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New challenges and new faces
SfAM’s Early Career Scientist (ECS) Committee has been operating for 10 years now. In that time we’ve grown from a small group focused on organising the ECS Research Symposium into a 14-member team that not only organises the symposium each year, but various other events and programmes throughout the calendar focused on SfAM’s ECS members. 2020 has been a landmark year for the ECS Committee for a variety of reasons – and not just because of COVID-19! The 2020 ECS Research Symposium was moved to an online format with less than a week’s knowledge – no small feat, but the hard work of the committee and enthusiasm of attendees meant that we were able to host a great event with great feedback from everyone involved. On the back of this the ECS Committee also hosted Micro-Talks over the summer, to give ECS members who had missed a chance to present over the summer an opportunity to still present their work. All of this provides great experience for us to prepare our 10th symposium, a week-long virtual event running from 22 to 26 March – more on that later in the magazine!
We have also made behind-the-scenes changes to the ECS Committee, with the formalising of small teams within the committee to handle policy, events, communications and undergraduate representation. We also made the position of ECS Industry representative, currently occupied by Nicola Williams, to ensure our committee is taking care of the interests of our ECS members that are outside of academia. Over the summer we had a chance to open recruitment for three spots on the committee. We were inundated with over 70 applications, making this the most competitive round of applications we have ever had and giving us the incredibly difficult task of narrowing it down to just three successful applications. So, without further ado, I would like to introduce you to our three new ECS Committee members: Anete Krista Salmane, Frazer McCuaig and Hannah Trivett.
Dr James Williamson ECS Committee Observer
10
microbiologist
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December 2020
www.sfam.org.uk
