Kirsty is a full time public engagement professional. Depending on the day of the week, she is Outreach Officer for the EPSRC & MRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Optical Medical Imaging (OPTIMA) shared between the Uni of Edinburgh and Uni of Strathclyde. She is also Public Engagement Officer at Uni of St Andrews.

Kirsty worked for over 5 years in post doc roles in microbiology, vaccine development & immunology, including a 2 month period as a volunteer between contracts as a stepping stone to her role on a project based at Strathclyde, funded by Arthritis Research UK. Kirsty has been active in supporting others to explore and extend their Public Engagement practice and has developed multiple innovative engagement platforms and training opportunities for researchers. She is the lead on academic research investigating the impact of PER practice on individual researcher’s personal and professional development.