D&I Networks
The All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Diversity and Inclusion in STEM is a cross-party group dedicated to promoting the inclusion and progression of people from diverse backgrounds in STEM. It aims to encourage government, parliamentarians, academics, businesses, and other stakeholders to work towards a STEM sector that is representative of the population.
The APPG conducted a 15-month inquiry into Equity in STEM Education to understand whether young people are provided with equitable learning opportunities within STEM education, regardless of their background. The resulting report, “Equity in STEM Education”, published in June 2020, identifies 6 recommendations for improving young people’s access, attainment, and engagement levels in STEM education.
APPG on Diversity and Inclusion in STEM: 2022 Focus
In Autumn 2021, the APPG on Diversity and inclusion in STEM put out a ‘Call for Ideas’ to invite submissions of potential activities for the APPG to focus on in 2022. After consultation with the AMI membership, we concluded that the APPG should focus on the areas of anti-racism and anti-ableism.
Anti-racism
Applied Microbiology International established the Anti-racism working group (ARWG) to identify any forms of systemic racism that touch the lives of our team, committees and members - with a goal of ensuring AMI is anti-racist organisation. The ARWG aims to examine how historic practices may have blocked equal participation in our work, learn and improve by facing difficult issues and being self-critical and have difficult conversations and face the realities of the changes needed to make our work better.
Since the group has been founded, ARWG members and some members of AMI staff have had the opportunity to participate in the anti-racism meeting on Wellcome’s anti racism principles and toolkit and Race Reflections: Beyond Bias Training and we hope to extend this training to all AMI staff and committee members in 2023. We are working hard to ensure the Society is an anti-racist organisation and feel that the sector must do more to ensure this is the case across the entire STEM workforce.
Anti-Racism Working Group
Kofo Balogun
Kofo oversees the Society's Strategic HR and Operational Development portfolio. Ensuring best practice is maintained, Kofo ensures effective people management processes are in place, handles all HR issues and oversees the implementation of up to date at employment law practices ensuring the Society is legally compliant.
Emmanuel Adukwu
Emmanuel completed a PhD in Microbiology at the University of Northampton, investigating community acquired infections and identifying decontamination and control measures. He is currently a Professor and Department lead for Employability at UWE Bristol where he is involved in Biomedical Science and Public Health teaching and research at undergraduate and postgraduate level. He is also a fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy (FHEA). His research is dedicated to studying the survival strategies in bacteria and fungi as well as antimicrobial resistance and infection control in diverse communities with particular interest in preventing and managing infectious diseases in Africa.
Passionate about equality, diversity and inclusion, Emmanuel has been recognised for his contributions with a National Diversity Award nomination in 2019 (UK), institutional awards and the Bristol BME Powerlist100 in 2018. He is passionate about global education and mentoring and has been a member of Applied Microbiology International for over 10 years and previously served as Events Coordinator and Chair of the Early Career Scientist committee.
- Twitter:
- @EmmanuelAdukwu
Gil Domingue
Gil runs a data analysis consultancy and, as a registered trainer, also offers farm to fork hygiene assessments. Previously he was the R&D Project Manager at GALVmed, a charity for the sustainability of veterinary medicines including vaccines. Gil led sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America projects and found working with poor people was humbling. Gil previously worked for Express Microbiology Ltd, a Food Water Environment analytical lab with UKAS and DEFRA accreditation, and Aviagen Ltd (poultry breeding). As a recruiter, he promoted equality and balanced teams. This was most relevant when training staff from so-called “conservative” countries. Gil gained his Ph. D. at the University of Aston (Birmingham) and then obtained a post-doctoral position in Professor Bill Costerton’s Biofilm Laboratory, the University of Calgary, Canada. He then held a Research Fellowship in the Microbiology Department, University of British Columbia Hospital, Canada. He discharged patient care, clinical research and lecturing duties.
Blessing Mbaebie Oyedemi
Dr Blessing Mbaebie Oyedemi is a research fellow at Nottingham Trent University with research interest in natural product drug discovery for molecular mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance research (AMR), both in academia and clinical research settings. As an AMI member, her passion resonates as an advocate for sustainable antimicrobial interventions through research, strengthening education and promoting policy.
