by Zoe Marshall
On the afternoon of Tuesday the 17th of March, I attended the STEM for BRITAIN event in London, which was held at the Portcullis house in the Houses of Parliament. At this event, early career researcher finalists from across the UK in different science disciplines present their work in the form of a poster – in my case I was part of the Biological and Biomedical sciences event. At this event, from 2-5 pm we presented our work to both judges, attending MPs and members of science societies. Due to the diversity of the audience, the science had to be lay-man accessible, so it was a great exercise in communicating my work simply and accessibly in an engaging narrative.
After the poster session was complete, we were treated to some refreshments, speeches and then the award ceremony. Dundee University and the James Hutton Institute had some great success at the event – I won the gold award and received the G.J. Mendel Medal, and the Silver award went to Aniketh Bishnu, a Post-doc at the University of Dundee. There was also a bronze prize, a nutritional society prize and a physiological society prize. If you wish to see my poster, and the posters of the other prize winners, they are available for viewing of the STEM for BRITAIN website at this link: https://stemforbritain.org.uk/stem-for-britain-winners-2025/ . Because I won the gold award, I presenting my poster again online on the 24th of March, alongside the other Gold medal winners from the different STEM disciplines, for the chance to win the Westminster medal. This was won by Ane Kritzinger, the Physics gold medal winner from the University of St Andrews.
The event was a wonderful opportunity to gain experience in science communication, and it was inspiring to see the diversity of research being presented by early career scientists across the UK. I would encourage any other students or postdocs who are interested to apply for next years event once applications open in September.
Zoe Marshall
2nd Year BARIToNE PhD student, James Hutton Institute