New ECS Committee places announced

As many of our members will be aware, at FEMS2019 we said thank you to Dr Aled Roberts for his time as chair of the ECS committee and welcomed Jennie French as the new chair. With new leadership came a few new changes, and some new roles opened up on the committee that we are pleased to announce have been filled!

The new roles: Policy Officer, Welfare Officer, Undergraduate Officer, and Podcast Editor will work alongside the rest of the committee in organising events and activities for SfAM’s early career scientists, and have a major role in next year’s annual ECS Research Symposium in Cardiff. So, who are our new officers? Let’s introduce them:

Our new Policy Officer, Kate Bamford, is a final year PhD student from the University of Warwick – you might recognise her name as one of the presenters at the ECS research symposium earlier this year! Kate will be assisting our other policy officers Lucas Walker and Lucky Cullen in ensuring the ECS committee has a voice in the latest issues that our government faces related to science.

Nasmille Larke-Mejía is joining the ECS as the newly created role of Welfare Officer. Nasmille is a postdoctoral researcher at the Earlham Institute in Norwich, and is the faculty staff representative there. The new role will focus on the growing theme of welfare throughout academic and industrial science, and Nasmille is looking forward to meeting more of our ECS members to help in this role.

Joining Hannah Brace-Thompson as Undergraduate Officer, we welcome Elitsa Penkova to the committee. Elitsa is currently studying for a BSc in Evolutionary Biology at the University of Exeter, with a passion for antimicrobial resistance and science communication that will make a great addition to the committee.

We also welcome Joseph Kirk in another newly created role: Podcast Editor. Joseph, a post-doc also at the University of Exeter, is a very active science communicator. Joseph has presented at several outreach events and has been heard talking about science on the radio several times – a voice which you’ll no doubt hear again in this role as Joseph puts together the popular SfAM ECS podcasts!

The ECS committee are excited to welcome our new officers and look forward to all of our members extending this warm welcome as well! Make sure to keep an eye out for them at the 2020 ECS Research Symposium in Cardiff and say hello!

Robert G. Millar
ECS Social Media Officer