Meet Our New Youth STEM Matters Programme Officer!
Hello! I am Anne-Rosa Bilal, a Co-Founder of Youth STEM Matters and the newly appointed Youth STEM Matters Programme Officer. I was previously the Managing Editor for Life Sciences as part of the Volunteer Team for around 2 years and have cherished my time in the team profusely. Over the past year, I had a lot of time to reflect on what kind of direction I would want to pursue going forward in the team. I realised that I wanted to contribute to strengthening the foundation of the journal and trying to work with the team to enhance the team members’ experience from all angles (technical, social and outreach). Fortunately, taking a gap year from my studies meant that I would have a lot more time on my hands to dedicate to supporting the journal not only for the current team, but for future teams that will be here hopefully long after I’m gone (although I have a feeling I’m not really ever going to stop being in some capacity involved with living with the journal even as time passes - the organisation is definitely a part of my being).
As part of the Youth STEM 2030 team, I have started working on designing training programmes and guides for our team members now and in the future to go hand-in-hand with our goal of sustainability-proofing. I will be continuing to further develop these resources for our team to advance their technical, peer-review related activities, but also to support the reinforcement of their professional skills, including leadership, and communication. My previous experience in the team at an extensive level has meant that I have a lot of experience and insight about how our team functions and how to best support them using the skills I have developed whilst being on the team. In addition, I have spent a lot of time curating methods for the team community to strengthen which I am very excited to continue working on, as well as outreach efforts to get across the message of our journal to more young people - that any young person (like you!) can play a significant role in making the world a better place through STEM research.
Most importantly, I am excited for this role to teach and guide me to how to do bigger-picture thinking successfully. It’s almost as if I am a humble neuron, and I’m trying to make neural networks & connections to understand how the whole human body is functioning and the cross-talk that happens between many different systems to the body - visualising a lot more clearly the relationships between our mission, our stakeholders and our impact.
I am really excited to be taking on this role for the next 4 months, because it ultimately means I can collaborate more closely with a range of young people to work seriously towards a personal aim that I share with Youth STEM Matters - and that is to empower bright young minds and researchers to take action together to solve the world’s biggest problems.
