RMS Council

Peter O'Toole

RMS President, University of York

Peter heads the Imaging and Cytometry Labs within the Technology Facility at the University of York which includes an array of confocal microscopes, flow cytometers and electron microscopes. Peter gained his PhD in the Cell Biophysics Laboratory at the University of Essex and has been involved in many aspects of fluorescence imaging. Research is currently focused on both technology and method development of novel probes and imaging modalities. 

Peter has ongoing collaborations with many leading microscopy and cytometry companies and his group also provides research support to many academics and commercial organisations. Peter is also heavily involved with teaching microscopy and flow cytometry which includes organising and teaching on both the RMS Light Microscopy Summer School and the RMS Practical Flow Cytometry courses.

Rik Brydson

RMS Vice President , University of Leeds

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.

Michelle Peckham

Executive Honorary Secretary, University of Leeds

Michelle is Professor of Cell Biology in the Faculty of Biological Sciences. She obtained a BA in Physiology of Organisms at the University of York, and a PhD in Physiology at University College London. She moved to King's College London, and started to use a specialised form of light microscopy (birefringence) to investigate muscle crossbridge orientation. She then worked at UCSF, San Francisco for a year, where she used fluorescence polarisation to investigate muscle crossbridges. She moved back to the UK, to the University of York, to work on insect flight muscle. In 1990 she was awarded a Royal Society University Research fellowship, based at King's College London, and began working on the cell and molecular biology of muscle development, and started to use live cell imaging to investigate muscle cell behaviour in cultured cells, and confocal microscopy to investigate their cytoskeleton. She collaborated with Graham Dunn to use Digitally Recorded Interference Microscopy with Automatic Phase Shifting (DRIMAPS) to investigate cell crawling behaviour. She moved to Leeds in 1997 as a Lecturer, and has continued to use a wide range of both light and electron microscopy approaches to investigate the molecular motors and the cytoskeleton.

Rod Shipley

RMS Honorary Treasurer, Thermo Fisher Scientific (retired)

Rod has recently retired from his role at Thermo Fisher Scientific where he lead the Sales and Service Organisations as VP & Senior Director for over nine years in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Rod is a qualified Metallurgist and spent 13 years in Industry in a variety of roles culminating in heading the analysis department responsible for carrying out residual stress analysis on aerospace bearings for their main customer at Rolls Royce. It was from this position that he took his first steps into a commercial role in 1991 with Philips Analytical X-Ray responsible for XRD & XRF Sales in the Midlands and South West of England before switching to become the UK Sales Manager with FEI Electron Optics in 1998.

Maddy Parsons

RMS Honorary Secretary Biological Science, King's College London

Maddy is Professor of Cell Biology at King’s College London. Maddy completed her PhD in Biochemistry within the Department of Medicine at University College London in 2000. During her PhD she analysed the role of mechanical forces in dermal scarring. She then moved to Cancer Research UK laboratories in London for a 4-year postdoctoral position where she used advanced microscopy techniques including FRET/FLIM to dissect adhesion receptor signaling to the actin cytoskeleton and how this controlled directed cell invasion. Based on these achievements, Maddy was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2005 to establish her own group within the Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics at King’s College London.

Following completion of her fellowship, Maddy was appointed Reader at King’s in 2013 and Professor of Cell Biology in 2015. Maddy has established collaborations with developmental biologists and clinical researchers to study adhesion receptor signalling in skin blistering, wound healing, inflammation and cancer. She works closely with physicists, biophysicists and other world-leading cell migration groups in the field to develop and apply new imaging technologies to dissect spatiotemporal cytoskeletal signalling events in live cells, tissues and whole organisms. As a result of her interest and applications of advanced microscopy, Maddy developed a strong working partnership with Nikon, which subsequently led to the establishment of the state-of-the-art, world-class Nikon Imaging Centre at King’s College London of which she is Director. Maddy also currently works alongside other biotech and pharmaceutical companies to develop and apply advanced imaging approaches to basic mechanisms that underpin drug discovery. 

Andy Brown

RMS Honorary Secretary Physical Science, University of Leeds

Andy is a Professor in the School of Chemical and Process Engineering at the University of Leeds and has a background in the application of analytical transmission electron microscopy to the characterization of materials, focusing more recently on nanoparticles and beam sensitive materials.

