The Vincent Weir award is a scientific award that was first established in 2010 by the British Bat Conservation Trust and aims at rewarding and encouraging research on the biology of bat conservation by the students residing in the United Kingdom. Every year, the award is presented to the winner after holding the National Bat Protection Conference. This annual award is accorded to a master's or doctoral student who has made a significant contribution to the biology of bat conservation, and is designed for students who produce research or published papers from their theses.

This year, Dr. Rana Osama Khayyat, ، an academic staff member at the Department of Biology, was nominated for this award by her PhD supervisor, and later selected to win the award by the organizing committee as a result of her doctoral project. The topic of her PhD is "Causes and Effects of Bat Wing Fissures on Flight for Pipistrellus Pipistrellus Bats", which was conducted at Manchester Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom in 2019.

This project provides the first quantitative description of wing wounds in the common type of Pipistrellus bats. Moreover, it provides a quantitative method for assessing flight in bats by testing wing movement and body orientation, and also presents scientific evidence that cats attack bats and cause ruptures in their wings.