About
The remit of the Outreach & Education Committee is to promote the use of microscopes in schools, and to raise public awareness and appreciation of microscopes and science through public exhibitions, workshops and talks.
The activities of the committee include:
Our Microscope Activity Kit Scheme – launched in 2011 to combat the lack of time currently given to science in the primary curriculum and to promote the use of microscopes in schools. Our kits are sent out to Primary Schools around the UK, complete with microscopes and ready-to-go activities for both teachers and pupils.
Summer Studentships - For those just starting out in microscopy, six Summer Studentships are offered each year to undergraduates wishing to complete a project with a large microscopy component in their summer holidays, meaning invaluable experience can be added to their CV before they've even left university!
RMS Diploma - the RMS offers a Diploma qualification to help you advance to the next stage of your career. Our Qualifications Committee meets twice a year to discuss current diploma candidates progress reports.
Public Engagement and Outreach Bursary Fund - It is recognised that many RMS Members are engaged in outreach activities where some external funding would help with those little extras, such as consumables, refreshments etc. Council has set aside a special bursary fund for this specific purpose.
Public Outreach Events – the RMS has hosted and been involved in many public outreach events over the last decade.
The RMS is committed to being a welcoming, inclusive Society and encourages diversity across all activities and in the membership of our committees and groups.
If you are interested in joining any of the committees in the future, please visit our Join a Committee page.
Committee
Kerry Thompson
Kerry is a Lecturer in Anatomy at the University of Galway since 2017. She is the Programme Director for the newly established MSc in Microscopy & Imaging at Galway. In 2010 she was awarded her PhD for a microscopy heavy research project which focused on structure function relations in the human endometrium. In 2011 she began work as a Postdoctoral Microscopy Facility Scientist in the Centre for Microscopy and Imaging (CMI) in Galway and was a key member in its establishment.
In the 2014/2015 academic year Kerry acted as a project lead in the “Under the Microscope” Programme, which brought the Microscope Activity Kits from the RMS into Irish Primary Schools for the first time. Following this Kerry was elected on the Outreach & Education Committee of the RMS. With the support of both the RMS and the Microscopy Society of Ireland, the team continue to visit schools all over Ireland and partake in outreach events. In 2018 she succeed Prof Susan Anderson as the Honorary Secretary of Outreach and Education of the RMS. Her current research is focused on the development of correlative light and advanced electron microscopy techniques and technologies. She is keenly involved in the acquisition of microscopy related research infrastructure, and the development of adequate training and career progression pathways for Imaging Scientists and Core Facility Staff.
Alex Sossick
Alex is Head of Science Innovation Platforms at the Natural History Museum. He has a strong background in light microscopy, previously leading the Advanced Imaging Facility at the Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, which includes a variety of microscopy techniques including confocal, high throughput and deconvolution. He is keen to raise skills and access to technology and runs various courses.
Alex Ball
Alex is the Head of Imaging and Analysis in the Core Research Laboratories at the Natural History Museum. He has over 25 years' experience in light and electron microscopy and has published research involving transmission and scanning electron microscopy, confocal microscopy and micro-CT. His PhD research involved the use of LM, SEM and SEM combined with computer-aided 3D reconstruction. Now his interests focus on non-destructive imaging and analysis of natural and cultural heritage samples. Over the course of his career Alex has had the good fortune to be tasked with setting up the NHM's micro-CT laboratory and more recently the 3D surface scanning facilities where our first job was to 3D scan an entire blue whale skeleton! He has a keen interest in outreach and education and has led the NHM's imaging activities at the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival for over ten years and routinely participates in the NHM's public outreach events.
Susan Anderson
Susan has been involved in microscopy for over 20 years. She established and led the Advanced Microscopy Unit at the University of Nottingham for ten years and is especially interested in electron microscopy, confocal laser scanning microscopy and correlative microscopy. Susan joined the RMS Materials Science Section in 2006 and helped to organise several symposia on the use of microscopy in biomaterials and tissue engineering.