Kerry Thompson

Chair of Outreach & Education Committee, Honorary Secretary for Education, University of Galway

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.  

Peter Nellist

University of Oxford
Pete Nellist is a Professor in the Department of Materials, and a Tutorial Fellow at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford. He leads a research group that focuses on the applications and development of high-resolution electron microscope techniques, in particular scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), including atomic resolution Z-contrast imaging, ptychography, electron energy-loss and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and applications of spherical aberration correctors. Pete gained his PhD from the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. Since then he has worked in academia and in the commercial world in the UK, USA and Republic of Ireland. In 2007 he was awarded the Burton Medal by the Microscopy Society of America for exceptional contributions to microscopy, and in 2013 the Ernst Ruska Prize of the German Microscopy Society.  In addition to being Vice-President of the Royal Microscopical Society he is also a Board Member of the European Microscopy Society.

Kurt Anderson

Light Microscopy Section Chair, The Francis Crick Institute

Kurt is a cell biologist who uses advanced imaging methods to study cell migration. He completed his PhD at the University of Salzburg in 1997 on the actin-based mechanism of fish keratocyte migration. He then spent 2 years as a post-doc at the Marie Curie Cancer Research Institute (UK) before moving to Dresden in 2001 to set up the light microscopy facility at the new MPI-CBG. In 2005 he moved to the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, where he runs the Beatson Advanced Imaging Resource (BAIR) and a research group investigating tumor cell migration. His work at the Beatson used imaging methods such as FRAP and FRET to study the molecular dynamics of cell adhesion and migration in vitro and in vivo. In 2016 Kurt moved to the Francis Crick Institute, where he is now Head of the Crick Advanced Light Microscopy Facility (CALM)

Anna Baldycheva

Engineering, Physical & Material Sciences Section Chair, University of Exeter

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.

Susan Brooks

RMS-Wiley Book Series Editor & Chair of the Qualifications Committee, Oxford Brookes University

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.

Roland Fleck

Electron Microscopy Section Chair, King's College London

Roland is Reader and Director of the King's Centre for Ultra Structural Imaging

Yanping Guo

Flow Cytometry Section Chair , University College London

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.

Jamie Hobbs

AFM & Scanning Probe Microscopies Section Chair, University of Sheffield

Jamie received a BSc in Physics from the University of Bristol in 1991, followed by a PhD in polymer physics, also from Bristol. Following work with Peter Barham and Andrew Keller on polymer crystallization, he worked with Mervyn Miles using and developing AFM for studying polymers. He pioneered methods for following polymer crystallization in real time, and then co-developed a new high speed scanning (videoAFM) approach which led to the launch of a spin-out company, Infinitesima Ltd. On moving to Sheffield in 2004 he started to collaborate widely with biologists, as well as further developing AFM approaches for high speed and high resolution imaging. His work is now focused on the development and application of AFM for imaging living systems, in particular bacteria, plants and cancer.

John Hutchison Hon FRMS

History Committee Chair, University of Oxford

John’s involvement with the RMS started 40 years ago when his micrograph entry won first prize in the 1974 competition. He was awarded a Certificate and the Glauert Medal by the then President Gerard L’E Turner.

John joined the Materials Science Section in 1984, and later the Electron Microscopy Section. Following a six year stint as Executive Honorary Secretary, he was elected President for the period 2002 – 2004, during which time he had the opportunity to present Gerard L’E Turner with an Honorary Fellowship, almost 30 years after receiving his own competition prize from him!

In 2014, to mark the Society's 175th anniversary, John wrote a specially commissioned book 'Moving Forward' highlighting the Society's activities from 1989-2014, bridging the gap from God Bless the Microscope! by Gerard L'E Turner

Martin Jones

Data Analysis in Imaging Science Section Chair, Francis Crick Institute

Martin is currently Deputy Head of Microscopy Prototyping in the Electron Microscopy Science Technology Platform at the Francis Crick Institute. His work focuses on developing new software and hardware tools for dealing with the deluge of data coming from modern microscopes. His background is in experimental quantum optics from the University of Sussex. After postdoctoral research and teaching fellowships in physics, he moved to the Vascular Biology Lab led by Holger Gerhardt at Cancer Research UK’s London Research Institute to work on microscope development and image analysis. From there he moved to the LRI’s Electron Microscopy core facility, led by Lucy Collinson, which subsequently moved to its current home at the Francis Crick Institute. Martin now works closely with the Crick’s Scientific Computing Science Technology Platform to work on methods for analysing large complex imaging datasets and has a strong interest in training.

