Launching in 2025, the Early Career award offers the opportunity to recognise the contributions of our early career members' enthusiasm, dedication, and service during their membership with SCI.
This year's winner is Mark Isaacs for his exceptional service to the Materials Early Careers group, the Materials Chemistry group the Careers committee, and his dedication to SCI's early careers programme. Mark will receive his award at SCI's AGM on 2 July 2025
Read Mark's interview below:
When and why did you become a member of SCI?
In 2011 my PhD supervisor, Prof. Adam Lee, was awarded the McBain medal and our entire group attended the accompanying meeting and award ceremony at Belgrave Square. We signed up for a membership and I was so impressed by the SCI I’ve been a member ever since!
Why did you decide to get involved in committee work?
I was one of a number of early career researchers to answer a call to start a new committee, around 2014/15 (the Early Career Materials Committee) and from the start took up an officer role as the Social Media Manager, before in 2019 taking the role as Chair of the Committee. I’ve since also joined the Materials Committee, helping bridge the committees and deliver joint projects (first with David Birkett, and now with James Wickson), as well as the Careers Committee (which also encouraged me to join the SCI mentoring scheme as a mentor for ECRs!).
What has driven your continued involvement with SCI?
I pursued an industry-sponsored PhD, researching antimicrobial nanomaterial additives for polyurethane foams. After investigating a number of systems I costed up production of enough material for one single foam roll (i.e. a saleable unit), including time and resources. While many of the systems investigated better met the project goals, one system stood out in another way – it was about 100x cheaper to make! Following this I looked at using combinations of the cheaper materials and found they could approach similar levels of control to those of the expensive materials, even if they were individually less sophisticated.
Though I have remained in academic research, I’ve remained conscious of how my science might be employed in a real commercial setting, and continued involvement with the SCI has enabled me to meet and learn from many different people and helped me remain mindful of specific challenges impacting the commercial sector.
How has being involved in SCI activities had an impact on your professional career?
I am part of the UK national facility for photoelectron spectroscopy (HarwellXPS) and therefore a few of the activities our committee has organised have been focused on surface and materials analysis! As a national research facility we have genuinely world-leading academic expertise and capabilities, but one of our key desires is to support the UK commercial science sector as best we can, and so I find our activities – as well as the friendly and diverse membership community – an unbelievably useful resource for reaching new user communities and learning how we can improve to meet the needs of industry.
How do your SCI activities reflect your personal/professional interests?
I am a big advocate for good practice, and we have run events (mostly online) dedicated to upskilling ECRs in materials analysis (e.g. spectroscopy). I am also proud of the EDI focused activities our committee has organised, and the membership have been a wonderfully enthusiastic and driven group for producing these events and programmes.
What advice would you give to Early career individuals joining the society?
Get involved as much as you have time for! The early career committees are a great way to learn how the SCI works, make new connections and build your CV – and by their nature they always want new members. One thing the SCI is very good for is welcoming new ideas that don’t necessarily fit the traditional mould – so don’t be afraid to propose something outside-the-box.
How do you think that your contribution has helped shape SCI?
The Early Career Materials Committee went through a lull around 2019, with loss of members and activities being shelved. After becoming Chair, I was quick to organise online events during Covid, ranging from careers support, to mental health discussions, to technical workshops in materials analysis, and focused on regrowing our committee numbers. I’m a strong advocate for academic-industry partnerships and constantly recommend the SCI to my networks and contacts!
What are your thoughts about receiving an Early Career Award?
I have enjoyed my involvement with the SCI and have put in a lot of time into committee management and other SCI activities, and I’m very grateful the organisation recognise the efforts of their membership through awards such as this. It really is an honour to receive this award, as there are so many fabulous ECRs within the community all working hard to make the SCI a success!
Visit Blog