Early Career Committee

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 Ahsan Akram’s lab at the University of Edinburgh using techniques such as multiplex fluorescence imaging and FLIM to understand the tissue microenvironment in lung cancer.

Tim Young

Early Career Committee Deputy Chair , University of Cambridge

I qualified as a Biomedical Scientist in 2012 after completing my bachelor’s degree at The University of Essex but never entered practise. Instead I moved towards research; my first job was a technician with the MRC Epidemiology Unit, here I used a variety of methods to perform batch analysis of large cohorts of samples.
After this I moved towards cancer research and worked as a research assistant for Prof. Bruce Ponder in conjunction with the NHS Papworth Histology team. The research was directed towards the investigation of DNA repair dysfunction which can cause a genetic predisposition to lung cancer, particularly in smokers.
Then, in 2016, I joined the lab of Christian Frezza at Uni. Of Cambridge as part of the mass spectrometry team before becoming the lab manager and microscopist. When the lab moved out of the country I joined Prof. Paul Lehner’s team in CITIID and am continuing my RMS diploma here.

Myfanwy Adams

infocus Representative, University of Oxford

Myfanwy obtained her PhD from Cornell University where she studied the structural features and mechanisms of host-pathogen interactions using X-ray crystallography, biophysical and biochemical techniques. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford working with Dr. Dmitry Ghilarov to leverage cryo-electron microscopy in pursuit of better understanding molecular machines in bacterial systems.

Emily Barot

Social Media co-lead, University of Manchester

Emily completed her PhD at the Rosalind Franklin Institute and the University of Manchester, advancing graphene-supported transmission electron microscopy at both room and cryogenic temperatures. She now works as a research technician at the electron microscopy facility in the faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health at the University of Manchester, where she gets to share are passion and expertise in EM with a wide range of facility users. 

Zoe Barr

Heinrich-Heine University, Germany

Zoe completed her PhD at the University of St Andrews and the James Hutton Institute, and has began a post-doctoral position at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Her research focus is the structure and function of the plant cell membrane contact sites, plasmodesmata, particularly using confocal microscopy and serial-block-face scanning-electron-microscopy.  

Zoe was awarded her PGCAP and Associate fellow of higher education academy (AFHEA) in 2024, and has a continued interest in pedagogical practice. During an internship with the RMS, Zoe wrote an impact report on the outreach programme ‘Hitachi Global STEM Outreach Project portable SEM.

Niamh Burke

Early Career Engagement lead, University College Dublin

Niamh Burke is a final-year PhD student and Anatomy Demonstrator at University College Dublin (UCD) and a Postgraduate Representative with the Microscopy Society of Ireland. During her undergraduate degree in Physiology in UCD, Niamh completed a short project under the supervision of Dr Mark Pickering. It was here where she developed a strong interest in building simple, low-cost, open-source lab instruments. Taking a brief break from the world of open hardware, Niamh then worked as a Research Assistant in the Cancer Biology and Therapeutics Group in the UCD Conway Institute under Professor William Gallagher. Following this, Niamh returned to the Pickering Lab for her PhD, which focuses on designing open and accessible tools to measure microplastic pollution in the sea. 

As the representative for the Microscopical Society of Ireland on the Early Career Committee, Niamh works to increase engagement and encourage networking between the RMS and Irish Early Career Researchers. 

Jo Cull

Oxford Brookes University

Joanna is a PhD student on the Oxford Interdisciplinary Bioscience DTP at Oxford Brookes University, supervised by Professor Susan Brooks. She has a background in molecular biology and cancer research, with an MSc in Oncology from the University of Nottingham and a BSc (Hons) in Human Biology from Loughborough University. Joanna uses a lot of microscopy, including confocal, to help understand the functional role of glycosylation, notably in cell motility. 

