At the end of the third week of this pleasantly sunny and warm September, while helping with packing some books for an upcoming event, I found myself mentally going through my to-do list, thinking what I have done and what still needs to be finished.
At the end of October Sense about Science will be awarding the Maddox prize I already mentioned, a recognition to people who are committed to clear communication of science despite adversity. The nominations for this prize were 55 this year and needed to be read through, their information checked and summarized. I had gone through the candidatures carefully, looked for the material on line, put together a summary of each profile, trying to be at the same time accurate and complete, but synthetic. Now that all the candidates have been scrutinized I am really looking forward to the future steps and what the judging panel will decide.
There have been plenty of other things going on in the office, including a revision on my Statistics presentation, and on an analogue past publication about Uncertainty, which needed a fresh eye to spot small slips and typos. And then organizing a workshop on Science Communication at the beginning of October, aimed at young scientists and researchers. I was putting together some reading material for the participants, it is going to be an exciting opportunity to have a look into science as it is reported in the media and what the contribution of researchers to the scientific debate can be.
This coming last week is going to be a collection of mixed feelings: fulfilment, satisfaction for the work done, curiosity for where it will lead in the future and of course a pinch of melancholy at the idea that I am (not so) slowly seeing the end of this experience.
The second week at Sense About Science has been packed with old and new things. I feel I am learning a lot and getting more involved in the office actvitities, which is a great feeling.
The day starts always with the news: the entire office team gathers and skims the newspapers looking for articles reporting science-related stories. The purpose is to check if these accounts are reliable, if the science is reported in an accurate way, if the claims made are actually evidence-supported or not.
News reading and evidence checking
If they sound unclear or dubious the team discusses about the opportunity of asking the newspaper or the person who made a statement for some science-based evidence.
There was an ad reported some days ago about a pair of gloves containing golden nanoparticles which are supposed to help your skin look younger. I looked at the company website, in particular at their “the Science” page, but the information (and the graphs) I found there were quite confusing and not really explanatory, so we decided to write an email to the company asking for clarifications. Nothing happened for one week. The following Monday on the Sense About Science twitter account (@senseaboutsci) we mentioned the ad and the fact that I had been asking for evidence and… half an hour later I received an email! I was quite impressed, I admit. The pressure of social media does work! Companies must feel accountable for what they claim, and this seems to be a good way to achieve that.
The Ask for Evidence campaign
Besides the Ask for Evidence campaign, I have been collaborating on a couple of other projects Sense About Science is working on. One of them is the Maddox Prize, a recognition to scientists who are committed to bring evidence-supported science into the public debate, despite hostility. This year Sense About Science received more than 50 nominations: a tough job for the evaluating commitee!
I have also been working on a power point presentation about Statistics. This is part of a series of short guides called, “Making Sense of” which summarize useful tips we should keep in mind when reading news about science. One of the guides already published, for example, is called “Making Sense of Chemical Stories” and helps the reader understand why and when we should (or not) be concerned about chemicals. My work was to distill some basic guidelines to navigate in the complex world of statistics. I didn’t realise how often statistics was used in the news, I developed a very selective eye in spotting weird claims now.
The key word if you are working for an organization like a (relatively) small charity is Multitasking. One thing is granted: you will not get bored. There are many activities going on at the same time, and a lot to do to keep them going. Good planning skills are definitely needed!
Lots to do in the office!
I am now half-way through my internship. I find myself looking forward to the next week and all the work ahead. Let see what the press is cooking up for us tomorrow…
Final look at the CABI entrance with the map of all the partner countries where they work.
Well my last week came to a close at CABI. Like many of the other Charity Insight participants have written, I also feel that the experience has been tremendous. In my PhD, I had come across many articles and books written by CABI and so the opportunity to work briefly in their office was a fulfilling personal experience. I also learned a lot from working with Peter Baker about the challenges facing the coffee sector, the other organizations involved, and some of his perceptions on how to address the challenges it is facing.
The modelling was very challenging as I had limited experience in Excel VBA and Monte Carlo simulation, however, it is amazing what you can find online to show you the way once you know what you are trying to implement. In my final bit of the internship, I worked with project counterparts at HRNS in Hamburg to add some stochasticity to their cash flow forecasts for different coffee plot scenarios. This work is still ongoing, but I think we have demonstrated the utility of considering decision-making with uncertainty and the potential impact of probabilistic events like Roya. The key is to show stakeholders that farmers face difficult choices when deciding which coffee practices to follow and investments to make on their plots. While a deterministic model quite easily shows the optimum choice is for example certified coffee sales through farmer organizations, adding in uncertainty to price and potential losses due to disease makes the optimal decision dependent on how much risk you can take on and what you believe about the likelihood and severity of a loss event like Roya. This tool is in its infancy, but with development will hopefully aid in the strategy and planning for extension work with coffee farmers.
