The Stempra committee was deeply saddened by the death of our Chair, Rob Dawson this year. Rob was a dedicated and enthusiastic Chair who had led Stempra for the last three years and was always a pleasure to work with. He was an active member of the science press officer and science communication communities and will be greatly missed by those of us who knew and interacted with him.
Stempra events were paused for a period after Rob’s death and the AGM was delayed. The committee extended their thanks to everyone for the outpouring of support for Rob’s family and friends. We held a memorial event where Rob’s former friends and colleagues spoke warmly about their memories of him. And Stempra donated to Horatio’s Garden in Rob’s memory. The committee is also planning a Rob Dawson memorial award and these details will be announced at a later date.
Despite Covid interfering with some of Stempra’s plans over the last year, we still had several successful events across a wide range of topics including ‘Taking the next step in your career’, ‘Misunderstanding sex differences’ and ‘How to read numbers’. Unfortunately a Covid spike meant we had to postpone our Christmas party but we had a small social in February and we plan to hold a late summer social too.
We’ve made good progress with the new website – a project that Rob started – and we look forward to launching this as soon as it’s ready. We also plan to hold more in person events next year while keeping a number of online events to ensure our members living outside of London can easily attend these. We’re also planning to bring back the Press Officer’s Training Day in person next year.
This year we saw the publication of the Science Media Centre’s report on the Changing Role of the Science Press Officer and we look forward to working closely with the SMC to capture the membership’s views on how Stempra can respond and better support the community.
And finally we would like to say a huge thank you to our members stepping down this year: Chris Melvin, Philip Strafford, Joshua Gardener and Daisy Barton.