Technicians' work celebrated at second annual conference

One of the final events of 2024 with our second annual Technicians' Conference at Harper Adams University.

In this guest blog, Laboratory Manager – and conference organiser – Dr Victoria Talbot looks back at a wonderful and productive day.

The 2025 Technicians' Conference was lots of fun -and nicely rounded off the calendar year!

We had a great programme of speakers and breakout sessions, and our facilities did us proud with display stands and activities for delegates to participate in.

It was also great to welcome honoured guests from the University of Wolverhampton - Dr Christopher Rogers, Senior Lecturer in Forensic Science, PhD student Dawn Morgan; Senior Lecturer & Course Leader, Danen Appasamy and Senior Lab Technician Karen Hollyhead.

We hope they had an inspiring and enjoyable day!

Professor Michael Lee gave a very positive welcome address, followed by Charlie "Rallying the Wright Way" Wright on opportunities given to students to work with an M-Sport UK Ltd Fiesta RT2 and develop the same skills, resilience and competencies as professional motorsports rally teams.

We also heard from Rachel Barker and Caroline Cawood from the DEFRA Plant Health Team on scientific authorisations and inspections of facilities.

Paul Clews and Zakee Hayat from Keele Anatomy and Surgical Training Centre spoke about their careers, Keele's apprenticeship scheme, development of anatomy at Keele and how our relationship with them has grown and developed over the years. It all stemmed from an enquiry some years ago when I was struggling to find a disposal route for a large quantity of formalin (probably a story for another time!) and has grown ever since in a way which benefits us both.

Andy Allen spoke well about the Technician Commitment and our ambitious new action plan which we plan to submit in the New Year once it passes through all the necessary channels. It's looking good so far.

New this year were the inaugural Technical Excellence Awards. We have begun with four categories which any in our technical community could be nominated for: Outstanding Contributions to Learning and Teaching, Research, Knowledge Exchange and Environmental Sustainability. 19 nominations received for colleagues in all facility areas is an excellent start. Wonderful too to have trophies made by one of our own: Christopher Waghorn.

Congratulations to the winners, Kevin Jones, Fred Baker, Kirsty Flint and Alice Rogers. We are very proud of you! And well done to all the nominees who are all excellent members of the Harper Adams technical community and who all do amazing work.

Thank you to judges Professor Lydia Arnold, Alastair Dawes, Simon Thelwell and Jim Monaghan (who stepped in at the last minute for Dawn Arnold) and for sponsoring the prizes, and to Professor Ken Sloan for presenting the winners with their trophies and prizes.

Breakout sessions were generously provided by Keira Venables who ran an insect curation session, Grace Milburn who gave a tour of the Future Farm and a milk workshop, Fred Baker who gave a tour of the Companion Animal House  - with a tasty Christmas present-making session for the animals - and, finally, an intro to Advance HE fellowships by Professor Lydia Arnold and Emily Chapman-Waterhouse. Full sessions to follow later this year!

Huge thanks go to our sponsors AMPCS Ltd and Thistle Scientific and for Blades Biological Limited for sending us items to add to the delegate bags (which were also new this year!) and some specimens for teaching. Thistle and AMPCS - we hope you enjoyed your day and made some useful contacts.

Thank you to everyone who helped to make this such a successful event, particularly Gina Hendy our Laboratory Administrator and Fred Baker, fellow members of the Technician Conference planning group for their invaluable contributions.

Here's to the 2025 event!