About
Electron Microscopy (EM), originally developed by Ernst Ruska and Max Knoll in the 1930s, is a high resolution imaging technique that provides key insights into the fundamental structure of all materials, both inorganic and organic. The EM Section of the RMS covers a wide range of expertise in sample preparation, imaging and analysis for scanning EM, transmission EM, STEM, volume EM, cryo EM, spatial analytical techniques and correlative imaging, with applications in the physical and life sciences. Section expertise also includes X-ray microscopy, which is often closely associated with EM analysis, sometimes as part of a multimodal workflow. These topics are the basis of various meetings and courses organised by the RMS in collaboration with the wider community and catering for all levels of user, from the beginner through to expert, and often considering emergent techniques and novel instrumentation. The Section includes representation from other EM groups and societies, including the Association of Clinical Electron Microscopists (ACEM), the Society for Electron Microscope Technology (SEMT), the Electron Microscopy and Analysis Group (EMAG), EM-UK and BioImagingUK.
Committee members represent a cross-section of electron microscopists with a remit to represent the interests of the wider EM community. Any Society member may be nominated to serve as an ordinary committee member when vacancies arise.
The RMS is committed to being a welcoming, inclusive Society and encourages diversity across all activities and in the membership of our committees and groups.
If you are interested in joining any of the committees in the future, please visit our Join a Committee page.
RMS Section Awards
Launched in 2014, the Section Awards (formerly known as the Medal Series) recognise those who have made significant contributions to the field of microscopy. The RMS Section Awards celebrate outstanding scientific achievements across all areas of microscopy and flow cytometry with each RMS Science Section able to select a winner for their own award.
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Committee
Roland Fleck
Roland is Reader and Director of the King's Centre for Ultra Structural Imaging
Asa Barber
Asa is Professor of Advanced Materials Engineering at London South Bank University and Dean of the School of Engineering. His interests are in using microscopy to understand the relationship between microstructure and mechanical properties of complex systems, particularly hierarchical structures produced by biology. Asa previously led major initiatives in small scale mechanical testing combining EM with AFM at Queen Mary University of London and 3D imaging within a broader 3D engineering activity at the University of Portsmouth. Asa regularly supports the RMS Microscience Microscopy Congress in various capacities and was the Conference Chair for Tomography for Scientific Advancement (ToScA) ’17.
Chris Parmenter
I am a seasoned electron microscopist and imaging scientist. My experience ranges from cryo-Transmission Electron Microscopy (cryo-TEM) of soft matter systems (polymers, proteins, liposomes, extra cellular vesicles) to focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM), and particularly the development of cryo-FIB-SEM sample preparation approaches applied to soft matter systems. I have been developing the cryogenic lift-out technique since 2013 to enable cryo-TEM of bulk samples (polymers, cells, tissues). At the University of Nottingham, I am the manager of the Cryogenic Analytical and Transfer (CAT) Suite, a category 2 approved microscopy suite with an emphasis on cryogenic and correlative (light and electron) microscopy. In 2024 I will add confocal light microscopy to my skills and responsibilities in the lab. I believe that I have a wide range of skills and backgrounds to offer the RMS gained from my years in the lab and also developing training and organizational skills to fulfil my various roles. I have so far contributed to the running of two cryo-EM courses in conjunction with the RMS (2021, fully virtual and 2023 as a hybrid). I have a keen interest in the development and training of the next generation of microscopy professionals.
I am a board member of Journal of Microscopy and since 2022 is the Chair of the Cryo Microscopy Group. Since 2014 I have been the editor of Microscopy and Analysis, a global microscopy publication aimed at the professional microscopy community. I became Editor-in-Chief of M&A in 2020. I believe that this has given me a good appreciation of what is going on in microscopy, of new developments and where the field is headed. I enjoy observing this and trying to keep ahead of the curve.
Christopher Allen
Chris completed his MPhys undergraduate degree in physics at the University of Leeds in 2004. His master’s thesis, supervised by Prof. Chris Marrows, was on the interplay between ferromagnetism (FM) and superconductivity (SC) in FM/SC heterostructures. Chris returned to Leeds to study for his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Bryan Hickey investigating the link between the atomic structure and electronic properties of carbon nanotubes.