Susan was delighted to be invited to be the Honorary Secretary Education in 2009 and she established a Committee of talented and enthusiastic microscopists and educationalists to drive forward the strategy of the newly established Outreach & Education Committee. Susan has been involved in Education for many years. She has been a volunteer at her local primary school and has encouraged many primary and secondary school visits to the Advanced Microscopy Unit over the years. In addition, she is involved with a creative science programme which encourages creativity in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths) in a space managed by and for young people. Through this Susan has been lucky to be involved in working with many primary and secondary schools to improve science provision.
Richard Bowman
Richard is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Reader at the University of Glasgow, whose research interests focus on instrumentation development for automated microscopy. Over the last six years he has led the OpenFlexure project, which uses open source hardware as a means to make automated laboratory experiments more repeatable and more accessible. This includes extensive collaboration with engineering and clinical collaborators in Tanzania, with the aim of enabling local engineers to manufacture digital microscopes suitable for medical diagnostics. He obtained his PhD in 2012 from the University of Glasgow working on optical micromanipulation, then spent four years in Cambridge working on microspectroscopic characterisation of single nanostructures before moving to Bath. He moved to the University of Glasgow in 2022.
Anna Baldycheva
Anna Baldycheva is an Assistant Professor in Engineering at the University of Exeter, where she leads STEMM Laboratory – a highly interdisciplinary academic research lab working on applied R&D of smart materials, devices and systems for real-world applications. STEMM Lab specifically conducts applied research in cooperation with industry and business.
Prof Baldycheva is a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Higher Education Academy. She served on the board of the EPMS section of the RMS since 2015, as a section committee member, then as a deputy chair and since 2023 as a chair of the section. Prior to her active involvement in the RMS activities, she was on board of the Microscopy Society of Ireland. At the RMS Prof Baldycheva is also actively involved in outreach activities to support and promote women in microscopy and related disciplines, as well as running and organising events for children.
With over 15 years of combined experience in pioneering R&D within prestigious academic institutions such as MIT, Trinity College Dublin, Tyndall Institute and the University of Exeter, Professor Baldycheva is an internationally recognised female researcher, expert in emerging technologies, innovator and entrepreneur in STEMM, who is the founder and the main driver behind the Women in STEMM Initiative - It’s Her! https://itsher.today/ featured in Forbes and other media. Since 2019 she serves on the committee of the Jocelyn Bell Burnell PhD Scholarship to support physicists from under-represented groups.
She is also a founder and trustee of STEMM Global Scientific Society - the first international academic network helping scientists and innovators to connect and establish collaborations on emerging technologies projects across STEMM disciplines.
Since 2015 Prof Baldycheva has been an expert in Future and Emerging Technologies at the European Commission. She has published over 100 scientific publications to date with over 1000 citations. She is an editor of the Nature Scientific Reports and Discover Nano Journals and a guest editor in a number of recognised scientific journals.
Jacquelyn Bond
Jacquie is a Senior Lecturer in the Leeds Institute of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health based at St James’s University Hospital. Her research group uses imaging approaches to investigate genes and proteins involved in mitosis, which when mutated cause Autosomal Recessive Primary Microcephaly (MCPH). The group use live cell imaging, confocal, super resolution and high-content high-throughput microscopy to identify and quantitate changes in mitotic spindle orientation, microtubule and actin organisation and cell cycle progression in patient cells and modified cancer cells. Jacquie’s interest in cell biology and imaging has led to her developing a high-throughput high-content imaging bio-screening facility at Leeds, which screens whole and partial genome siRNA/miRNA libraries and small molecule libraries to identify components of biological/disease pathways, therapeutic targets and novel therapeutic drugs. Currently she is the Academic Lead for imaging for the SCIF Flow Cytometry and Imaging Facility, University of Leeds, which for imaging encompasses a number of widefield, live cell and confocal imaging systems and the bio-screening service.
Susan Brooks
Susan has been involved with the RMS since winning an RMS prize for young scientists giving their first public scientific talk in 1985. Her research uses different types of microscopy -- standard light and fluorescence, confocal and electron microscopy - to study cancer biology. She is passionate about science education and teaches on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate cancer and cell biology courses. She has been an organiser of the RMS Cell Imaging Techniques course since 1996. She has authored and edited half a dozen books and is the RMS-Wiley Book Series editor.
