Blog posts

My final week at the UK Stem Cell Foundation

Having completed the British 10k on Sunday, my final week at the UKSCF started by discussing the run and how it had gone with my colleagues. However, before long I was back to work.

I began the week by responding to queries that had been sent into the charity by individuals enquiring about places on clinical trials. I had to advise them on the costs and benefits of different clinical trials, as well as guide them towards useful tools to research and understand the implications of taking part in a clinical trial. This exposed me to some of the people that the charity is trying to help by funding research, and it served me as motivation to imagine the situation that they must be in and the fact that we must be somewhat of a final hope.

Settling in at the UK Stem Cell Foundation

Weeks 2 and 3:

My second week began much the same as my first finished – I continued to produce a database of contacts, which we could contact to help us with the opening of a Centre for Regenerative Medicine in Sport and Trauma. I extended the database from sports clubs, brands and bloggers to include sportsmen and women who had retired due to injury and startup companies to target for a corporate partnership. Having completed research for all of the charity groups that I had been assigned, I compiled a list of the top 10 male and female sports stars that I believed we should target using criteria such as sport played, injury history and current charity links.

Getting started at the UK Stem Cell Foundation

My first day:

I arrived at the rather impressive Royal Institute of Great Britain ready to begin work at the UK Stem Cell Foundation. I entered the building where I met my supervisor, Hugh. He gave me a brief induction and tour of the building, including the theatre where so many major scientific discoveries have been announced.

With the welcome over, we began discussing my role at the charity in more detail and the plan of action for my first week: RESEARCH. I was to build a network of sportsmen and women, sports club, sports brands and sports bloggers to contact about becoming involved with raising public awareness of the UKSCF.

When you get the timing just right….

I picked the best month to do my internship at Anthony Nolan. (A charity that saves the lives of people with blood cancer or blood disorders). I have now started my third week and last Friday was the annual staff picnic. This is a day where the whole charity comes together (minus vital staff required to keep the charity running) to look at what has been happening over the past year and what the goals are for the coming one. This lead to a gathering of around 300 people in the great hall of London Metropolitan University.

The morning started off with a speech from the CEO.

End of the internship at London Wetland Centre.

My internship at London Wetland Centre has finished. It has been great 4 weeks. I have done all the fieldwork designed by myself and I have completed my report for WWT. I marked all the sites where different species of ladybirds were spotted on the map of LWC and included it in my report. The main findings from my quantitative measurements are as follows:

  • Ladybird community at LWC is dominated by harlequin ladybird – Harmonia axyridis, which comprises 70% of all tree-living ladybirds at LWC.
  • There is a positive correlation between the density of aphids on the tree and the abundance and diversity of ladybirds living on the tree.

BNA: THE INTERNSHIP BEGINS (1/3)

Hello! I’m Anna, an incoming third year Biologist.

Firstly, let me introduce you to the charity I have chosen to work with. The British Neuroscience Association (BNA) is the leading neuroscience charitable organisation in the UK, and functions to bring together researchers, organisations and individuals which are involved with, or have an interest in, neuroscience. It’s a charity chiefly run for and by scientists and thus must have specifically tailored marketing strategies to appeal to such a niche demographic – which is what first drew my attention to BNA.

The beginning of my internship did not start well. I woke up on Monday morning feeling absolutely awful, and made it halfway down the road before I gave in and had to call in sick.

Eden Project Internship – First Day

The Eden Project mostly known as a popular visitor attraction in beautiful Cornwall. It is famous for having the largest captive rainforest its Rainforest Biome and also for it’s Mediterranean Biome. Additionally, they have the popular Eden Sessions during summer, which are concerts held at its main stage. However, mainly Eden is an educational charity that aims to reconnect people with the natural world and with each other. They do this by using leaflets, informational boards and interactive exhibits around the site.

The project I am involved with at the Eden Project is called ‘Life Givers’ and it aims to communicate the worlds’ and in particular Eden’s energy story using a trail of sculptures and other art-based exhibits.

Internship with LED: First Week

I have completed my first week of my internship with the charity Light Education Development (LED) and it has been an interesting experience so far. Although I have been given a direction for the project, I also have the opportunity to be independent and to choose my focus and my approach. My project is related to the work the charity does providing solar lights to families in Peru and Nepal with no access to electricity. I am researching the different lamps on the market and evaluating their suitability for the charity’s needs. Beyond this, the content of the report is at my discretion; how scientific to make it, how many products to consider, how to compose the layout.

Farewell to Future Frontiers

The final week has been quite hectic. After finally getting hold of adobe acrobat, a software which allows you to make interactive PDFs, I have gone back to working on…

Task 1: Academic Plan

Getting to grips with the software was hard. But, generally, most of the problems I was having, others had also had, so Google could help me out. (Tech aside: Acrobat allows you to add javascript to the PDF, but it’s a bit weird getting your head around how it works).

What I ended up creating are PDFs, one for each year group, which allow students to see what grades they need to achieve at the end of each school year in order to be on track for their chosen career.

St. Anne’s Community Services – who, what, where and why?

I thought I’d dedicate my first blog post to explaining at little bit about my internship, and the organisation that I’ll be working with over the coming weeks.

St. Anne’s Community Services is a charity based in Leeds that provides a huge variety of services to many groups, from the homeless to those with mental health problems, from asylum seekers to people with substance abuse issues. In 2014 (see my previous Charity Insights blog posts!) I carried out a project at St. Anne’s that was focused on Alcohol Related Brain Damage, or ARBD, in the homeless. I really enjoyed working with the team at St.