Chris Kennedy

RMS Honorary Historian

Leandro Lemgruber

Infocus Scientific Editor, University of Glasgow

Leandro obtained his PhD in Biophysics in Brazil, studying the cellular structure of parasites and the interaction with host cells. He did a Post-doc at the University of Heidelberg (Germany) working on the cytoskeleton dynamics of the Malaria parasite Plasmodium sp and its structural organization. He took a position as a Research Support Specialist at the Electron Microscopy Resource Center of The Rockefeller University (New York, USA) and afterwards a position of Research Associate at the National Technology Institute in Brazil. Since 2015 he manages the Imaging sector of the Wellcome Centre for Molecular Parasitology at the University of Glasgow. Since his PhD, Leandro has applied optical, electron, super-resolution and cryo-microscopy in his work, as well as correlative microscopy.

Donald MacLaren

University of Glasgow

Donald is a Senior Lecturer in the Materials Physics group at the University of Glasgow and is currently Secretary for the Institute of Physics Electron Microscopy and Analysis Group. His main research interests lie in the use and development of electron microscopies and spectroscopies for the study of functional materials. Recent work includes studies of thin film perovskite oxide heterostructures for data storage applications, electron energy loss spectroscopy of plasmonic devices, and development of Heusler alloys for energy applications. 

Donald's doctoral research was conducted at the University of Cambridge, towards the development of a (neutral atom) Scanning Helium Microscope

Francis Morrissey

Corporate Advisory Board Chair, Thermo Fisher Scientific

Francis has worked for Philips, FEI and now Thermo Fisher Scientific for 19 years in Applications, Product Management, Marketing and Sales.

FEI was purchased in September 2016 by Thermo Fisher Scientific. Former FEI manufacture Scanning and Transmission Electron Microscopes (SEM & TEMs), Focused Ion Beam Systems and when these are integrated with an SEM, DualBeam systems. They also have our own x-ray MicroCT system. Different models and configurations of all of these systems are made for three main markets, Semiconductor (& Data Storage),  Materials Science and Life Science. They also have a software division which besides supporting their high level software platforms,  produces the well-known Amira and Avizo 3D visualisation packages.

The wider Thermo Fisher Scientific company manufacture a very wide range equipment: XPS, EDS, Mass Spectrometers, Chromatography and DNA sequencing systems, and an extensive range of lab and consumable equipment.

Katherine Paine

Early Career Committee Chair , University of Edinburgh

Katherine completed her PhD in Chris MacDonald’s lab at the University of York using yeast as a model organism to study membrane trafficking. This project involved using a wide range of microscopical techniques such as SIM and FRET study the regulation of cell surface membrane proteins. She is now a postdoc in Simon Wilkinson’s group at the University of Edinburgh in the field of autophagy where she continues to use a variety of microscopical techniques to answer biological questions. 

Julia Parker

Engineering, Physical & Material Sciences Section Deputy Chair, Diamond Light Source

Julia is an X-ray microscopist at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron facility. Julia is responsible for the operation of the hard X-ray nanoprobe beamline, supporting nanoscale spectroscopy, diffraction and imaging experiments across the life and physical sciences. Julia joined Diamond in 2007 after completing her PhD at the University of Cambridge. Julia’s current research interests lie in the area of biomineralisation, using synchrotron techniques to unveil details of the structure of calcium carbonates formed by organisms such as shells and studying the crystallisation and formation pathways of calcium carbonates.

Eric Prestat

University of Manchester

Tim Self

University of Nottingham

Tim Self is a Principal Experimental Officer and Head of the Imaging facility at the School of Life Sciences, University of Nottingham. His interest and passion for microscopy started in his undergraduate project using electron microscopy at the University of Sheffield and has spent the proceeding 40 years putting that passion into practice. For half of his career Tim has applied electron microscopy to many biological research questions, such as neurodegenerative disease, hereditary deafness, bacterial infection until in 2000 he saw the light and moved over full time to light microscopy. He now leads a large core facility with EM, histology, super resolution, confocal, wide field, High Content, label free, luminescence, FCS and TIRF imaging at the University of Nottingham. 