Susan is Chair of the RMS Qualifications Committee.
Joel Cohen
Dr. Cohen utilized microscopy to study the introgression of germplasm in inbred and hybrid maize from one source being a single chromosome of Tripsacum, which required cytogenetic confirmation of its presence.
While teaching, Dr. Cohen gave priority importance to microscopy in secondary science and in his after-school science societies. Here, his students explored living specimens only by making their own fresh-mount slides. These labs led to articles published on using microscopy to explore biodiversity.
Currently, he is a Visiting Scholar at the Nicholas School of the Environment, of Duke University, USA. This follows a career in international research and eleven years as a secondary biology teacher. Presently, he is working on biological aspects of the C&O Canal Historical Park and its potential to serve as a corridor between various habitats along the Potomac river, thus providing wildlife migration routes right through the Nation’s Capital.
Oliver Clarke
Dr Oliver Clarke is the Head of Microscopy for Carl Zeiss Limited in the United Kingdom. He has worked for Carl Zeiss Limited since 2005 and has held a several different roles in the company including Product Specialist, Business Development Manager, and Account Manager. Oliver holds a PhD in Bio-organic Chemistry from the University of Essex. During his PhD, Oliver worked with Dr Peter O’Toole who collaborated on the development of a new kind of fluorescent dye and possible drug for PDT in cancer. In recent years Oliver has developed a passion for STEM outreach and public engagement science which he sees as vital to the evolution of our relationship to technology. ZEISS has an influence in almost every market of Science across both Academia and Industry. 170 years of history and leadership in Microscopy means that the position already held by Oliver at ZEISS, carries significant responsibility for the future direction of microscopy while respecting and protecting its past.
Lorna Dougan
Lorna is an Associate Professor in the Molecular and Nanoscale Physics group in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leeds. Before joining in 2009, Lorna held a postdoctoral researcher position in the Biological Sciences department at Columbia University in New York. Lorna is a physicist by training (MPhys and PhD) and during this time held a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship. More recently she was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry MacroGroup UK Young Researchers Medal in 2013 and the Medical Research Council and Royal Society Suffrage Science Award in 2015. Lorna's research interests span biophysics and soft matter physics.
Owen Green
Owen has worked in the Earth Science Department at the University of Oxford since 1989. He initially, trained and worked in London Colleges as a Geological Technician and Curator of Geological Collections. He is currently a member of both the Engineering and Physical Sciences and Outreach Committees, and has been a co-convenor of the Geo-materials meeting (September 2014), and organised Outreach events on volcanos and mountain building. He has been a member of the Learning Zone team at mmc and an occasional contributor to infocus. His research interests include sample preparation techniques, particularly those involving applications in light and scanning electron microscopy. He is currently undertaking a 2nd edition of A manual of Practical Laboratory and Field Techniques in Palaeobiology (2001, published by Kluwer, now Springer). Other micropalaeontological research includes a study of the last shallow marine carbonate-platform foraminifera of the Tethyan Ocean recorded in rocks from the NW Himalayas 50.5 million years ago as India crashed into Asia, Neoproterozoic agglutinated foraminifera from NW Europe (Avalonia and Baltica), and contextual studies on the world’s oldest (3.5 billion years old) putative microfossils from Western Australia.
Yanping Guo
Yanping is the manager of the Flow Cytometry Translational Technology Platform at UCL Cancer Institute. After receiving her DPhil degree from Oxford University, Yanping did her postdoc research at UCL focusing on the hematopoietic stem cells and leukaemia. She enjoys helping users with training, experimental design and data analysis for flow cytometry in different disciplines.
She is also has a keen interest in the teaching and mentoring of younger scientists.
