Max Fisher

In the last 18 months or so since the start of my career I have proudly advocated for the active inclusion of disabled people in STEM. In my first job as a cell line engineer, I gave career talks at Nottingham Trent University, where I am an alumni fellow, and sit on the Biosciences Employer Advisory Group Board. In this role I work with the university and with students to improve their bioscience courses, and be a role model for both disabled and LGBTQ+ students.

I organised and took my company to RAREfest 2022, to showcase our work to patient groups, and show that disabled people belong in STEM. At the end of 2022 I proudly received the Person of the Year award from Sense after writing a blog post about my life as a DeafBlind drag king.

In 2023, I worked with Sense to turn the article into a video for Pride month, talking about life as a queer and disabled person, and touching on my work as a scientist. I also worked with them to create a video for DeafBlind awareness week. I also launched Revvity’s Disability Employee Resource Group, designed to provide support for our disabled colleagues across the globe, as well as raise awareness. I was a speaker at RARESummit as part of a rare youth panel, talking about the impact of growing up with a rare disease. I was also featured in a Spotlight Science series promoting disabled scientists to school aged children.

In 2024 I became a Registered Scientist with the Science Council and the Royal Society of Biology. I was a judge at NTU’s biosciences degree showcase and chose a winner from each poster session. I was featured on AXS Chat talking about life as a disabled scientist, and I was a part of this year’s Soapbox Science event in London, teaching the general public how I grow cells in a flask as a DeafBlind person, and the basics of nanomedicine research.