Sample output from one run of the model comparing 4 different coffee plot strategies and their respective IRR, NPV, and metrics of the number of years where the cash flow positive and greater than a minimum income threshold
I’d like to thank Helen and Amy at Imperial for selecting me to participate in this wonderful program. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my experience and developed some new skills in project management as well as technical skills in Excel. Thanks as well to CABI for hosting me for such a brief period and especially to Peter for all the support throughout this past month.
Thanks for reading! Please get in touch through Linked-in or my imperial address if you work on similar topics or have any questions/comments or want more detail.
Well week 3 went by fast! Some of the highlights from the week:
Presented to some interested CABI staff the preliminary results from our coffee risk modelling endeavours and discussed how to use stochastic methods in Excel.
A conference call to a colleague in Germany at HRNS to check in and plan the next steps for where to focus effort
Said goodbye to my supervisor for the week as he was off to Germany and then Colombia for coffee meetings.
People do such an interesting variety of work at CABI and I’ve really enjoyed my time in the office (though I have to say, I think I’d rather be in Vanautu when I look outside 😉 ). I can’t believe there is only this week left. I’ll likely continue on with the modelling and see what we can come up with. This week started with another conference call to Germany and discussion around potentially testing the tool with extension workers in Guatemala. There is a lot of work to do before then and increasingly I feel like I am really pushing myself to the limit of my knowledge. It’s an exciting combination of frustration and little breakthroughs. Time to get back to it!
It somehow felt appropriate to end my internship with a week cut short by the bank holiday. My main project was in good shape to begin with, so there were no concerns about finishing it in just 4 days, the general atmosphere at the office was cheerful due to people returning from bank holiday weekend trips and longer holidays, and I swear that even the weather seemed to get better as the week progressed. On the other hand, it was weird to part ways with something that you were so intensely involved in for a short period of time. No more skimming through energy news in the morning, suiting up every day even though you knew it was not really all too necessary, and coming up with creative uses for the IF-statement in Excel, even though there surely was a proper way to get the same task done.
So what have I gained from my internship? Well, working at the intersection of policy, economy, and environment has been an outstanding learning lesson for me. Not only have I familiarized myself with an important area of industry, but also extended my knowledge in a myriad of other fields: research skills, Excel, statistical methods, the energy market, business culture in the UK, and the list goes on. All of these aspects are easily transferable to any kind of career path that I choose to take. On that topic it has to be said that based on my experiences here, I would be lying if I said that I could never see myself working in the non-profit sector at some point in my life. I have really enjoyed the stress free yet productive vibe and the sense of dealing with meaningful issues. As a fun fact, according to my back-of-the-envelope estimates on my last day at the office, my final report will have to save the organisation 2 hours of research in the next 12 months to offset the expenses caused by my coffee consumption over the time of my internship. However, this does not keep me up at night, since I am sure that when the time comes for the next paper to be published or event to be held about infrastructure, someone will remember my report and appreciate my endeavours.
I can only be grateful to Green Alliance and the Careers Service for this great experience, and hope that maybe one day you (yes, YOU!) will choose to partake in Charity Insights after reading my ramblings here. If you read this and have some further questions about the Charity Insights programme, feel free to approach me via email or social media. I will end my presence in this blog with the same parting words that I received on my last day of work in the form of this lovely card:
Just a few minutes before the bell tower of St James’ Church opposite our office strikes 5, I suddenly realize one week has already gone by and it is time for a blog post.
The lovely St James tower seen from the office
I entered this office Monday, not even one week ago, but I already feel I have found my space here. When I knocked on the black door of 14 Clerkenwell Green I was carrying a backpack and dragging a 18kg suitcase with all my stuff for the coming 4 weeks.
The moment I got off the last bus and walked towards the office of Sense about Science, the charity where I will do my internship, all the thoughts and expectations I had about this new experience suddenly came back to me and evaporated in a few seconds, replaced by an excited feeling of curiosity.
Sense about Science – the office and its shiny black door
How did I end up here?
Some months ago I bumped across a blog post from one of the previous participants of the Charity Insights program at Imperial College and was intrigued by the idea of doing something outside academia but still somehow linked to my scientific background. Being a PhD student working in an external research institution (i.e.: not among the familiar walls of Imperial College) can be pretty hard at times. The feeling of loneliness we all experience at some point of our research is somehow emphasized by the simple fact that… you are alone! No other PhD fellow to vent with about the inconsistency of your results, the puzzling outcome of your reactions, the sometimes unpredictable behaviour of the machines you are using. Sometimes a chat with someone going through the same difficulties can help put things back in perspective. For this reason I tried to take advantage, while in London, of the activities offered by the Career Office, and participate to courses and workshops. Oh, just a little detail: I am not even based in the UK, the research institute where I work is in Belgium. Which happens to be a lovely country, but just adds to the list of difficulties one must think about when participating in activities organized by the College!
