Early Career Symposium

Beatrice Bottura

University of Strathclyde

Beatrice is a final year PhD student in Strathclyde's biophotonics group. After graduating with a Master degree in Physics at the University of Manchester, she now works on a joint PhD project between physics and microbiology. This involves studying mature E. coli colony biofilms with the Mesolens, a fluorescence microscope which allows to visualise big (6x6 mm) biological specimens with sub-cellular detail. In particular, she will investigate the effect of genetic mutations on biofilm architecture. Her interests lie in using novel microscopy techniques to observe bacterial samples.

Shelly Conroy

Imperial College London

Dr. Shelly Conroy is a Royal Society University Research Fellow Principal Investigator, specialising in in-situ TEM, 4D-STEM and electron energy loss spectroscopy. Dr Conroy's is an academic member of the Imperial Centre for Cryo Microscopy of Materials at Imperial College London. She worked at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory as a permanent staff scientist before joining the University of Limerick Ireland as a Science Foundation Ireland Analog Devices Research Fellow (PI) working on TEM of magnetic domain-wall-based materials and devices. Dr. Conroy holds a Ph.D. Eng Sci in III-N thin film growth and in-situ TEM from Tyndall National Institute and University College Cork Ireland.

Dr. Conroy’s Royal Society grant ‘Improper Ferroelectric Domain Wall Engineering for Dynamic Electronics’ is focused on thin-film growth of the ferroelectric/ferroelastic boracites and in-situ biasing 4D-STEM. The project is in collaboration with the National Center for Electron Microscopy at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and SuperSTEM the EPSRC National Research Facility for Advanced Electron Microscopy.

Dr Conroy is also a committee member of the IOP electron microscopy and analysis group (EMAG) and the Microscopy Society of Ireland. She hopes to improve integration between these societies and microscopy science between the UK and Ireland.

Judy Kim

Rosalind Franklin Institute

Judy Kim is the Deputy Director of Correlated Imaging at the Rosalind Franklin Institute and a Lecturer in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford.

Judy has a special interest in the various forms of in situ TEM and pushing the current boundaries of temporal resolution using novel optical setups, modified electron sources and modern detectors for application towards radiation sensitive materials. At the Franklin, she works alongside physicists and biologists to cultivate EM techniques developed in physical sciences for application to biological and medical sciences. 

After attending state schools, then Northwestern University, her PhD work at the University of California, Davis contributed to the development of a Dynamic Transmission Electron Microscope where she was awarded a Lawrence Scholar Program Fellowship from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Her study on exothermic nanolaminate reactions led to the first publication of nanosecond + nanometer scale images and was awarded the Zuhair Munir Best Dissertation Award. She has also received the R&D 100 Award in 2008 and the Microscopy Today Innovation Award 2010 for her development work on the DTEM. At the University of Oxford, she focused on technique development using monochromation and aberration correction for characterization of beam-sensitive energy and 2D materials. After several years as a Principal Scientist at ePSIC, Diamond Light Source's EM facility, Judy developed an interest in cryo EM, which lead to a natural progression to her current role at the Franklin. It was during this transition period, that she pushed forward the technique of cryo electron ptychography with colleagues from Nanjing University, eBIC and ePSIC.