Author: Graduate School

KiW – Know it Wall

By Peter Shatwell

www.knowitwall.com

Know it Wall (KiW), is a public engagement project run by students at Imperial and UCL. It was founded in the summer of 2014 by three UCL students, and a few months later I noticed a friend of mine from Imperial (now doing an MSc in Science Media Production) working on it. I thought it sounded like a pretty cool idea, so I got in touch with the team asking to get involved. Luckily they saw I could be of some value to the team, and so the five of us decided to make KiW a collaborative project between UCL and Imperial, launching the website in 2015.

The aim is to bring the excitement of academics’ work to the general public through short audio and video documentaries. Academics who are interested in getting their research ‘out there’ in an accessible and engaging way simply send us a script of around 1000 words and we take care of the rest. I think what’s most interesting about the KiW project is that we endeavour to include *all* disciplines: sciences, arts and humanities.

I have always been interested in science communication, but there’s always an uneasy feeling in the back of my mind worrying about ‘scientific elitism’ and all that. I’m a big fan of science, but I don’t think it’s the only thing worth having vast resources at its disposal for its effective communication. KiW is about championing the links between subjects, and showcasing research across disciplines alongside each other. This is one of the main reasons why I find KiW so interesting.

An exciting time for the project happened last year, when we entered Jisc’s ‘Summer of Student Innovation’ competition. The first task was making a short video that described our idea.

https://youtu.be/3fK5Vlyi9Yc

Having impressed the organisers with our video pitch, we were invited to a four day ‘design sprint’ in Birmingham. It was a thrilling experience where we worked intensively on the project, gaining a wealth of knowledge and expertise from mentors at Jisc.

The competition culminated in a final pitch day in August, and we prepared extensively for it. Luckily the presentation went smoothly and our work paid off, as we were awarded £10,000 funding from Jisc! This was a big boost to the project, and enabled us to start venturing into making films. Our first film was with UCL historian Zoltán Biedermann on Italian Renaissance maps (it’s actually much more interesting than it sounds!).

We’ve continued to release content since our win with Jisc, and our most recent film is about Imperial researcher [Dr Emily Mayhew’s](http://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/e.mayhew) work on blast injury. The film explores the ‘invisible killer’ of World War I, and the pioneering work first done by one neuroscientist in Paris a hundred years ago.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=IkEzVBJj7lI

http://www.knowitwall.com/episodes/blast_injury

There are nearly 30 episodes on the KiW site now, showcasing academic research across the arts and sciences – from Italian Literature and Art History, to Neuroscience and Theoretical Physics. Four of these are from Imperial academics, with more to come in the near future. You can currently learn about Antarctic exploration from Martin Siegert, the possibility of life on Jupiter from Mehdi Ben Slama, and even about the Stegosaurus from former researcher Susannah Maidment.

Although life is certainly busy being a graduate student, it’s still rewarding to find time to help grow this project, working with academics, and learning about things completely unrelated to my research.

If you’re interested in contributing to Know it Wall, or want to learn more about the project, then please contact Peter Shatwell at peter.shatwell12@imperial.ac.uk.

CDT Festival of Science and Art

by Jennifer Hack

Science and art are two disciplines that would not normally be put together, which is why the choice of theme for this year’s CDT Festival of Science “Science and Art-Exploring Creativity” presented an intriguing challenge. The festival‑in‑a‑day is an annual event, which is organised by a committee of PhD students from the 12 Imperial‑affiliated Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs) and this year it took place on Friday 21st April in the Sir Alexander Fleming building of Imperial.

The planning of the festival happened over 5 months, during which we invited scientists and artists working at the interface between the two to come and speak about their work. It was also decided that we would install a “pop-up” art exhibition on the day of the festival, so we invited students from two of London’s art colleges, the Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martens, to submit work on the theme “science and art” for the exhibition. Although it was a lot of organisation, the planning of the day went really smoothly and aside from a last minute purchase of black table cloths, everything was ready to go!

