Student ambassadors

The Student Advisory Group (SAG) consists of members of each cohort who represent the student body at meetings with the Management and Oversight Boards. They help to implement new ideas that benefit the overall experience of their peers, to offer different perspectives, and to ensure the PGRs' opinions are heard.

The current SAG representatives are:

• Joseph Beadle (2015 cohort)
• Ben Hogan (2015 cohort, chair)
• William Ferguson (2016 cohort)
• Julia De Pineda Gutiérrez (2016 cohort)
• Jessica Brown (2017 cohort)
• Emily Glover (2017 cohort)
• Katie Lewis (2018 cohort)
• Conor Price (2018 cohort)

To provide a platform for cross-cohort experience exchange, XM² runs monthly group meetings as a forum to share insights from research and other activities, such as outreach, industry visits, conferences, and external training attended.

The XM² group meetings are facilitated and managed by the PGRs to share knowledge and support each other in their professional development. With over 60 PGRs we now have 4 CDT groups consisting of a balanced cross-cohort mix, each chaired by two PGRs.

Chairs of the 2018/19 groups are:

Shane Davies and Joaquin Faneca

Rosamund Herapath and William Ferguson/Francis Davies

Elizabeth Martin and Joe Morgan

Ned Taylor and Milo Baraclough

Public engagement and outreach play an important role on the XM² agenda. Many of our PGRs proactively engage with the public at science fairs, external and internal public engagement programmes.

Natalie Whitehead volunteers as an internal point of contact for our postgraduate researchers to support initiation of activities, especially among the new PGRs.

XM² postgraduate researchers proactively manage the Centre’s social media platforms and internal communication channels, to share knowledge and experiences internally and externally.

The current communications representatives are:

Facebook and Twitter: Rosamund Herapath, Jessica Brown
Internal communication: Joseph Beadle
EUOPS social media administrator: Henry Fernández

Community is an important factor in XM².

In addition to the CDT group meetings and ad-hoc discussions where the postgraduate researchers bounce ideas off each other, share knowledge and experiences, and support each other in finding answers to their questions, the PGRs coordinate social events to encourage interactions and a positive work environment. Peter Inzani and Jess Brown are currently leading on the PGR social events organisation.