Author: Maxime Chautemps
Artist: Si Chen
Editor: Samuel Durston
Another year, another Rep Elections week: a vital opportunity for students to choose who will represent them for the next academic year. In order to provide our members with more information on their candidates who could be representing them, and to hear about themselves in their own words, Kinesis Magazine reached out for comment from 175 different candidates, each bidding to be a rep for either what we considered a STEAM (STEM + Arts) faculty, Student Trustees, Welfare Reps, and/or Societies Rep.
This feature will introduce the candidates in their own words. In a time where much is changing in higher education, these students’ voices and votes will shape the focus of the Students’ Union, and what futures are possible at UCL.
Unfortunately, we contacted the candidates late on Saturday the 17th of October. This gave the candidates only a day to get back to us in time to publish this the Monday of election week. Only 28 out of 175 candidates were able to get back to us. Despite this, we still received a sizeable number of responses, especially compared to our coverage last year. We really appreciate the time that candidates took to reply to us, and the effort they put into their responses. Thank you for trusting Kinesis with presenting your campaigns.
These were the questions we asked each candidate:
- What faculty are you running for? What is your department and degree?
- What do you have planned should you win your election?
- What would you like to do to ensure STEAM students’ voices are heard?
- Will you be able to state what you plan to do for the upcoming year and how you intend to work with your departments or societies to lead change on and around campus?
- If you were to miss Zone meetings and discussions, would you hold yourself accountable? If so, how would you do this?
As we still received a significant number of responses, we will be publishing across several articles, and we recommend finding those covering the elections that most concern you. Make sure to cast your votes following the link below!
https://studentsunionucl.org/election/rep-elections-2026
Faculty of Life Sciences
Candidate respondees: Maggie Liang and Zoey Zhou, Hugo Kapalko, Nat Huusko-Kumar, Rohama Ali
Candidates: Maggie Liang and Zoey Zhou
1. What faculty are you running for? What is your department and degree?
We are running for the Life Sciences Faculty Representative position at UCL as a job-share team. I’m Manqi Liang (Maggie), studying Biochemistry MSci, and my partner is Zoey Zhou, studying Biological sciences Msci.
2. What do you have planned should you win your election?
We hope to make Life Sciences more connected and supportive for students across different years and departments. We would like to make it easier for students to share feedback, organise opportunities for students to connect and learn from one another, and encourage more academic, career-focused and social events.
3. What would you do to ensure STEAM students’ voices are heard?
We would create accessible ways for students to share their concerns and suggestions, such as feedback forms and open conversations. We would also actively reach out to students across different year groups and departments, making sure feedback is not limited to those who are already comfortable speaking up. We would bring recurring concerns to the relevant staff and representatives and follow up on the progress made.
4. What do you plan to do during the upcoming year, and how will you work with departments or societies to lead change on and around campus?
Throughout the year, we plan to gather feedback regularly, communicate key concerns to the relevant departments, and work with Life Sciences societies and other representatives to organise academic discussions, cross-year networking and social events. We also hope to help students learn more about volunteering, internships and career opportunities, while keeping them updated on any changes resulting from their feedback.
5. If you were to miss Zone meetings and discussions, would you hold yourself accountable? If so, how?
Yes. We understand that attending meetings and keeping up with discussions are important responsibilities. If either of us were unable to attend, we would inform the relevant organisers in advance, catch up on the minutes and updates, and follow up on any actions assigned to us. As a job-share team, we would also communicate with each other to maintain continuity and ensure that students’ concerns are still represented.
Candidate: Hugo Kapalko
1. What faculty are you running for? What is your department and degree?
My name is Hugo and I am running for the Life Sciences Undergraduate Representative position. I am currently a second year in the BSc Neuroscience programme, which falls under the NPP (Neuroscience, Physiology, and Pharmacology) department.
2. What do you have planned should you win your election.
If I am elected, the key points I would work on would be making it easier for students to report lecture absences due to illnesses etc. through the UCL-GO system, continuing the work on a website project that was started last year to provide students with a platform to anonymously voice their feedback to student reps and faculty staff, and making the different courses and departments that fall under Life Sciences at UCL more connected by hopefully planning faculty wide picnics, and perhaps specific snack days at certain locations to allow students from different Life Sciences courses to chat and befriend one another. I would also love to investigate the concept of cross departmental projects that would allow students from different life sciences backgrounds to collaborate on projects.