Alex Sossick

Chair of Professional Development and Training FIG , Natural History Museum, London

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.

Leslie Stump

ISO and IT, Microm Ltd

In the mid-sixties Leslie began his career working in the Department of Metallurgy at the University of Oxford. He then moved to the Physics Department at Rice University in Houston, Texas and then to the Department of Metallurgy at the University of Toronto before returning to Oxford to the Department of Zoology. He remained there for six years continuing to be involved in both light and electron microscopy. Leaving Zoology in the mid-seventies his sales career began in the microscope division of British American Optical and he has remained in the microscopy and imaging business to date.

Steve Thomas

Life Sciences Section Chair, University of Birmingham

Steve is a Lecturer in the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, College of Medical and Dental Sciences. His interest is in using imaging approaches to understand the cytoskeletal organisation of platelets and their precursor cell the megakaryocyte, and how this regulates platelet production and function. He has a background in plant cell biology and made the move to studying the mammalian cytoskeleton during a postdoc with Prof Laura Machesky. Steve’s recent focus has been on applying new advances in fluorescence microscopy, including TIRF, super-resolution and light sheet microscopy to study how the actin cytoskeleton is required for protrusion of proplatelets through blood vessel walls during platelet formation, and in help platelet aggregates adhere and resist shear forces in blood flow.

Paul Verkade

University of Bristol

Paul Verkade is a Professor of Bioimaging at the University of Bristol, UK. He has been working in the field of microscopy from the start of his scientific career and over the last 15 years has established himself as one of the leaders in the field of Correlative Light Electron Microscopy (CLEM).

As a champion of Correlative Microscopy and a passion for training the next generation of microscopists, he has taught on and organised numerous RMS and other courses including 4 EMBO practical courses on CLEM in Bristol and edited 5 books on Correlative Microscopy. 

He is a long-standing member of the Electron Microscopy section of the RMS, having served as chair and other functions. He has been involved in the set-up of the RMS mentoring scheme that started in 2022. 

One of the main efforts is to bring together imaging communities and organise the funding of imaging infrastructure, Paul has been an active member of the BioImagingUK community since the beginning, set up EM-UK as an EM network together with Pippa Hawes (Pirbright institute) and in 2019 initiated the organisation of the volume EM community, together with Lucy Collinson (Crick) and Gerard Kleijwegt and Ardan Patwardhan (EMBL-EBI).

Claire Wells

King's College London

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.

Phoebe Whitlock

Phoebe works as Legal Counsel. She originally trained as a barrister and was called to the Bar by Gray’s Inn in 2019. As a non-practising barrister, she additionally qualified as a solicitor in 2023 under the new SQE system. She has worked in a diverse range of in-house commercial technology roles at a cybersecurity company, a financial technology company and Google. 

Phoebe is a Director of the Intellectual Property Awareness Network and part of the agile management team at the Society for Computers and Law, overseeing the Advisory board.

Phoebe is dedicated to inclusion and diversity both within the legal profession and the technology industry.  Her dedication to diversity and inclusion has garnered recognition, earning her the In-House Rising Star award at the Women and Diversity in Law Awards and the In-House Rising Star award at the Women, Influence and Power in Law UK awards.

Phoebe has sat on several DEI Committees. She is also Chair of the Board of Trustees of Codebar, a charity that facilitates the growth of a diverse industry by running free regular programming workshops for minority groups. She has a clear passion for developing people and enabling them to succeed. 

Beyond her professional accomplishments, Phoebe is deeply involved in mentoring schemes. She is a volunteer with SEO London and mentors young women coming into the legal profession. She is also a Mentor in the Judicial Reverse Mentoring scheme, a program that aims to foster greater understanding among the judiciary of the experience of individual lawyers from underrepresented groups, and of the barriers faced by underrepresented groups in accessing a career in law and in the judiciary.

In combination with her professional roles, Phoebe has also been undertaking academic study. She has just finished her MSc in Intellectual Property at St Peter’s College, University of Oxford. Her research focused on the history of generative AI and its regulation in the UK. She hopes to further develop this area of interest and is passionate about bringing AI into the legal profession.