Why the Charity Insights program?
I simply thought it was a great idea. Testing your skills on a different environment, using the kind of approach developed in these years of study and research to do something else.
When I read about Sense about Science my interest just grew more and more: they seemed to be the concrete active form of vague idea I have been having in my mind for some time now. This charity wants science to be made accessible to a broad audience, and the public to be involved in the scientific debate. I found their approach really interesting because they encourage people to get involved, being active in asking and looking for information more than patronizing or lecturing them. The underlying idea is that there are specialists in the field (the scientists) who have the competence and the experience to evaluate scientific facts to a deeper level, but this does not imply that those who do not have this background have to step back and wait for the science to speak. They can themselves be proactive and actually need to be so. After all, we cannot be specialists in… everything. If anything, what doing research is teaching me is that the more we know about something the more we see how much there is still to investigate. This recognition of our limited knowledge doesn’t prevent us from being critical and inquisitive in what we read about science.
The second reason why I was interested in working with an organization involved on Science Communication is more personal. Countless times it happened to me to be asked weird questions about anything that sounded science-related from “why do I lose so much hair?” to “is [compound x] carcinogenic?” Sometimes it can be very difficult to disentangle true findings messed up with vague hypotheses and extravagant claims. I thought that seeing how this kind of discussions are tackled in a more “professional” way could give me some good hints for the heated discussions with my friends.
Furthermore, I firmly believe that as citizens we have the right and somehow the duty to get informed and speak up to let our voice heard. To make this voice meaningful, though, we need to know what we are talking about and to have a critical approach to things. I never thought of scientists as detached individuals closed in their laboratories, but rather as curious and creative people who want to understand how things work to make them work better. I think science needs to have a place in society, but making place for science is (also) up to scientists. Sense about Science seemed to me a good place to get an idea about how this can be done for real.
The first contact between me and SaS was via e-mail, followed by a skype call (with my connection being very unstable!) and e-mails between me and Victoria, my supervisor at Sense about Science and Amy, at the Career Office.
After a 40-minute delayed flight from Brussels, here I am, once again, in London, looking for an accommodation for these 4 weeks, pulling out of my purse my remaining pounds and my Oyster card. The first days have been quite tiring, settling in my minuscule room, learning once again my way to work, getting used once again to London and its charm. Surviving 5 days with no internet connection!
At the same time they have been great, I started working in a very friendly and stimulating environment, and I feel like I have already learned a lot. On my 50 minutes trip to work (thanks London!) I am every morning gathering ideas and thoughts, making a mental plan of what needs to be done at work, enjoying being where I am doing what I do.
As for what I exactly do, that is for the next post!
So I thought I would do a quick round up of what I have learnt on my internship since I am at the end of my final week 🙁
How to link data
How to communicate the same information in different ways effectively for different people and purposes i.e Writing a report, a memo for a meeting and a PowerPoint on my project (oh and these blogs! This has been fun to do!)
I think my touch typing has got better all this time at the computer
I have learnt conditional formatting on excel and how to add data filters (forgotten skills from GCSE ….) ,kindly retaught to me by fellow intern Chloe
Networking
How to plan a project
New experience of how businesses work – communication, IT, people skills and more
How much words impact the meaning and reception of information
Advice for students hoping to apply to this wonderful and fulfilling programme next year (or interns working for charities in general)
Do not underestimate getting to know people and creating networks – I would not have got my placement otherwise!
Find a charity that you are passionate about, perhaps one that you already have links to?
Communicate clearly, frequently and politely
Ask questions about your project, make sure you are clear on the tasks and what the expectations are
If you are not 100% sure –ASK! People are happy to help!
Be aware that people working for charities often ( if not always) do more than their job description ,so are often very busy people with long to do lists. This due to charities using as few staff as possible so funds can go to those in need- therefore interns are valued you help get work done!
Write yourself little notes to help you remember what you need to do and by when ( saves you bugging your manager too often and stops you forgetting stuff )
Some members of staff may have to travel around an area the charity works in – Be aware of this and plan for any days like this so you have tasks to get on with when your manager maybe out of their main office on training/ meetings
If your manager is busy try to give them warning of when you will need work checked over in order to complete the work to a good standard- it helps them out with planning what they have to do each day
Charities are nice places to work: there is often a really friendly, open vibe about the office
Make sure you know how to make tea/coffee – you know look after people, for example, if you are going to get a drink offer to make other people in the office one too ( but don’t solely make tea, this is not the aim of any internship).