3. What you would like to do to ensure STEAM students’ voices are heard.
One of the main things I would like to do to ensure that STEAM students’ voices are heard would be to make sure that the appropriate platforms are made available to all students so that they can voice their concerns, which includes both concepts such as the anonymous feedback website I mentioned earlier, and publicly reflecting on feedback that might be particularly prevalent and popular in the student body, with an action plan being put in place and presented back to the student body appropriately. I want to also ensure that SPC meeting notes and reflections are used at the faculty level, as this would allow us to see the most common types of feedback on a faculty level with great detail.
4. Will you be able to state what you plan to do for the upcoming year and how you intend to work with your departments or societies to lead change on and around campus.
The plan for the upcoming year is to firstly reflect on all the SPC meeting data that we have from the previous academic year from the different departments and courses in the life sciences faculty. We would then focus on creating a plan to tackle any points or feedback that was prevalent across multiple courses/departments. Discussing ideas regarding change with society leadership would also be a greatly valuable tool which I am hoping to use through possible meetings with the leadership of different UCL science societies. I would get in touch with the different societies to plan a possible cross-society picnic, or ask them to help plan or advertise get togethers at places like Haldane Hub. I would also like to tackle the feasibility of creating a way to report lecture absences due to illnesses on UCL-GO as quickly as possible to help implement the change this school year, and start planning some cross departmental science projects which would allow students of different life science background to collaborate on a shared project together. Lastly, I would get in touch with the different life sciences societies at UCL to discuss possible lecture events, where module organisers could guide us through some common shortcomings of our final year exam essays in order to help us be better prepared for finals. Closed-book essay writing under a time crunch is a skill that is disproportionately highly marked compared to the amount of time we spend practicing the format throughout our courses, so it would likely be a good way to raise confidence and overall marks going into exam season.
5. If you were to miss Zone meetings and discussions, would you hold yourself accountable? If so, how would you do this?
If I were to miss a Zone meeting or discussion, I would definitely do my best to hold myself accountable for any of my possible shortcomings that led me to not being present by communicating my absence with the other reps and staff members (hopefully ahead of the actual meeting), explaining the given circumstances, and going over meeting notes and discussing developments on possible projects/ideas with other meeting attendees.
Candidate: Nat Huusko-Kumar
1. What faculty are you running for? What is your department and degree?
I am running to become the Undergraduate Representative for the Faculty of Life Sciences! I am in the Division of Biosciences within this faculty, studying Biomedical Sciences.
2. What do you have planned should you win your election.
Life Sciences students need to be heard. If elected, I will immediately:
- Launch a dedicated outreach hub: create a unified social media presence with regular video updates, forum links, and transparent progress tracking
- Host interactive in-person events: organise events where students can have a bit of fun while sharing feedback about their faculty experience
- Partner with key societies: connect directly with societies that have high Life Sciences representation to support their initiatives
Ultimately, I will meet as many students as possible within the faculty and share ideas communally and accessibly (i.e., highlighting underrepresented students, leveraging my language skills to assess problems that may be challenging to explain in a second language).
3. What you would like to do to ensure STEAM students’ voices are heard.
The core pillars of my leadership are accessibility, representation, and persistent outreach.
- Making underrepresented and/or marginalised groups heard: I will advocate for the wide range of students the Life Sciences at UCL boasts, from women in STEAM navigating academic spaces or international students adjusting to a new environment
- Championing creative balance: I will advocate for the integration of creative outlets within the scientific workload, ensuring students have the time and space to pursue artistic endeavours
- Proven leadership experience: As former State President of the Future Health Professionals organisation in the United States, I led over 7,000 students in the Health and Life Sciences fields for over a year. This experience equipped me with persuasive communicative skills to proficiently present students’ feedback to the university
- Multilingual capacity: Speaking French, Japanese, Finnish, as well as some Malayalam and Hindi, I am dedicated to listening closely to students’ unique stories and ensuring everyone feels heard
4. Will you be able to state what you plan to do for the upcoming year and how you intend to work with your departments or societies to lead change on and around campus.
