MESA 2021

2 June, 2022

2021 has been another great year for the MacDiarmid Emerging Scientists Association (MESA) with a large number of fantastic, well-attended events being held across the country. As always, we kicked off the year by holding welcome events in each of our centres. This is always a super fun way to make connections with other MacDiarmid Institute students and this year was no exception! MESA was able to run its famous “Python Workshop” in both the North and South Island this year, which are always incredibly popular! Other MESA organised events included an AFM workshop at the University of Auckland at the start of the year, a presentation workshop at the University of Otago and a writing skills workshop at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington.

After the unwelcome return of COVID-19 in August, some of our key MESA events were unfortunately cancelled or postponed, including our extremely popular MESA Bootcamp, an ImageJ and OpenCV workshop at Massey University and multiple site visits. However, we were able to hold a “Science from the Supermarket” workshop online, which was a great deal of fun, and supply funding to a number of our members to attend online conferences.

This year was the inaugural year for a new position on the MESA committee, the Industry Representative. This role, and the work that has been done so far, is particularly exciting and provides incredible opportunities to MacDiarmid students, well beyond the scope of the formal PhD structure, and should help MacDiarmid Institute graduates stand out among the crowd. MESA is very excited to see how this role develops and the opportunities that arise in the coming years.

Photographs from some of the MESA workshops and events that took place in 2021.

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