RMS President and RMS Vice President Awards
The RMS President's Award 2021
Derek is based at the Francis Crick Institute and has worked in Cytometry for more than 35 years. He has been instrumental in promoting Cytometry on a local, national and international level.
He was one of the founding members of the London Cytometry Club and the founder of flowcytometryUK. Through the latter, Derek has clocked up 15 years of organising highly successful national conferences, and he also runs the active flowcytometryUK mailing list. He is a former RMS Council Member and recently completed his second term as Chair of the Society’s Cytometry Section.
For more than 10 years, Derek has worked closely with Peter O’Toole and Stephen Couzens to run the RMS Flow Cytometry practical courses, held annually at the University of York for both UK and international attendees. He is well known for the help and advice he gives to delegates, and for his willingness to offer ongoing assistance remotely, after they have returned to the lab. He also finds time to offer informal coaching to junior members of the RMS to help with their communication and presentation skills.
On an International Level, Derek has been very involved with ISAC (RMS is an ISAC Associated society) over the years, including sitting on Council. He is also an Associate Editor for Cytometry Part A, and has helped with the establishment of SRL (Shared Resource Laboratory) publications within the journal.
Derek's own SRL lab at the Francis Crick Institute has an excellent reputation. It is no coincidence that at least eight of his staff have gone on to become highly successful core managers elsewhere within Europe and the USA (plus one in Australia), taking with them Derek's guidance, expertise and knowledge. Recently he has changed roles within the Francis Crick Institute to become its National Science Technology Platform Training leader
RMS President Grace Burke said: “It is my great pleasure to announce Derek Davies as this year’s winner of the RMS President’s Award. Derek has been a key lynchpin at the RMS for many years and has shown remarkable dedication to the promotion of Cytometry at all levels. His passion for his subject and willingness to devote his time and expertise for the benefit of others, are precisely the qualities for which the President’s Award was established to honour. My warmest congratulations go to Derek.”
The RMS President's Award 2022
Steve is an outstanding Principal Clinical Scientist, who heads up the Immunophenotyping Laboratory at the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff. The laboratory provides a clinical flow cytometry service to most Health Boards in Wales.
He has participated in, and later organised, the Clinical Module of the Annual RMS Flow Cytometry Course for more than two decades, and in recent years, has also run the Virtual RMS Clinical Flow course. Both have been hugely successful and of benefit to thousands of delegates over the years.
Steve has regularly chaired many other educational sessions and best practice workshops. He is a founding member of UK multicolour immunophenotyping (MIG) group and co-authored national guidelines for the use of multicolour flow cytometry in the diagnosis of haematological neoplasms. He is also a founding member of PNH diagnostics interest group, which established and validated a consensus protocol for PNH flow cytometry.
Steve has also been actively involved in working groups to improve diagnosis of myeloma, leukaemia and lymphoma – as well as working to improve standardisation of flow cytometry within Europe through the Harmonemia initiative.
Throughout his career Steve has remained at the forefront of clinical flow cytometry by consistently reviewing and evolving the needs of his service and patients. He has had an active role in clinical trials and is seen as an expert in several fields including lymph node flow cytometry, where Cardiff has a reputation as a reference centre.
The RMS Vice-President's Award 2021
Judith is a well-known and respected figure in the UK EM community. She has been the senior electron microscopist of the Wolfson Bioimaging Facility at the University of Bristol since the establishment of the facility.
Having initially spent time with microscopy suppliers such as Philips and Oxford Instruments, she joined the facility in 2007 and was instrumental in the set-up of the new EM unit, together with Paul Verkade.
Colleagues have praised Judith for her patience and dedication in keeping the EM unit afloat, and for her expert knowledge as a teacher – qualities she has also deployed to great effect on RMS courses, and as a member of the organising committee of the Cryo Microscopy Group.
During her time at Bristol, she has helped establish the EM unit as a highly regarded facility,
introducing new techniques such as STEM tomography and cryo SEM. She has been an author on more than 50 research papers, for which the EM provided by Judith has often been the critical piece of evidence lifting the impact of the research.
In 2016, Bristol was awarded a Wellcome grant to set up a new dedicated cryo EM facility.
Selflessly, Judith was instrumental in the design, installation, and initial running of the facility – despite the fact she would not be directly involved going forward.
RMS Vice Presidents Dr Peter O’Toole and Professor Susan Anderson said: “It is our great pleasure to announce Judith Mantell as winner of this award, which celebrates the achievements of the ‘unsung heroes’ of microscopy. Judith is quite evidently a major asset to her facility and all those that she has helped and taught both internally and external to Bristol.
Her expertise has not only elevated the quality of research being carried out, but also continues to earn the respect of colleagues across the EM community. We are delighted to be able to take this opportunity to acknowledge these often unseen efforts.”