Alicia moved from South Africa and joined Prof. Elizabeth Wright’s Cryo-EM team at the UW- Madison Cryo-EM Research Center (CEMRC) and the Midwest Center for Cryo-Electron Tomography (MCCET). She obtained her academic qualifications at Stellenbosch University, Western Cape, South Africa. Alicia has completed her PhD in 2019 under the supervision of Prof. Albert Van Reenen, Dr Marietjie Lutz and Prof. Sinha-Ray Suprakas (CSIR, Pretoria). Her studies focussed on the adsorption capacity of electrospun chitin-and chitosan-based materials for the removal of heavy metals from waste water. She has gained more than 10 years of EM experience which includes, Transmission-EM, Scanning-Transmission-EM, Energy and Wavelength Dispersive X-ray analysis, Cathodoluminescence, Confocal microscopy, ultra- microtoming and various EM samples preparation methods. Her previous position was as a senior analyst at the Central Analytical Facility, Stellenbosch. She is also a co-host along with Jacob Schekman on The Polymer Science Podcast, where they discuss interesting polymer-related studies with researchers from around the world.