Early Career Committee

The Early Career Committee is for students, postdocs and early career professionals. It aims to focus on career development of RMS members through pre-congress workshops, industrial tours, networking events and more

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About

The RMS Early Career Committee enables students, postdocs and early career professionals to become more involved in the RMS than ever before, share their views and ideas for the RMS and make the most out of their RMS membership. Many students, postdocs and early career professionals often forget that the RMS can be utilised as a tool for professional development, a platform for collaboration and, most importantly, a community.

The Early Career Committee aims to bridge the gaps between a) students, postdocs and early career professionals, and b) research facility scientists, industrial scientists, academic staff, the RMS team and more. Upon creating a community here in the UK, the next step will be to encourage similar early career councils to be established (if they are not already) across Europe, such that this committee can be a branch of a much larger Early Career Council under the other Microscopy Societies.

The RMS Early Career Committee will not only organise new events and create new initiatives, but also make students, postdocs and early career professionals aware of the existing resources and opportunities provided by the RMS.

What will the RMS Early Career Committee do?

Provisional list of activities:

Organise pre-meeting congresses for students, postdocs and early career professionals at national and international conferences (i.e. for European Microscopy Congress (EMC) in 2020 and Microscience Microscopy Congress (MMC) in 2021).
Promote collaboration between students, postdocs and early career professionals in the RMS across both physical and biological sciences.
Organise a biennial MSA-RMS student/early career researcher scholarship, where:
- 2-3 RMS members would be awarded scholarships to attend Microscopy & Microanalysis (M&M), and
- 2-3 Microscopy Society of America (MSA) members would be awarded scholarships to attend Microscience Microscopy Congress (MMC).
Attend conferences to raise awareness of the RMS. Inform attendees of what the RMS can do and how they can get involved in the committee.
Build a network with microscopy-related industries to provide support and careers advice for students, postdocs and early career professionals. Organise facility tours and informative presentations from research centres and industry if desired by members.
Provide information on committee activities via email, infocus magazine and on the RMS website.
We are open to further suggestions!

Who can benefit?

Students
Postdocs
Early career professionals

Any student, postdoc or early career professional who is a member the RMS can benefit from the activities organised by the Early Career Committee. You will be informed of upcoming events through the RMS website, emails and infocus magazine.

We are recruiting committee members!

If you are interested in becoming a committee member, please contact debbie@rms.org.uk. We aim to support students, postdocs and early career professionals, so it would be ideal to have committee members from each of these categories.

Committee

Colum O’Leary

Early Career Committee Chair

University of Oxford
Colum O’Leary studied physics for his undergraduate degree at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, before beginning his DPhil (PhD) studies in Materials at the University of Oxford. His research interests include atomic resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy, electron ptychography and 2D materials. Colum is one of the founding members of the RMS Early Career Committee, and is eager to organise more networking events and workshops for early career members of the RMS.
Yanping Guo

Early Career Committee Deputy 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 keen about teaching and mentoring of younger scientists.
Dr Rebecca Thompson

Electron Microscopy Early Career and infocus Editorial Board Representative

University of Leeds
Rebecca Thompson is Facility Manager and senior cryo-electron microscopy (EM) support scientist at the Astbury Biostructure Laboratory, University of Leeds. Her research interests include imaging a broad range of biological specimens, from whole cells to macromolecular complexes, to high resolution using cryo-EM, and integrating data from EM with other microscopy techniques.
Dr Rebecca Saleeb

Light Microscopy Early Career Representative

Queen Mary University of London
Rebecca completed an interdisciplinary PhD at Heriot-Watt University in early 2017, employing commercial and developmental FLIM-FRET technology and super-resolution techniques to understand late-stage autophagy. Her focussed interest in imaging technology and method development has since led her into light microscopy facility management, initially managing the Edinburgh Super-Resolution Imaging Consortium and later moving to Lisbon’s Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown to specialise in imaging for neuroscience, in particular lightsheet microscopy. She now manages the Advanced Bio-imaging Facility within Queen Mary’s William Harvey Research Institute in London, which specialises in live sample imaging.

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Dr Wing Chung Tsoi

Swansea University
Wing Chung Tsoi is a Lecturer at the College of Engineering at Swansea University. He obtained both his BSc in Physics (2002) and PhD in Physics (liquid crystal solar cells, 2007) at The University of Hull. He then carried out postdoctoral research at The University of Sheffield, Imperial College, and National Physical Laboratory on organic photovoltaic cells. In 2014, he started his independent research career as a senior research officer at Swansea University. In 2019, he become a lecturer there. His research mainly focuses on solution-process photovoltaic cells, including organic and perovskite solar cells. He also has expertise on advanced multiple mapping techniques (Raman, PL, photocurrent, electroluminescence) and functional atomic force microscopy. He is also a committee member of the Institute of Physics Wales, and a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society.
Dr Stefania Marcotti

King's College London
Stefania Marcotti is a postdoc in the Cellular Biophysics section at the Randall Centre for Cell and Molecular Biophysics at KCL. After a BSc and an MSc in biomechanical engineering under the guidance of Prof. Alberto Redaelli at Politecnico di Milano, she obtained a PhD at the University of Sheffield focused on the mechanical characterisation of bone cells with atomic force microscopy and finite element modelling. Thanks to the possibility of combining both experimental and computational approaches in all of her projects, she developed an interest in data and image quantitative analysis. In 2018 she joined Brian Stramer's group and her current research interest lie in developing and automating analysis pipelines for biological applications.
Peter Johnson

University of Southampton
Peter is a final year PhD student studying at the University of Southampton as part of the Molecular Biophotonics and Imaging group. His personal research interests are in designing and implementing label-free, super-resolution microscopy techniques for disease characterisation. He has a keen interest in science outreach and engagement, having designed and run activities at multiple events. As a member of the RMS EC committee, he particularly wants to facilitate early career researcher (ECR) engagement in public outreach and help create events to develop ECRs.