AFMBiomed has marked some of the most important points in my academic career, so it seemed fitting that the first talk I gave since joining the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Sheffield as a lecturer was at the 2019 AFMBiomed conference in beautiful Münster, expertly organised by Prof. Hermann Schillers. I attended the AFMBiomed workshop at the very start of my PhD, where talks and hands on tutorials kickstarted my PhD research. On the other side of my PhD, I attended AFMBiomed in 2014, days after submitting my PhD thesis, winning a prize for my oral presentation, which showcased my PhD research on DNA.

Fast forward 5 years to 2019, and I was able to present our next big step in DNA imaging by AFM, showing structural variation induced by DNA supercoiling. It was a great conference, and I enjoyed number of talks, including a brilliant one from Jean-Luc Pellequer, a pillar of the AFMBiomed institution, showing us all how powerful data analysis in AFM can be. Here’s hoping I don’t wait for another career milestone before attending another.