Kayla Fallon

Engineering, Physical and Material Sciences Early Career Representative , University of Glasgow

Kayla is a Research Scientist in the Materials and Condensed Matter Physics group at the University of Glasgow. She started this position in 2023, after completing her PhD and two post-docs in the same research group. Kayla is the manager of the Kelvin Nanocharacterisation Centre, which specialises in the application of electron and ion microscopies to a broad range of material science problems. Her primary area of interest is Lorentz transmission electron microscopy applied to the study of functional magnetic materials, with particular interest in advances enabled by direct electron detectors.  

Preksha Hooda

Early Career Committee Representative on the AFM & SPM Section , University of Sheffield

Preksha is a PhD student in the Pyne Lab at the University of Sheffield. Her work focuses on integrating high-resolution atomic force microscopy (AFM), optical tweezers, and HPLC to investigate how mRNA structure influences protein production. She aims to bridge structural and functional insights to accelerate the design and manufacturing of mRNA therapeutics.

Nischita Kaza

Events co-lead, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Nischita is a bioengineering Ph.D. candidate at the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, where her research focuses on developing label-free microscopy techniques in the Optical Imaging and Spectroscopy Lab. Prior to pursuing her graduate studies in the United States, she obtained an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka, India in 2018. Her undergraduate research experiences introduced her to the field of biomedical imaging and sparked her interest in optical microscopy. Currently, Nischita's research is centered around deep-ultraviolet (UV) microscopy, a high-resolution, label-free imaging technique used for molecular analysis of cell and tissue samples in clinical and biomedical applications. Within the lab, she is actively involved in various aspects of microscopy, including optical engineering, instrument development, sample preparation, and image analysis. Alongside her research, Nischita is passionate about teaching and community outreach, with aspirations of pursuing a career in academia. Nischita will serve as a liaison between the RMS and other microscopy and optics societies based in the USA and hopes to create more opportunities for collaboration and networking between early career researchers across international borders. 

Gea van de Kerkhof

Events co-lead, Central Laser Facility, Harwell

Gea is a microscopist focused on technique development for correlative/multi-modal imaging in the Life Sciences. She has experience with light, electron and X-ray imaging and spectroscopy. During her PhD she investigated the optics of structurally coloured bacteria and plants. Afterwards she worked at Diamond Light Source in a combined industrial role with Johnson Matthey. There, she developed techniques and workflows for in-situ liquid microscopy across the I14 nanoprobe beamline and a Cs corrected TEM. Now, she develops cryogenic correlative light and electron microscopy at the Central Laser Facility, in the Octopus imaging cluster. Here, she works on cryo-FIB lift-outs, with lamella to use correlatively between super-resolution fluorescence and transmission electron microscopy.

Benjamin Lane

Aston Institute for Membrane Excellence

Ben is a Research Fellow at the Aston Institute for Membrane Excellence (AIME), Aston University. He studied for a BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry at the University of St Andrews and earned his PhD in Structural Molecular Biology from the University of Leeds, where he focused on the structural characterisation of mechanosensitive ion channels. After a postdoctoral position researching FGFR-chaperone interactions, he began a research fellowship focused on understanding the mechanisms of membrane transport proteins. His research background is in cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM) of membrane proteins and the integration of this technique with other structural biology approaches. As AIME is a multidisciplinary institute, Ben supports both physical and biological scientists with their transmission electron microscopy needs.

Ofentse Makgae

Johnson Matthey Technology Centre

Ofentse is an electron microscopist at Johnson Matthey Technology Centre (JMTC) working on the development and applications of various sample preparation, imaging, and spectroscopic techniques to study a wide range of industrial materials from catalysts to polymer membranes. The techniques include (Cryo)FIB (2D and 3D), SEM, and (S)TEM (in situ gas, 4D, EELS, and EDX). He holds a D.Phil. in Materials from the University of Oxford. Before joining JMTC, Ofentse held a postdoctoral research fellowship in environmental TEM and focused ion beam (FIB) at the National Centre for High-Resolution Electron Microscopy (nCHREM), Lund University, Sweden, followed by a principal researcher position at AlixLabs AB on FIB method development and HRTEM imaging of proprietary semiconductor nanowire technology. As an industry representative, Ofentse aims to foster stronger connections between early-career academic microscopists within the RMS and their industrial counterparts, create opportunities for early-career microscopists in the industrial sector to engage with the RMS, and enhance the engagement and visibility of the RMS in the industrial sector.