Get the work done properly and to a high standard!
And Finally …. BE FABULOUS AND ENJOY! ( Oh, and get your application, CV etc into the internship service by the deadline, I hear it helps?)
Good Luck!
Thank you to everyone in People and Learning for supporting me in applying to the Charity Insights Programme and supporting me whilst on my internship – I have learnt so much!
It is amazing that the time has arrived to write my final blog. It has honestly flown by, it only seemed like yesterday that I was witing my first one. It is a very bitter-sweet moment.
This week I have been expanding on the project mentioned in my previous blog. Initially, I was required to contact various institutions and charitable organisations over the phone and ask whether they provided or supported any specific LGBT services. After a long day on the phone, I concluded that there were no sevices in the Leeds region that provide such a service. From here my sub- supervisor is now in a position to establish his own clinic within Leeds supporting Children within the Barnardo’s programme. The process from here involves some very thorough statistical research around the proposal by my sub supervisor. Once the research is done he must submit a report containing the research to his manager and they will carry out an evaluation. During my final few days I did some ‘unofficial’ research for him gathering some statistical information regarding some of the data within files of children on the barnardos scheme. The research for this project could potentially take a very long time and my supervisor at Barnardo’s have offered me the chance to return later in my academic career to further aid with this project.
I was initially hoping to set up a 3 day science workshop for the children on the Barnardo’s programme. Unfortunately the demand for this was very low and hence decided it was not feasible to go ahead with the workshop. Instead I have been offered the oppertunity to interact more with young carers who are meeting with staff within this branch of Barnardos. I can’t sit in on the meetings due to the confidentiality of carers-staff relations. But out of the meetings I have had the oppertunity to interact discuss certain aspects of the carers future with them. This was probably the highlight of the Internship simply due to the emotional impact it had on me.
Overall the experience has been infinitely times better than I could have hoped. My communication skills have developed tenfold whilst gaining an excellent understanding of both how the Barnardo’s organisation is set up along with a brilliant experience of working within a not for profit organisation. I have gained several contacts that may aid me in future and, at this point in time, I have no doubt that I hope to persue a career in the not for profit sector.
I would also like to use this oppertunity to express my deepest thanks to Imperial Charity Insights. I would not have been able to carry out this internship from an economic standpoint without the help of yourselves. THANK YOU!
Week two flew by and I forgot to get a post done by Friday; I thought I’d bash it out this morning. It was an exciting week as I’ve finished a first draft of the simulation in Excel and we are now getting feedback from a few experts. I have a skype call today with a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) expert based in Germany for HRNS to walk-through the model and discuss future steps.
The situation for coffee farmers in Central America has been very tenuous the past few years due to a fungus called Coffee Leaf Rust or La Roya. The New York Times has a great article summarizing and putting faces to the impact with interviews. The difficulty faced by extension agencies and other organizations that are involved with coffee farmers has been what to do about rust immediately, but also, what do we do to encourage resilience and sustainability as our certifications standards alone do not seem to bring these benefits. Some evidence seems to suggest that farmers are switching out of coffee and the concern for many groups is about ensuring a stable supply for the world’s markets as well. Many open questions remain including: how do farmers view and act upon the uncertainties of coffee production? how does the return period for Roya affect the optimal decisions for the coffee farm (e.g. if Guatemala had a Roya outbreak every 3 years, what should farmers do? or if it is every 20 years, what does the system look like then?).
One way to look at these risks is through simulation. In the current model, a user can input many assumptions about various characteristics of the coffee market and coffee farm (e.g. cherry price, plot size, yield loss if roya comes, etc.). Many of these variables are inputed with uncertainty (mean and standard deviation) and excel will sample them from a normal distribution. Currently we have a 10-year model where each year the user can decide whether to fertilize, spray for roya, and how much land to devote to coffee (see below).
Each year you can see how your production is going:
At the end of the 10 year period, you can see how you performed, with your results for income (for instance) plotted as a distribution of likely outcomes:
Another set of modelling is to keep the same decisions on fertilizing, plot allocation to coffee, and spraying and simulate for a sample of up to 2,000 runs to get an idea of the possible set of outcomes given the assumptions you have made about production. A screenshot of running this simulation is below:
The model is quite simple at this point and needs more realistic assumptions drawn from actual data about the input variables, but that will be some of the work this week. It would also be great to add in some of the information farmers might receive before making decisions on the plot, we can then use the 10-year simulation to play with farmers to elicit how they respond to simulated weather events. Getting a better understanding of decision-making at the farm-level can hep to design better policies to mitigate the impact of devastating crop losses.
Until next time, Lee
PS. Find me on linked-in or comment below if you have thoughts or suggestions.
