2023 Frank Fitzgerald Medal & Travel Grant winner shares her experience

In 2023, Dr Annabel Fitzgerald CEng MIMMM was awarded the Frank Fitzgerald Medal & Travel Grant to attend an international conference in Cape Town and shares her experience.

I would like to say thank you to the IOM3 Iron & Steel Group for awarding me the 2023 Frank Fitzgerald Medal & Travel Grant.

I returned from the International Conference on the Tomography of Materials and Structures 2024 (ICTMS2024) held in Cape Town and have had the best time!! Those I was speaking to at the awards dinners (in both Sheffield and London) were well aware it was a lifelong ambition of mine to visit the penguins on Boulders Beach, and I went on the Saturday after the conference finished when Cape Town was lovely and sunny (weather was atrocious the rest of the time so I’m glad I headed inland for a bit for some safaris / a nice holiday before heading home!) and it was everything I’d ever hoped for.

Whilst at the conference, I did an unexpected lightning talk as well as presenting my poster at the poster session (that bit was expected!!) and met so many people from across the world all working with similar techniques on a very diverse mix of topics which was super cool to hear about (from plant roots to dinosaurs and groundwater flow at potential nuclear fuel storage sites!!). I was nervous going into the poster session as I know I was representing a pretty niche area of tomography (compared to xray or neutron techniques which dominated the conference – atom probe got a shout out in one other talk as well as my poster!!) but I was super busy for the full 2/3h with people keen to understand more about the technique and how it could be applicable to their work.

I’m so proud of myself for how I did and am grateful to have been involved in several East Midlands heats of the YPLC over the years for practice at sticking to time so I could do a good job of the lightning talk with almost zero prep! I’m confident I learnt a lot throughout the week, particularly on segmentation / reconstruction that I’ll be able to apply to my own work going forwards.

Thank you so much again for this award. I think I’ve definitely put it to good use, and I hope you agree!!

Dr Annabel Fitzgerald CEng MIMMM