovator Nathan Eagle received the inaugural MRS President's Medal.

Eagle, CEO of mobile phone crowdsourcing company Jana (formerly TxtEagle), was recognised for his 'extraordinary contribution to research'. He and Ben Olding founded Boston and San Francisco-based Jana in 2009, and claim to have access to a network of more than 3.48 billion mobile phone subscribers across almost 100 developing countries.

Eagle accepted his MRS award via a remote video link for his firm's work in Kenya, which aims to help track blood availability for hospitals across the region. Nurses send updates using text messages, and are rewarded with free mobile airtime to encourage them to provide regular data. The MRS said that the work is a prime example of 'someone making the most of advances in technology to design innovative research methods that can have an enormous impact on people's lives'.

The Best New Agency award went to online consumer panel firm ResearchBods, set up last year by Robin Hilton and Jonathan Clough who previously worked at youth researcher Dubit. Meanwhile, their former colleagues at Dubit scooped the MRS Award for Best Innovation.

GfK NOP won Best Agency with a turnover above £20m, ABA Market Research was named Best Agency with turnover under £20m, and Flamingo received The Best Place to Work accolade.

Client of the Year was presented to Diageo, Sainsbury's Customer Insight Team took the Best in-house Research Team gong, and ESRO and the Design Council were awarded the Healthcare Research award.

Jane Frost, MRS CEO, comments: 'The awards ceremony is an opportunity to celebrate creativity, innovation and business achievements and a further demonstration of the growing value and relevance of research. The breadth and depth of the winning entries - and the record number received - is testament to all that has been achieved over the past year with research continuing to provide the evidence for critical business and policy decisions.'

A full list of the winners can be found at: www.mrs.org.uk/awards .