In June 2011 Chris joined the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford as a post-doctoral researcher focusing on the characterisation of carbon nanomaterials using aberration corrected transmission electron microscopy (TEM).
In 2016 Chris took up a role at the electron Physical Sciences Imaging Centre, a national facility for aberration corrected transmission electron microscopy based at Diamond Light Source first as Senior Electron Microscopy Scientist and then in 2019 as Principal EM Scientist. Chris’s role includes maintenance and development of the microscope, supporting users in the design, execution and analysis of experiments as well as performing his own research.
Chris’s current research is focused on low voltage STEM, TEM and diffraction studies of low dimensional and beam sensitive materials.
Jemima Burden
Jemima is Head of Electron Microscopy at the Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology at University College London. She received her BSc from University of Bath and her PhD from Imperial College London, where her fascination for microscopy began. Her main interests are developing Correlative Light and Electron Microscopy (CLEM) workflows and using volume EM (vEM) to investigate cell biological processes - from viruses to whole organisms.
Patricia Goggin
Patricia is a Clinical Scientist Manager and Head of the Biomedical Imaging Unit (BIU), a joint NHS and University facility offering light, electron and X-ray imaging. Her interests include diagnostic EM, in particular for Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia, serial block-face SEM and bone cell anatomy and pathology. Patricia is chair of the Association of Clinical Electron Microscopists.
Sarah Harper
My name is Sarah Harper, previously Sarah Karimi, and I am the General Manager – Sales at JEOL UK. I started my PhD studies in Materials Science at The University of Sheffield in 2007 and since then Electron Microscopy (EM) has formed a major part of my career. Over the last decade I have worked very closely with the EM community across academia and industry, where I have had the opportunity to be involved in many fantastic projects, exploring new research directions, consulting on available instrumentation, offering collaboration opportunities on instrumentation and/or applications developments as well as providing appropriate support from JEOL for new funding applications.
Currently I am also a member of the EMAG committee of the IoP and the Infrastructure and Community Working Groups of Volume EM.
Louise Hughes
Louise is the Business Manager for EBSD, FIB and Life Sciences at Oxford Instruments NanoAnalysis. Prior to this she was the facility manager of the Oxford Brookes University Bioimaging unit. Louise specialises in 3D electron microscopy and has been a biological electron microscopist since 2000. Her research focus has been on optimising biological sample preparation, methodology and imaging techniques across a wide range of sample types. She has extensive experience in SBFSEM, array tomography, electron tomography and 3D data reconstruction. Her current work involves applying EDS to biological samples and working with correlative data analysis.
Mark Jepson
Mark is currently a senior lecturer in metallurgy and microscopy at the Department of Materials, Loughborough University. In addition, alongside this he is the Academic Director of the Loughborough Materials Characterisation Centre (LMCC). With interests mostly in metallurgy, his research work is all linked through a shared application of electron microscopy-based analysis. He has previously held roles at the University of Sheffield as a research associate studying secondary electron dopant contrast for semiconductor analysis and as a research associate at Loughborough where he studied steels and superalloys for power generation applications. His love of electron microscopy began during his PhD (Loughborough, 2008) when he had opportunity to explore the world of oxide microstructures using SEM and the new generation of revolutionary focused ion beam systems.
Leandro Lemgruber
Leandro obtained his PhD in Biophysics in Brazil, studying the cellular structure of parasites and the interaction with host cells. He did a Post-doc at the University of Heidelberg (Germany) working on the cytoskeleton dynamics of the Malaria parasite Plasmodium sp and its structural organization. He took a position as a Research Support Specialist at the Electron Microscopy Resource Center of The Rockefeller University (New York, USA) and afterwards a position of Research Associate at the National Technology Institute in Brazil. Since 2015 he manages the Imaging sector of the Wellcome Centre for Molecular Parasitology at the University of Glasgow. Since his PhD, Leandro has applied optical, electron, super-resolution and cryo-microscopy in his work, as well as correlative microscopy.
