We are pleased to announce Dr Sam Webb as a winner of the 2025 OPSYRIS Rising Star award. Dr Sam Webb is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford. Sam’s research focusses on cognitive screening in stroke: developing tools, assessing their validity and reliability, and implementing them into clinical practice. He was awarded a postgraduate fellowship by the Stroke Association for his PhD project – during which he was a co-developer of, and validated, the OxMET, Mini-OCS, MET-Home revised, and OCS-Plus. He validated all, separately, on over 700 stroke survivors (in total) as well as conducted normative data collection (3 scientific articles on OxMET, 3 on OCS-Plus, 1 on Mini-OCS, and 1 on MET-Home: https://samswebb.github.io/publications.html). He showed the tools are accurate, feasible, and sensitive to cognitive impairments. The OxMET and OCS-Plus are now used, for free, in over 1,000 settings globally and counting; both tools have at least 3 cultural/linguistic translations in different nations. He is currently funded by the Stroke Association as a postdoctoral research fellow to co-produce the Multistaged Cognitive Screen for Stroke (MCS-Stroke), which is a cognitive screen assessing 6-domains of cognition at a level tailored to the individual, and it is suitable for those with aphasia and motor impairments. Sam also provides statistical and methods consultancy to private companies.