A piece from our sponsor, The Company of Biologists, on UCL early-career researchers utilising their online platforms for developing science communication skills.
Introduction
Our online communities are a powerful way to keep the conversation going no matter where you are. They offer an opportunity to promote your work and expand your network globally, allowing interactions with people you might not usually meet face-to-face.
- Join 200+ early-career researchers (ECRs) over on preLights to highlight the latest preprints in your field, build confidence in your scientific writing and interact with preprint authors.
- Freely contribute to the Node and FocalPlane, our community sites that serve developmental and stem cell biologists and microscopists with discussion threads, jobs, event listings, resources and beautiful images.
- Keep up to date with the Node and FocalPlane Correspondents and preLight Ambassadors as the selected members help shape the future of their respective communities.
We profile here some UCL ECRs who have played a key role on the Node, preLights and FocalPlane:
The Node
Courtney Lancaster is a PhD student at the Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology (LMCB), UCL. She was one of the presenters in the Fascinating World of Developmental Biology documentary produced by the British Society for Developmental Biology and the journal Development. She also wrote a Node post about her experience being part of the film.
PreLights
Rob Hynds was a postdoc when he joined preLights in 2018; the year preLights was launched. He now leads the Epithelial Cell Biology in ENT Research Group at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. As one of its first members, Rob was very active within the preLights community. For preLights 5th birthday, he wrote his last preLights post (as ‘alumni’) highlighting work from the same authors whose work he covered in 2018.
Diego Sainz de la Maza is a postdoc working in the Amoyel Lab at University College London. He studies stem cells and tissue homeostasis in the fly testis. He wrote a preLights post covering a preprint from Marie Clémot and colleagues. This post includes a wonderful author response as well as a ‘postLight’ which was added when the work was eventually published in PLOS ONE.
FocalPlane
Ioakeim (Makis) Ampartzidis, who was a PhD student at UCL and now is a postdoc Cambridge in the Department of Biochemistry has been shortlisted in two of our image competitions. We were delighted to be able to share one of Makis’s images in our ‘Featured image’ series on FocalPlane. Makis’s image ‘Beat’ was on display in our art gallery at the Biologists @ 100 conference.
Giulia Casal from the LMCB at UCL was the first recipient of the volume electron microscopy ambassador travel grant. We published an interview with Giulia about her experience at the meeting. Together with Ian White, Jemima Burden and Allison Lloyd, Giulia shared a case study on how they used array tomography scanning electron microscopy to interrogate the blood-nerve barrier.
Hoang Anh Le is a postdoc in Roberto Mayor’s lab at UCL. Anh has taken striking microscopy images and we were delighted to highlight Anh’s work in our featured image series. Anh’s image ‘At the heart of a cancer cell’ was also shortlisted in our image competition.
Nicole Noel, a research fellow at UCL, was selected as one of our FocalPlane correspondents for 2025. We are looking forward to reading Nicole’s posts on overlooked cellular features.
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