Kirsty Maclellan-Gibson
Kirsty is the Deputy Facility Manager at the Imaging Facility of the Babraham Institute. She earned her PhD in Structural Virology from the University of Glasgow and gained further experience through postdoctoral roles in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Paris, France. Prior to joining the Babraham Institute in 2022, she worked as an electron microscopist and facility manager at the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC), where she specialized in high-resolution imaging techniques to ensure the safety of biological medicines. At the Babraham Institute, she focuses on VolumeEM and CLEM methodologies to study cellular and molecular biology, with an emphasis on healthy ageing.
Jennifer Simpson
Jennifer is a Senior Microscopist at The Pirbright Institute. She studied for a BSc Hons in Biology at the University of Portsmouth and joined The Pirbright Institute Bioimaging group in 2002. After leaving to work in an NHS histopathology laboratory for two years, she returned to The Pirbright Institute in 2012. She collaborates on a variety of research projects using confocal microscopy and electron microscopy including STED, CLEM and tomography. She was recently awarded the RMS Diploma for her project researching Marek’s disease virus in chicken feather follicle epithelium.
Rebecca Thompson
Rebecca is Facility Manager and senior cryo-electron microscopy (EM) support scientist at the Astbury Biostructure Laboratory, University of Leeds. Her research interests include imaging a broad range of biological specimens, from whole cells to macromolecular complexes, to high resolution using cryo-EM, and integrating data from EM with other microscopy techniques.
Lore Troalen
Lore is an Analytical Scientist at National Museums Scotland. She holds a PhD in analytical chemistry from the University of Edinburgh and previously studied chemistry and archaeological science in France where she gained MSc qualifications from the Universities of Paris XI and Bordeaux III. She joined National Museums Scotland in 2005, where her research interests include the use of X-ray based and microscopic techniques for the study of ancient gold jewellery.
Gea van de Kerkhof
Gea is a microscopist focused on technique development for correlative/multi-modal imaging in the Life Sciences. She has experience with light, electron and X-ray imaging and spectroscopy. During her PhD she investigated the optics of structurally coloured bacteria and plants. Afterwards she worked at Diamond Light Source in a combined industrial role with Johnson Matthey. There, she developed techniques and workflows for in-situ liquid microscopy across the I14 nanoprobe beamline and a Cs corrected TEM. Now, she develops cryogenic correlative light and electron microscopy at the Central Laser Facility, in the Octopus imaging cluster. Here, she works on cryo-FIB lift-outs, with lamella to use correlatively between super-resolution fluorescence and transmission electron microscopy.
Paul Verkade
Paul Verkade is a Professor of Bioimaging at the University of Bristol, UK. He has been working in the field of microscopy from the start of his scientific career and over the last 15 years has established himself as one of the leaders in the field of Correlative Light Electron Microscopy (CLEM).
As a champion of Correlative Microscopy and a passion for training the next generation of microscopists, he has taught on and organised numerous RMS and other courses including 4 EMBO practical courses on CLEM in Bristol and edited 5 books on Correlative Microscopy.
He is a long-standing member of the Electron Microscopy section of the RMS, having served as chair and other functions. He has been involved in the set-up of the RMS mentoring scheme that started in 2022.
One of the main efforts is to bring together imaging communities and organise the funding of imaging infrastructure, Paul has been an active member of the BioImagingUK community since the beginning, set up EM-UK as an EM network together with Pippa Hawes (Pirbright institute) and in 2019 initiated the organisation of the volume EM community, together with Lucy Collinson (Crick) and Gerard Kleijwegt and Ardan Patwardhan (EMBL-EBI).
Thomas Walther
Thomas is Reader in Advanced Electron Microscopy at the University of Sheffield and Director of the Kroto Centre for High Resolution Imaging and Analysis.
His research areas include electron microscopy method development and instrumentation, in particular HREM, EFTEM, ADF-STEM, EELS, ELNES, EDX.
A focus is on quantitative analysis of semiconductor quantum wells and quantum dots, but also the study of interdiffusion and segregation at grain boundaries and within metal nano-particles.
He runs the Microscopy of Semiconducting Materials conference series which is alternatingly held in Oxford and Cambridge, always in odd years.
AGM
The 2025 Annual General Meeting of the Electron Microscopy Section of the Royal Microscopical Society will take place at 4:45pm on Wednesday 2 July 2025 during mmc2025 incorporating EMAG 2025.
All the Society’s AGMs are free to attend for both members and non-members.