Dana Perry

Natural History Museum

Dana is a Microscopy Specialist at the Natural History Museum. She received her BSc (Hons) in Biomedical Science from the University of Surrey, then obtained a PhD from the same university in 2023, in collaboration with The Pirbright Institute. This PhD project involved a range of microscopy techniques, including FRAP and STED, to study intracellular structures induced by HSV-1 infection. She has since moved into a core facility role at the Natural History Museum, running the Light Microscopy Facility, which includes supporting a variety of curation- and research-based projects involving basic light and confocal microscopy.

Emilie Smith

Cardiff University

I'm a first-year PhD researcher at Cardiff University's School of Chemistry, using advanced electron microscopy to study gold-based catalysts for acetylene chemistry. I came to research via an unconventional route, working across project support, customer experience management, and pharmaceutical process development and quality assurance before completing a BSc Chemistry with the Open University in 2025. I currently sit on the Bristol District and Local Section committee of the Royal Society of Chemistry as the Diversity and Inclusion representative. I've joined the Early Career Committee keen to support researchers who, like me, didn't take the traditional path into science.

Sean Tattan

Early Career Committee Representative on the Flow Cytometry Section, University of East Anglia

Sean obtained his PhD from the University of East Anglia, where he investigated tissue engineering approaches to developing and optimising in vitro models of the human colon. He is currently a Lecturer in Cell Biology and Immunology at the University of East Anglia, where his research focuses on human disease modelling, pharmacology, and the application of advanced imaging and quantitative computational approaches to investigate cellular behaviour, migration, and signalling.

Madeline Tisi

Imperial College London

Maddy is currently an advanced imaging specialist at Imperial College London, working in the Facility of Imaging by Light Microscopy (FILM) where she manages the Hammersmith site overseeing applications in STED, FLIM-FRET, and high-throughput automated microscopy. Maddy has a wealth of experience from her PhD research at King's College London and the Francis Crick Institute, which she completed in 2024, where she investigated cellular metabolism in cancer and bioengineered stem cell models alongside the development of a custom novel multi-photon lightsheet. Her PhD thesis examined the development and metabolic characterisation of phenotypically distinct astrocyte subtypes using FLIM-FRET to quantify diverse metabolic profiles during maturation and reactivity. Maddy possesses extensive interdisciplinary expertise in both cell biology and multiple types of microscopies including multiphoton microscopy, super-resolved microscopy, dual-inverted light sheet microscopy, and advanced quantitative microscopy techniques.

Conor Treacy

Early Career Committee Representative on the Light Microscopy Section , Brunel University of London

Dr Conor Treacy is a Research Fellow at Brunel University of London, where he develops and applies advanced fluorescence microscopy techniques to study cancer biology. His current work focuses on building microscopy systems and using fast fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) to investigate dynamic molecular processes in cells, tissues and patient-derived organoids.

Conor completed his PhD in Cell and Molecular Biophysics at King’s College London. He subsequently held postdoctoral research positions at King’s College London and the University of Edinburgh, working across cell biology, biophysics and optical instrumentation. His research has included the development and application of time-resolved fluorescence imaging, Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) and multiphoton microscopy to study protein interactions, cytoskeletal organisation and cellular mechanosensing.

Alongside his research, Conor is interested in microscopy education, instrument development and making advanced imaging approaches more accessible to biological researchers. He has joined the Royal Microscopical Society’s Early Career Committee and Light Microscopy Section, where he hopes to support early-career microscopists, encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and contribute to the wider microscopy community.