Why are we celebrating women in AFM? (Women in STEM series)

In our blog this month we want to showcase some of the fantastic work being undertaken by women working with AFM today.

We asked Dr Alice Pyne to introduce the piece to you and share her thoughts on why highlighting women in AFM, their work and their achievements is critical to the healthy development of the AFM Community…

“In organising The RMS Virtual RMS AFM & SPM Meeting 2020 with Jamie Hobbs we discovered that finding profiles for women in AFM can be quite a challenge – you have to get pretty far through Google to find some of these fantastic researchers.

Once you find their research you realise there is so much more incredible work being done with AFM beyond that which we often see promoted. Internet presence is really important especially as a woman in science and for anyone who is part of an underrepresented group, but it’s not often given. If you Google AFM you often find the same handful of key names in the field. They are well-known, regularly interviewed and invited to be conference keynote speakers, which in turn resonates and repeats. The challenge this presents is that other voices and viewpoints may not be heard.

AFM is a great technique, and we can all benefit from sharing our knowledge and experience of it – in fact I would go so far as to say the technology needs a community around it. A community that includes more women as a start, increasing diversity and inclusivity to ultimately help foster and produce better work, in an improved environment.

We all need to do our part to grow a diverse supportive community, which provides opportunities for women to be seen and their work heard. Professor Caroline Austin, working in the field of DNA Topology, sets a gold standard in how to do this. She won’t run a conference with less than 33% women; she runs her searches for people by field and then by country, to avoid a highly westernised approach to science.

Creating opportunities, such as this blog, to showcase the work of women in AFM is a great start, as is the creation of the RMS gender equality database spearheaded by Dr Siân Culley – which we need to use, get our colleagues in AFM to add themselves to, and publicise.

There’s so much more we can do though – more user meetings, more diverse keynote speakers and panellists at conferences, support for early career researchers, more mentoring within the AFM community, including between women who work in the area - all of which will benefit the science we are all dedicated to. Who wouldn’t want to be part of that transformation?”

Dr Alice Pyne, University of Sheffield, UK

Here we start with profiles of 10 women using AFM for their research, ranging from Professors to Early Career Researchers, studying topics from smart materials to DNA repair. Please click on the images below for each researcher.

If you are a woman working in AFM (or you know someone you’d like to nominate), we would love to hear from you and to have you take part in our Women in STEM interview series. Contact us via email at community@nunano.com