Delighted to win the Principal's Research Impact and Engagement Established Academic Prize for my work on the ARREST-TB project public engagement activities. For more info, and to see the other winners and examples of great public engagement at Heriot-Watt please see: 
https://www.hw.ac.uk/research/engage/principals-prize/2019-winners.htm

We've been busy with public engagement, particpating at the Fountainbridge Canal Festival and also working on the Royal Academy of Engineering funded Ingenious! project, taking microfluidics into schools.

My research media article is now out.

International Innovation, published by Research Media, is the leading global dissemination resource for the wider scientific, technology and research communities, dedicated to disseminating the latest science, research and technological innovations on a global level. More information and a complimentary subscription offer to the publication can be found at: www.researchmedia.eu

It was a lot of work so I'm delighted to see my book finally in print: http://store.elsevier.com/Waterborne-Pathogens/isbn-9780444595430/

And I was particularly excited to sign a copy a couple of weeks ago:)

Our paper reporting on the use of encounters to promote interdisciplinarity among early-career researchers has just been accepted by Futures. This paper built on our experiences from the ESF junior summit and writing it was an interesting exercise in Interdisciplinarity as we were all from different disciplinary backgrounds and different countries. I was also able to contribute reflections from my Crucible experiences and we concluded the paper with making recommendations to the organisers of interdisciplinary encounters to maximise benefits for early-career researchers.

The special issue which I proposed and edited has just been published. The issue includes articles from the delegates at the European Science Foundation Junior Summit at Stresa last year, several of which represent new interdisciplinary collaborations arising from the meeting. The special issue can be found here:
http://www.scirp.org/journal/jwarp/

Together with the other new members of the Young Academy I attended our induction day on Monday, finding out more about what we can actually do as members. There are a lot of different working groups and deciding which to join will be difficult. 
I think the work of the Tapping all of our Talents group is really important and we should definately encourage more girls to study STEM subjects and to look at how their talent can be retained and applied in these fields. The new Media working group also seems really interesting.
We had a great discussion about communication between media and scientists organised by the Media group as a part of the induction day. It was good to see the responsibility of scientists to communicate well and manage the conversations they are having about their work stressed as being critically important. I really agree with this after my Media Fellowship experiences.

Just back at Heriot-Watt after a few days in Italy for the start of the Aquavalens project, which is a large EU project aiming to develop new methods to detect waterborne pathogens. I'm part of cluster 2, the section of the project which focusses on delivering technical solutions for performing integrated monitor

Find out more about the project here:
http://aquavalens.org/

The project was covered in the media:
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/energy-and-environment/news/uk-team-leads-effort-to-develop-drinking-water-analysis-tool/1016111.article
http://www.scotsman.com/scotland-on-sunday/business/moredun-and-heriot-watt-secure-7-6m-for-safer-water-1-2868280

Lots and lots of news from the last 6 months:

Have settled into Heriot-Watt and am really enjoying it.

Went to India to give an invited talk at the Third International Conference on Natural Polymers, BioPolymers, Biomaterials and their Composites, Blends, IPNs, Polyelectrolytes and Gels: Macro to Nano Scales.

Became a Fellow of The Higher Education Academy.

Received lots of funding - a Scottish Crucible Projects for Scotland award looking at connectivity of green space and the impact upon exercise; an MRC Confidence in Concept award looking at microfluidic methods of separation and concentration of cells from blood; and an STFC award looking at Raman detection of Cryptosporidium.

Been busy writing my book on detection of waterborne pathogens for Elsevier and it is finally nearly finished!

Proposed and am editting a special issue for the Journal of Water Resources and Protection with articles arising from the European Science Foundation Junior Summit that I attended in August 2012.

Have been appointed as a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Young Academy of Scotland.

And finally, been finishing off lots of papers with 3 submitted this last month and several more in the final stages.