The Society has established a Committee to drive forward its outreach activities. If you have an interest in bringing microscopy to a wider audience and would like to contribute to the Committee, please contact Allison Winton.
The Annual General Meeting of the Outreach & Education Section was held on Tuesday 13th September 2011.
View the Minutes of the AGM.
Members of the Committee
Dr Susan Anderson, University of Nottingham, UK
Honorary Secretary Education
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. She was delighted to be invited to be the Honorary Secretary for Education and Outreach in 2009 and has established a Committee of talented and enthusiastic microscopists and educationalists to drive forward the strategy. 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 she has been lucky to be involved in working with many primary and secondary schools to improve science provision.
Ms Tracey Barton, Primary School Teacher, UK
Dr Peter Evennett, University of Leeds, UK (retired)
Peter lectured in Zoology at the University of Leeds, and for many years has taught light and electron microscopy for RMS courses and elsewhere. He has been closely involved with the RMS’s educational activities, and the project for encouraging the use of microscopes in primary schools. Together with Chris Hammond he helps provide funds for this scheme by recycling old microscopes, and selling them to amateur microscopists. He is particularly interested in helping microscopists understand in simple terms the basic principles of how their instruments work. Peter has been a member of the RMS for many years, and is an Honorary Fellow of the Society.
Dr Roland Fleck, National Institute for Biological Standards and Control , UK
Dr George Georgiou, Secondary School Teacher, UK
Dr Owen Green, University of Oxford, UK
Owen has worked in Earth Science Departments for over 35 years. He has been at the University of Oxford since 1989. Specialist interests include sample preparation techniques and protocols, especially light and scanning electron microscopy applicable to palaeobiology, and specifically applications in micropalaeontology. He is the author of A manual of Practical Laboratory and Field Techniques in Palaeobiology.
Dr Christopher Hammond, University of Leeds, UK (retired)
Christopher, formerly Senior Lecturer in Materials at the University of Leeds, has had a long association with the RMS. Together with a small group of Council members he was involved in the establishment of the AMFES initiative in 1995, from which the Educational and Outreach programme has largely grown. His motivation is the belief that a child's curiosity about the natural world can be nurtured, from the simplest level, by the observations and discoveries which can be made with the microscope.
Dr Pippa Hawes, Institute for Animal Health, UK
Pippa has extensive experience in the field of electron microscopy.
She believes the RMS has an important role to play in the promotion and teaching of microscopy.
Consequently she is the co-organiser of the EM Summer School and heavily involved in co-coordinating the Cell Imaging Techniques course.
Mrs Pippa Howard, ERA Technology Ltd, UK
Pippa has run the Electron Microscopy Service since 1969, with a break of a few years when her children were small. Her laboratory is part of the Reliability and Failure Analysis dept., so she deals with a huge variety of samples (and people) and never knows quite what each day will bring. In 2002 she, with her husband Ian, started a charity (PAGEANT) helping education in The Gambia, West Africa. The amount and quality of the materials available for children in Gambian schools to have any practical experience in Science is pitiful – PAGEANT is doing its best to redress this situation and the RMS has given considerable financial support to supplying microscopes and instruction for Gambian teachers.
Dr Tony Kendrick, Secondary School Teacher, UK (training)
Tony is a Physicist who has been working for over 30 years in materials science using a variety of electron microscopy techniques. For the last 6 years, he has been running his own company (SEM-FIB Solutions). Tony has been a regular lecturer on FIB at the annual RMS EM Spring/Summer Schools. In recent years, Tony got involved with helping at his local secondary school and quickly realised that he loves teaching and working with young people. In Sept 2010 he started a PGCE (Science) course at Oxford Brookes University.
Dr Noah Russell, University of Nottingham, UK
Dr Andrew Scott, University of Leeds, UK
Andrew is a lecturer in the Institute for Materials Research. He has extensive experience of a wide range of experimental (advanced electron 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.
Dr Rachael Walker, Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research, University of Cambridge, UK
Rachael runs the Flow Cytometry Core Facility at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research at the University of Cambridge. She also looks after the flow cytometry labs in the Laboratory for Regenerative Medicine and the Gurdon Institute. She is also the secretary of flowcytometryUK and has worked with the RMS for several years to organise very successful joint flowcytometryUK and RMS national flow cytometry meetings.
Dr Claire Wells, King’s College London, UK
Claire's laboratory is interested in how cancer cells are able to dissociate from the primary tumour, invade the surrounding tissue and subsequently metastasise to distal sites. They use a lot of microscopy in the work, including confocal, TIRF and FRET in addition to live cell imaging to investigate the role of PAK family kinases in cancer cell migration, adhesion and invasion. Claire will co-organise the next RMS Abercrombie meeting in 2012. She has been working with local primary school children bringing microscopy into the classroom.
Mrs Allison Winton (RMS Event Director)