She believes strongly in the values of AMI and the opportunities provided to all levels of scientists, researchers, and all public walks of life to be a change agent trying to solve everyday challenges and influence change through microbiology
Amara Anyogu
Amara is a Lecturer at the University of Westminster where she leads the Foundation year programme in the School of Life Sciences. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and is intentional about creating learning environments that support the successful transition of students from diverse backgrounds into Higher Education.
Amara completed a PhD in Food Microbiology, investigating the survival strategies of foodborne pathogens in low pH environments. Amara’s research explores the fascinating activities of microorganisms in food environments as producers, pathogens and spoilers. Her current projects focus on antimicrobial resistance in the food chain and the contribution of beneficial microbes in improving the safety and nutritional quality of indigenous fermented foods.
Amara has been a member of the Society for over 12 years and has previously served as the Secretary of the Early Career Scientists Committee. She is the Co-Convenor of the Nigerian Applied Microbiology network, a platform for advancing microbiology knowledge and impact in Africa.
Diane Purchase
Diane is a Professor of Environmental Biotechnology and has a keen interest in safeguarding and improving the environment. She is an alumna of King’s College London where she was awarded a PhD degree in Environmental Microbiology in 1992. As an Executive Member of the Committee of the Heads of Environmental Sciences (CHES) in the UK, a Fellow of the Institution of Environmental Sciences (IES) and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA), Diane engages in the advancement of environmental microbiology through teaching, knowledge exchange, research and scholarship in the UK and international higher education sectors. She was appointed to the Subject Benchmark Review panel for Earth Science, Environmental Sciences and Environmental Study by the UK Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) in 2014. Diane’s research interest focuses on the role of biotechnology in pollution control and bioremediation. She has published widely and has supervised a number of PhD students in this area. She is member of the editorial boards of the two international journals published by Springer Nature: Environmental Geochemistry and Health and Environmental Science and Pollution Research.
Marcela Hernandez Garcia
Marcela completed her PhD in Natural Resources in 2010 in Chile. After completing her PhD, she received an award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to perform her postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, in Marburg, Germany. In 2015, she moved to the UK to become a NERC research fellow in Environmental Microbiology at the University of Southampton (UoS). Marcela is currently a a Senior Research Associate in the group of Colin Murrell at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Her career is dedicated to studying how microbial communities establish in soils perturbed either by human manipulation or natural disturbance, specifically methanogens in paddy rice soils, carbon monoxide oxidisers in volcanic soils, antimicrobial resistance in agricultural soils and the resilience of microbial communities in archived soils. She uses high-throughput sequencing and stable-isotope probing to assess community diversity and function. Marcela is editor of the Journal of Applied Microbiology and has been a member of the AMI since 2017. Marcela is highly involved in outreach, receiving in 2017 the UoS “Research Communicator Road-show Award” for outstanding public engagement. Marcela is also a Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) visiting professor at the Institute of Soil Science CAS-Nanjing, China.
Michael Ukwuru
Michael Ukwuru has a Ph.D in Food Microbiology from Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Nigeria. He is currently the Head, Department of Food Science and Technology, The Federal Polytechnic, Idah, Kogi State, Nigeria. He has carried out a series of community development projects. He has published over 30 articles in journals and has presented 30+ papers in many conferences around the world. He is a member of the Editorial Board of 25+ journals and Editor-in-Chief of two journals. He has reviewed over 200 manuscripts for different journals and research proposals for some funding organizations. He is also a member of the UK Research and Innovation Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) Peer Review Development College. His research area is Food Microbiology, Food Fermentation, Food safety and quality management systems, and Bio-processing.
Sharad Kamble
Dr Sharad Ramchandra Kamble has a PhD in Life Sciences (Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences) from the University of Bradford. He is a Microbiologist with around 14 years experience with Pharma R&D, Pathology Labs, Research and Medical Devices C&D Validations.