The day kicked off with an entertaining talk from polymer chemist Tony Ryan, who discussed about his collaborative work with the artist Helen Storey creating “Dissolving Dresses” and “Catalytic Clothing”. The idea of their work was to create beautiful pieces of clothing, whilst also raising awareness of how fashion has become a “throw-away” industry. Geraldine Cox, who is the artist in residence in the Imperial College Physics department, then talked about her fascinating work, inspired by Richard Feynman, creating art to represent the way hierarchies in nature, from humans to atoms, interconnect.

Tony Ryan discusses the idea behind his dissolvable dresses

Charlotte Jarvis, who stunned the audience by discussing two of her pieces of work, gave the final talk of the morning session. In “Music of the Spheres”, Charlotte worked with scientists to turn a DNA sequence into a piece of music, as well as creating soap bubbles from the DNA. We were lucky enough to commission Charlotte to display this piece at the festival, so attendees could experience the DNA bubbles first hand! She then talked about her work with scientists to grow a real-life cancerous tumour in a laboratory from her own stem cells!

Committee members test out Music of Spheres

Thankfully, this wasn’t enough to put attendees off their lunch and after everyone was refreshed, artist Anna Dumitriu presented her work investigating the relationship that humans have with microbes. Using living microbes, she has created stunning pieces of artwork and at the time of the festival, she was displaying her work in the Imperial College Blyth Gallery, so no doubt, some people headed over there to take a look. The final talk of the day was given by scientist Andy Beeby, a professor at Durham University. As a member of “Team Pigment”, he has been working with other scientists and historians to use light to investigate the pigments found in ancient manuscripts. Andy entertained the audience with the challenges of handling centuries‑old manuscripts without damaging them!

Following the talks, tea and coffee was served and guests were invited to take time to explore the art exhibition. Installed over four seminar rooms, the artwork ranged from slime moulds to black holes, virtual reality to big data mapping. Entries to the “Science and Art” competition were also displayed, where entrants had been asked to present their scientific research in the form of a piece of art. The speakers were asked to pick the final winners and the top prize of £200 was awarded to Margarita Kopniczky and two runner up prizes of £50 went to Andrew Simmons and Francesco Gianoli.

Attendees interact with the exhibition

The final session of the day was a heated panel discussion about the differences and similarities between the creative processes used by scientists and artists. Panellists came from both disciplines and it was clear that some of the methods used in creating science were identical to those used for creating art.

Panellists are ready to discuss the relationship between science and art

The discussion continued over a drinks reception in the foyer, where attendees could mingle with the speakers, panellist and exhibitors over a glass of wine or a beer. Overall, the event was really well received and the hard work of the committee really paid off. Just over a month after the festival, the committee have plans to keep the conversation between scientists and artists going, so watch this space for further science‑art collaborations!

The Facebook page for the festival can be found here, with more pictures of the day: https://www.facebook.com/CDTFoS/

Words: Jennifer Hack

Pictures: Shengyang Chen

Three-Minute Thesis: From Contestant to Judge

By Sophie Damy

Summer seems to have finally arrived in London and it is hard not to start thinking about the holidays. Imagine, in a few weeks, going back home to visit your family and having to answer the recurring question: “What is it exactly that you are researching?” In my case, I can categorically forget the usual “I am developing algorithms to minimise the bias created by deterministic errors on the position estimated by a satellite-based positioning system.” You will need to keep your explanation clear and concise while trying to share your enthusiasm.

This situation is actually pretty similar to the 3-minute thesis competition! The rules are simple: one static slide, no prop and most importantly, strictly three minutes (timed to the second) to convince a diverse audience of the interest and importance of your research.

Preparing for the departmental competition two years ago, the exercise revealed itself more challenging than I first expected. Three minutes is very short. It forces you to select the essential facts and present them so that they are clearly connected. All this while dismissing the scientific jargon you are so used to employ. In the end, and despite being only three minutes long, this presentation took a long time to prepare.

