Society Showcase and AGM: celebrating the achievements of the membership

Each year the Society hosts a showcase event before our Annual General Meeting for early career members of the Society to come together, meet each other and learn from other members of the Society who are further on in their careers. The event allows us to recognise the excellent work these Committee members, Champions and prize winners have accomplished over the past year.

This year, guests had the opportunity to engage in a networking game that showed them just how much they had in common, before moving on to a session hosting some of our recent Prize Lecture winners and Society Committee members sharing what they wish they had known when they were starting out on their undergraduate degrees. Learning from others who have gone down the path can be so helpful for early career scientists, with one early career microbiologist commenting that it was “great to hear Dr Tansy Hammarton talking frankly about the challenges of career breaks from having children. It’s not something you hear much about and it’s so useful to early career women in STEM.”

Guests were then invited to view posters from the Annual Conference poster prize winners during lunch, before the final of the Sir Howard Dalton Young Microbiologist of the Year (YMOY) Competition began. The eight finalists, who were shortlisted from over 600 abstracts across our Annual Conference and Irish Division Focused Meetings, gave fantastic presentations of their research in another hard-fought competition. The winners of the competition were announced at the reception at the Foundling Museum. Congratulations to Courtney Kousser, from University of Birmingham, for winning first prize for ‘Pseudomonas aeruginosa inhibits Rhizopus microsporus germination via the sequestration of iron’, and to second- and third-prize winners Rute Maria Pinto, Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh and Stephen Dolan, University of Cambridge.

Courtney said, “it’s really nice to be recognised for something that I really enjoy doing. I enjoy communicating science and talking about science with people. So it’s a big honour to be recognised for that.”

After the business of the AGM, the final celebration of the day was Senga Robertson-Albertyn’s Microbiology Outreach Prize talk, ‘Microbe Motels: how to make a healthy poo’. Senga’s entertaining talk displayed her passion for science communication and fantastic approach to teaching students about microbiomes.

Watch interviews with Courtney and Senga on our YouTube channel.

Maria Fernandes

Head of Professional Development and Evaluation