Rob Kesseler
Rob Kesseler is a visual artist and Professor at Central Saint Martins. As University Chair in Arts, Design & Science he has initiated a series of events and opportunities for students drawing on his extensive links with the science community, including surgeon Roger Kneebone (Imperial College) and biologists Enrico Coen (John Innes Plant Science Centre) and Chris Hawes (Oxford Brookes Micro Imaging facility). As NESTA Fellow at Kew (2001-2004) he undertook research into a range of microscopy techniques from which he developed an extensive collection of images. These were exhibited in a solo exhibition at Kew and provided the basis for a series of award winning books on Pollen, Seeds and Fruit. In 2010, as Year of Bio-Diversity Fellow at the Gulbenkian Science Institute in Portugal, he worked with molecular biologists to create a collection of cellular images derived from microfine sections of local flora which have featured extensively in exhibitions in Portugal, Germany, Tasmania, USA, China and Chile.
Marie Kokolski
Marie has been an assistant professor in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Nottingham since 2016. She first joined the RMS in 2008 when working as a microscope technician in a multi-user facility; here she specialised in sample preparation and imaging for light, fluorescence and electron microscopy. She has been involved in several local and national outreach activities and joined the RMS Outreach and Education committee in 2018.
Dale Moulding
Dale is the Light Microscopy core facility manager at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. He took up this position in 2014, having spent the previous 16 years as a postdoc in Liverpool and London. Dale completed his PhD in 1998 at the University of Liverpool, where he learnt the basics of confocal microscopy. In his current post he helps researchers with all aspects of light microscopy and image analysis. He runs an open access image analysis course designed to make image analysis as accessible as possible to the wider research community.
Niga Nawroly
Niga is a qualified immunologist from Imperial College London with 10 years’ experience of the management of a successful flow cytometry facility. She has also worked for a number of flow cytometry reagents and instrumentation companies. She is interested in education in flow cytometry either as an organiser or a teacher/trainer. She has been an active member of the Flow Cytometry Committee for a number of years.
James Perkins
James Perkins is a physics teacher and head of science at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Faversham. James obtained both his MPhys and PhD at the University of Warwick and enjoyed a successful career in research in the department of materials, Imperial College London running a rather large and expensive transmission electron microscope where he regularly prodded individual atoms with electrons to see what they would do! James is a microscope geek and through research travelling has visited or worked at a number of electron microscopy labs around the world from Munich to Vancouver island via deepest Tennessee. Since becoming a teacher James has encouraged schools to be engaged with materials science and has an interest in the use of science research equipment and techniques. At St Paul's school he acquired funding for a table top scanning electron microscope which was used for research in school, outreach events and enhancing the curriculum. James helps run a residential materials science course with the institute of materials and is actively involved with the outreach and education committee of the Royal Microscopical Society. He was recently awarded a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust fellowship to travel to schools in the USA finding out how they access science research, his travel blog can be found on the website of the institute for research in schools.
Andrew Scott
Andrew is a senior lecturer in the Institute for Materials Research. He has extensive experience of a wide range of experimental (advanced electron microscopy, light microscopy, surface analysis, X-ray diffraction) and theoretical (ab-initio materials modelling, crystallography) techniques, acquired in both academia (Leeds, Newcastle, Brunel) and industry (BP Research). He is secretary of the Materials Chemistry Committee of the IOM3.
Qualifications Committee
Susan Brooks
Susan has been involved with the RMS since winning an RMS prize for young scientists giving their first public scientific talk in 1985. Her research uses different types of microscopy -- standard light and fluorescence, confocal and electron microscopy - to study cancer biology. She is passionate about science education and teaches on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate cancer and cell biology courses. She has been an organiser of the RMS Cell Imaging Techniques course since 1996. She has authored and edited half a dozen books and is the RMS-Wiley Book Series editor.
Susan is Chair of the RMS Qualifications Committee.
Kerry Thompson
Kerry is a Lecturer in Anatomy at the University of Galway since 2017. She is the Programme Director for the newly established MSc in Microscopy & Imaging at Galway. In 2010 she was awarded her PhD for a microscopy heavy research project which focused on structure function relations in the human endometrium. In 2011 she began work as a Postdoctoral Microscopy Facility Scientist in the Centre for Microscopy and Imaging (CMI) in Galway and was a key member in its establishment.
