August 22, 2019

The Sir Howard Dalton Young Microbiologist of the Year Prize is awarded by the Society each year. The prize recognises and rewards excellence in science communication by a Microbiology Society member who is a postgraduate student or postdoctoral researcher, having gained their PhD in the last two years. Two finalists are shortlisted from each of the Society’s Divisions based on a presentation given at the Microbiology Society Annual Conference or Irish Division meetings. The nine young scientists on this shortlist will give a 15-minute presentation at the Microbiology Society’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) on 12 September. In the run up to the AGM, we will be getting to know the finalists.

August 20, 2019

The Sir Howard Dalton Young Microbiologist of the Year Prize is awarded by the Society each year. The prize recognises and rewards excellence in science communication by a Microbiology Society member who is a postgraduate student or postdoctoral researcher, having gained their PhD in the last two years. Two finalists are shortlisted from each of the Society’s Divisions based on a presentation given at the Microbiology Society Annual Conference or Irish Division meetings. The nine young scientists on this shortlist will give a 15-minute presentation at the Microbiology Society’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) on 12 September. In the run up to the AGM, we will be getting to know the finalists.

August 16, 2019

The Sir Howard Dalton Young Microbiologist of the Year Prize is awarded by the Society each year. The prize recognises and rewards excellence in science communication by a Microbiology Society member who is a postgraduate student or postdoctoral researcher, having gained their PhD in the last two years. Two finalists are shortlisted from each of the Society’s Divisions based on a presentation given at the Microbiology Society Annual Conference or Irish Division meetings. The nine young scientists on this shortlist will give a 15-minute presentation at the Microbiology Society’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) on 12 September. In the run up to the AGM, we will be getting to know the finalists.

August 14, 2019

On 8 July, Rachel Exley attended her first Parliamentary and Scientific Committee discussion meeting, at Portcullis House in Westminster. The title of the meeting was 'STEM education and skills' and provided a forum for discussion between Members of Parliament and representatives of scientific bodies, industry and academia on how to inspire and engage young people in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects in order to address the skills shortage in the future UK workforce. The focus was particularly on engineering, and members of a diverse panel of speakers were invited to share their perspectives. I attended the meeting to gather information and identify ways the Microbiology Society might contribute to this agenda.

August 14, 2019

The Sir Howard Dalton Young Microbiologist of the Year Prize is awarded by the Society each year. The prize recognises and rewards excellence in science communication by a Microbiology Society member who is a postgraduate student or postdoctoral researcher, having gained their PhD in the last two years. Two finalists are shortlisted from each of the Society’s Divisions based on a presentation given at the Microbiology Society Annual Conference or Irish Division meetings. The nine young scientists on this shortlist will give a 15-minute presentation at the Microbiology Society’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) on 12 September. In the run up to the AGM, we will be getting to know the finalists.

August 13, 2019

Each month, the Microbiology Society publishes the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (IJSEM), which details newly discovered species of bacteria, fungi and protists. Here are some of the new species that have been discovered and the places they’ve been found.

August 12, 2019

Danny Ward is a postgraduate researcher at the John Innes Centre, researching virulence and pathogenicity of plant-infecting and human-infecting bacteria. The 2019 Microbiology in Society Award was given to Danny to create the Microbe Zone in this autumn's I'm a Scientist, Get Me Out of Here! competition; the online science engagement activity where school students connect with real scientists.

August 9, 2019

This month on the podcast, we spoke with Dr Mayri Alessandra Diaz De Rienzo, Ale for short, who is lecturer in Biotechnology at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. Ale is currently in Quebec, Canada, visiting the lab of Professor Eric Déziel on a Microbiology Society Research Visit Grant. Ale has travelled to Canada to research how biosurfactants can work with antibiotics to make infections easier to treat, and how they might be able to improve the lifespan of antibiotics.

August 7, 2019

Knowing how to write a strong grant application can be difficult. Here, two of our grant reviewers Dr Douglas Browning from the University of Birmingham and Dr Sarah Maddocks from Cardiff Metropolitan University give their advice on what makes a good application.

August 6, 2019

There are many ways to summarise and present your research, and graphical abstracts are becoming increasingly popular with journals and scientists. Condensing an entire manuscript, or PhD thesis, into a single figure seems like an impossible task to many. Visually representing any biological process can feel overwhelming, especially in microbiology where the main research subject is so small, but you don’t have to be an artist to make a graphical abstract. Here, we provide some advice on how to produce a graphical abstract and some key things to think about.