Ayorinde Afolayan
Ayorinde Afolayan is a post-doctoral scientist at Okeke lab (Molecular biology lab), Department of Pharmaceutical Microbiology, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He is interested in the application of genomics and metagenomics in the surveillance of antimicrobial resistance in humans, animals, and the environment. He joined the AMI's anti-racism working group to promote equality and objectivity in science.
Zina Alfahl
Zina joined the School of Pharmacy at Queen’s University Belfast, UK in September 2018 to purse her PhD degree in the relationship between airway microbiome composition, inflammation and clinical outcomes in patients with Bronchiectasis. In 2018, Zina acquired a BSc (Hons) in Pharmacy from Al Ain University of Science and Technology, UAE. In 2019, she was awarded the Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA) award. Zina is currently the Postgraduate Chair and acting as a student representative member at the SWAN SAT team for gender equality at the School of Pharmacy, QUB. Zina is interested in engaging with scientific community and in promoting microbiology.
- Twitter:
- @AlfahlZina
Mel Lacey
Dr Mel Lacey has been a member of AMI since her PhD in Molecular Microbiology at the University of Sheffield. After a BBRSC funded post doc in the same lab group she joined Sheffield Hallam University in 2013 as a Lecturer in Microbiology and became a senior lecturer in Microbiology in 2016. Through out her scientific career she has had a keen interest in public engagement and outreach, receiving her first Public engagement grant in 2007, in the second year of her PhD. Currently, she is working with partner organisations across South Yorkshire to deliver impactful public engagement and widening participation events to wide range of participants. Her research interests, as well as public engagement and widening participation, span higher education pedagogy, production and delivery methods of novel anti-microbial agents and the impact of the microbiome of human health.
Clare Taylor
Clare has been a Society member since 1997, when she was a PhD student at the University of Manchester. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Medical Microbiology at Edinburgh Napier University, where she is also Head of Student Experience and Employability in the School of Life, Sport & Social Sciences. The main focus of her research is on understanding host-microbe interactions, particularly of intracellular bacteria that cause human infection, and the aims of her research are to understand how bacterial gene expression is modulated in response to the host environment, and how this contributes to microbial pathogenicity. Clare is also involved in several multi-disciplinary projects and the applied aspects of her research include developing novel antimicrobial strategies. She has a keen interest in public engagement, including performing at Edinburgh Fringe, and also chairs the University’s Public Engagement Forum. Clare is active in encouraging women into science working alongside colleagues across STEM disciplines and Equate Scotland. Clare served on the Executive Committee of the Society from 2010 – 2014 and is also a Features Editor for Microbiologist.
- Twitter:
- @CT_Microbiol
Anti-ableism
Ableism is endemic in academia and there is substantial underrepresentation of disabled scientists in STEM. There are multiple barriers for disabled scientists in STEM due to lack of awareness, accessibility and discrimination. Concerningly, there is underrepresentation of disabled scientists in the membership and committees of Learned Societies and funding bodies. The STEM workforce is less diverse than the wider workforce and without addressing the issue of ableism, the science community will never be representative of the general community or be inclusive of the interests of all communities. As a Society we are working to deepen our understanding of the barriers that regularly impact people with disabilities and how to best address and remove those barriers. As part of this commitment, we are implementing NADSN recommendations for disability inclusion in STEMM careers to remove and ameliorate barriers faced by those who are marginalised due to disability.
APPG on Diversity and Inclusion in STEM: 2022 Project
Following two inquiries on education and the workforce, the Secretariat were keen to explore different options and areas. From the 20+ submissions received, the Secretariat progressed three potential ideas, which were reviewed by the Group’s members from the House of Lords and House of Commons and included:
- The digital divide and STEM skills
- Disability in STEM – accessibility at all stages
- Regional STEM skills inequity
We are now pleased to announce the APPG on Diversity and Inclusion in STEM’s 2022 project will be Regional STEM Skills Inequity. Regional STEM Skills Inequity evolved from an initial submission by Engineering UK. Submissions can be found on the APPG website.