In the 2014/2015 academic year Kerry acted as a project lead in the “Under the Microscope” Programme, which brought the Microscope Activity Kits from the RMS into Irish Primary Schools for the first time. Following this Kerry was elected on the Outreach & Education Committee of the RMS. With the support of both the RMS and the Microscopy Society of Ireland, the team continue to visit schools all over Ireland and partake in outreach events. In 2018 she succeed Prof Susan Anderson as the Honorary Secretary of Outreach and Education of the RMS. Her current research is focused on the development of correlative light and advanced electron microscopy techniques and technologies. She is keenly involved in the acquisition of microscopy related research infrastructure, and the development of adequate training and career progression pathways for Imaging Scientists and Core Facility Staff.
Susan Anderson
Susan has been involved in microscopy for over 20 years. She established and led the Advanced Microscopy Unit at the University of Nottingham for ten years and is especially interested in electron microscopy, confocal laser scanning microscopy and correlative microscopy. Susan joined the RMS Materials Science Section in 2006 and helped to organise several symposia on the use of microscopy in biomaterials and tissue engineering.
Susan was delighted to be invited to be the Honorary Secretary Education in 2009 and she established a Committee of talented and enthusiastic microscopists and educationalists to drive forward the strategy of the newly established Outreach & Education Committee. Susan has been involved in Education for many years. She has been a volunteer at her local primary school and has encouraged many primary and secondary school visits to the Advanced Microscopy Unit over the years. In addition, she is involved with a creative science programme which encourages creativity in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths) in a space managed by and for young people. Through this Susan has been lucky to be involved in working with many primary and secondary schools to improve science provision.
Rik Brydson
Rik holds a chair in the Institute for Materials Research (IMR) in the School of Process Environmental and Materials Engineering at the University of Leeds. He heads the NanoCharacterisation group based around the Leeds Electron Microscopy and Spectroscopy (LEMAS) centre which is shared between Materials and Earth Sciences and also acts as an EPSRC facility for external UK researchers. He has a general research interest in high spatial resolution chemical analysis in nanostructured materials, and has a current research h index of 32 with over 25 years research experience in nanomaterials characterisation. He has managed extensive national and international collaborations including being current consortium leader for the UK National Facility for Aberration corrected Electron Microscopy, SuperSTEM at Daresbury.
Rik is also on the Management Board of the European Microscopy Society. He has written an RMS Handbook on Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (Bios /Taylor and Francis 2001), has co-written a book on “Nanoscale Science and Technology" (Wiley 2005), edited a recent RMS book on Analytical Aberration-corrected Transmission Electron Microscopy with Wiley and has contributed a number of other chapters in specialist books on electron microscopy by other professional bodies covering Physics, Chemistry and Engineering. In recent years his research interests have focused on applying high spatial resolution characterisation methods (particularly TEM and EELS) to the nanochemical analysis of softer, more radiation sensitive materials.
Marie Kokolski
Marie has been an assistant professor in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Nottingham since 2016. She first joined the RMS in 2008 when working as a microscope technician in a multi-user facility; here she specialised in sample preparation and imaging for light, fluorescence and electron microscopy. She has been involved in several local and national outreach activities and joined the RMS Outreach and Education committee in 2018.
Andrew Scott
Andrew is a senior lecturer in the Institute for Materials Research. He has extensive experience of a wide range of experimental (advanced electron microscopy, light microscopy, surface analysis, X-ray diffraction) and theoretical (ab-initio materials modelling, crystallography) techniques, acquired in both academia (Leeds, Newcastle, Brunel) and industry (BP Research). He is secretary of the Materials Chemistry Committee of the IOM3.
Alex Sossick
Alex is Head of Science Innovation Platforms at the Natural History Museum. He has a strong background in light microscopy, previously leading the Advanced Imaging Facility at the Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, which includes a variety of microscopy techniques including confocal, high throughput and deconvolution. He is keen to raise skills and access to technology and runs various courses.
AGM
The 2025 Annual General Meeting of the Outreach & Education Committee of the Royal Microscopical Society will place at 6pm on Tuesday 1 July 2025 during mmc2025 incorporating EMAG 2025.
All the Society’s AGMs are free to attend for both members and non-members.