RMS announces Recipients of its President’s and Vice - President's Awards

RMS stalwart Jeremy Sanderson, who has been actively engaged with the RMS for 35 years, has been presented with the RMS President’s Award – in recognition of his exceptional contribution to the work of the Society, since joining in1988. Dr Robert Harnima, University of Bristol, received the Vice-Presidents Award, which recognises outstanding contributions of engineers, technicians or laboratory research support scientists.

A well-known and highly respected member of the national and international microscopy communities, Jeremy’s talent for microscopy was first recognised in 1991 when his Tech RMS project (a precursor to the RMS Diploma) was awarded a Student Medal in recognition of his outstanding examination paper and viva. In the early 1990s he began teaching the principles of light microscopy through the RMS LM summer school in Leeds and later York. He also became a stalwart of the confocal microscopy part of the Learning Zone at mmc, an essential feature of this flagship RMS event. Jeremy served on the technology-focused LM Section of the RMS from 2006-2009 and was appointed as a Trustee on the governing Council of the RMS from 2009 – 2012.

As a ‘lover of the microscope’, Jeremy embodies the spirit of the RMS in his professional life. He has worked as a histologist with the NHS in Oxford, as a core facility technician at the MPI-CBG in Dresden and has directed light microscopy facilities at the University of Sheffield and the MRC unit Harwell. His first book (1994) focused on histological sample preparation for the microscopy enthusiast and in 2019 his book on ‘Understanding Light Microscopy’ was published.

Having led the Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) facility at Bristol University’s School of Chemistry for the last 11 years Rob, regarded and respected as an expert and a point-of-reference for AFM, is renowned for his skills, innovations and original project ideas, and has collaborated in projects resulting in over 80 publications.

He has been involved in development of new instrumentation, including photothermal and photoradiative cantilever drives and perhaps more significantly, with vertically-oriented probe (VOP) force microscopy. He designed and built the first high-speed non-contact VOP microscope, which achieved remarkable resolution imaging molecular ultra-structure. VOP microscopy was also used in  the world-first direct measurement of the spin-momentum of photons, a fundamental quantum force.  

In the Bristol Centre for Functional Nanomaterials, he has developed and supervised numerous interdisciplinary Masters projects, where AFM forms the core in technological development or characterisation of unique materials.

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