After a strong social media presence and multiple in-person events are organised, I will gauge Life Sciences students’ most common feedback, priorities, and preferred feedback methods. I will plan out brief discussions with Academic and Course representatives to synthesise ideas I may have missed before finalising data for Zone and other key meetings. I believe a Plan of Action is best for consistent leadership and change around the faculty, which I will draft up based on priorities from the majority of students as well as minority groups. Additionally, I hope to be a friendly face on campus, and I will dedicate time for any question no matter how small!
5. If you were to miss Zone meetings and discussions, would you hold yourself accountable? If so, how would you do this?
I champion a strong sense of accountability in my leadership. Firstly, I have already begun outlining my schedule for the role if elected to avoid scheduling conflicts, and I will maintain a detailed organisational system throughout my term. Secondly, I will establish an accountability system with another representative to not only better connect the Life Sciences faculty but strengthen the teamwork within the SU. If I were to miss a meeting/discussion, I would catch up with the relevant representative and immediately communicate any news to Life Sciences students. Then, I would assess why I missed the meeting, and if it was an avoidable conflict, I would meet with my Personal Tutor or another mentor to talk about time-management strategies. Transparency will remain at the forefront of my leadership, and I promise to keep Life Sciences students my priority.
Candidate: Rohama Ali
1. What faculty are you running for? What is your department and degree?
I’m running to be the Faculty Representative for Life Sciences. I’m a second-year Biomedical Sciences student in the Division of Biosciences, currently following the Organs and Systems stream. Honestly, being part of such a broad faculty has made me realise that although we may study very different subjects, a lot of the issues we experience as students overlap. I want to make sure those experiences don’t just stay as conversations between friends but are actually heard by the people who can act on them.
2. What do you have planned should you win your election?
If I do get elected, one of my biggest priorities is to make representation feel VISIBLE and ACCESSIBLE. Students shouldn’t only hear from their representative around election time or have to search endlessly to work out who to contact when something is wrong. I want to introduce regular opportunities for students to share their experiences through short polls, anonymous forms and conversations, alongside updates explaining what I have raised, what response I received and what happens next. I would love to work closely with departmental representatives so that concerns affecting individual courses can be identified alongside wider issues across the Faculty. Most importantly, I don’t want to make unrealistic promises about changes that are outside a representative’s control. What I can promise is that I WILL LISTEN, raise the issues students actually care about, follow them up and be transparent about the outcome.
3. What you would like to do to ensure STEAM students’ voices are heard.
I think genuinely hearing STEAM students means recognising that there isn’t one single “student voice”. Experiences can vary massively between courses, departments, year groups and individual students, so I don’t want my own experience as a Biomedical Sciences student to become the basis for what I assume everyone wants and needs. I want to hear from students across the faculty, especially those who may not normally attend meetings or feel comfortable approaching a rep directly. Through anonymous feedback, quick polls and working with departmental reps and societies, I want everyone to have a way to contribute. Most importantly, I want to close the feedback loop by regularly sharing what students have raised, what I’ve taken forward and what has actually happened as a result.
4. Will you be able to state what you plan to do for the upcoming year and how you intend to work with your departments or societies to lead change on and around campus.
This year, I want to strengthen communication between students, departmental reps, societies, the Students’ Union, and the Faculty. Instead of assuming what students need, I’ll use conversations, surveys, and collaboration to find shared concerns and take them to Faculty meetings and Education Zone. I also want to work closely with societies, as they already bring together different student communities. For me, leading change means listening first, taking students’ concerns to the right people, and actually following them through.
5. If you were to miss Zone meetings and discussions, would you hold yourself accountable? If so, how would you do this?
Absolutely. Students are trusting me to represent them, so I would take that responsibility seriously. If I couldn’t attend, l’d communicate this early, make sure important concerns were still passed on and catch up on any discussions and actions afterwards. I’d also be transparent with students. To me, accountability isn’t about pretending I’II never miss something; it’s about taking responsibility, following up and making sure the students I represent don’t lose out because of it.