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:

• Conor Price (Cohort 5- Chair and representative for Outreach)
• Katie Lewis (Cohort 5 representative)
• Rachel Lennon (Cohort 5- representative for Student Guild)
• James Laurenson (Cohort 6- representative for Colloquia)
• James Capers (Cohort 6- representative for Industry visits)
• Kyle Arnold (Cohort 7 representative for Training/Availability of resources)
• Jenner Gudge-Brooke (Cohort 7 representative for Progress monitoring and assessment)
• Jessica Brown (Cohort 4 representative)

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 2020/21 groups are:

Rachel Lennon

Kavya Sadanandan

Jacob Binsley

Dean Patient

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, and through our Metabuddies scheme where we work with local schools to inspire and engage the next generation of scientists.

Conor Price is this year's public engagement and outreach coordinator.

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:

• David Newman- Lead for Social Media/Twitter
• Rachel Lennon- Instagram
• Kavya Sreeja Sadanandan- Facebook
• Dan Moore- YouTube
• Ben Pearce- YouTube
• Ineta Grikalaite- YouTube
• Connor Sait- YouTube

Keep your eye on this page for the launch of the new YouTube channel.

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.

The representatives for social events are:

• David Newman- Film Evenings
• Emily Glover- Film Evenings
• Hannah Barnard- Formal Events
• Katie Lewis- Formal Events