But these efforts were rewarded and I got selected to represent the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the College 3 minute competition with 18 other students, representing over 10 departments and institutes. That was a total of 57 minutes of diverse and captivating research! But to be honest, while sitting and waiting for my turn to come, these were actually quite stressful minutes.

Fortunately for me, the jury shared my frustration with signal failures and delayed trains and the idea I developed to solve the issue and awarded me the first prize for my presentation “Bringing train travel to the space age!” It was a great honour, especially as the competition was tenacious with a flurry of interesting and entertaining talks.

One of the great things about receiving the first prize is that you are invited back next year, but this time you get to sit on the other side of the table, as a member of the jury! Admittedly, this is a much more pleasant place to be with a fraction of the stress despite the importance of the duty. This year, 23 candidates are waiting to present their research. As each approaches the front of the room, I think of all the work they have done to prepare for these three minutes. The more effortless the presentation appears, the more likely the preparation was rigorous. Thanks to the Graduate School organisation, the event runs like clockwork! The enthusiasm and passion of each candidate for their research are tangible and highly contagious, and the afternoon just flies by.

The time for the deliberations arrives. With so many original ideas and presentations, it takes four judges to make the difficult decision in selecting the three winners. But all presenters should be very proud today, they did an amazing job. I have learnt so much this afternoon and in such an entertaining way!

One thing is clear after having experienced both ‘sides’ of the table: the general public is curious about science and researchers are happy to explain their work. And I believe the 3-minute thesis competition may actually be the best format to fulfil expectations from both sides in an enjoyable way!

Top left: Chief Judge, Rosie Waldron, me and 3MT Chair, Professor

Goats, Concubines and Misery – the Ig Nobel Awards Tour Show 2017

The Graduate School was delighted to host the fantastic Ig Nobel Awards Tour Show on Friday 17 March for the twelfth consecutive year. Presented by the wonderful Marc Abrahams, co-founder of the Annals of Improbable Research, the Show seeks to make you laugh, then make you think with research that’s maybe good or bad, important or trivial, valuable or worthless.

Marc was joined on stage by several winners of the Ig Nobel Prize, who presented their research in a hilarious and fun-filled evening. This year, Marc was joined by the following prize winners:

Mathematics – Dr Elizabeth Oberzaucher: Mathematical Analysis of the Man who Fathered 888 Children)

Management – Raghavendra Rau: Some Business Leaders Acquire a Taste for Disasters that do not Affect Them Personally

Biology – Thomas Thwaites: Living as a Goat

Also on stage were the QI Elves, who gave dramatic readings from bizarre-seeming research studies, including, “On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit,” “From junior to senior Pinocchio: A cross-sectional lifespan investigation of deception”, and “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.”

Dr Elisabeth Oberzaucher of the University of Ulm, Germany, presented mathematical analysis of how Ismail Ibn Sharif, ruler of Morocco from 1672 to 1727, successfully fathered 888 children! Ismail had four wives and is said to have had up to 500 concubines, but even with more conservative parameters the numbers suggest he could have had fewer than 100. Elisabeth’s analysis focused on how many times a day Ismail would have had to have sex in order to sire so many children, with the resulting estimate being around once a day for thirty-two years. Sadly, the majority of Ismail’s children died shortly after his own death, as they fought amongst each other for the throne.

Professor Raghavendra Rau of the University of Cambridge presented analysis of how exposure to disasters in their early lives impacts CEOs’ likelihood to take risks. The results suggest that those who experienced disasters without extremely negative consequences were more likely to lead aggressive-behaving companies, whereas those who saw the negatives were likely to behave more conservatively. Who would have thought it!

Thomas Thwaites decided to take a holiday from the angst of being human and become a goat. To achieve this dream and don the identity of Goat Man, Thomas built a suit of limbs he could wear, and acquired a rumen to strap to his chest, in which he could deposit the Alpine grass he chewed. Whilst struggling to completely detach himself from his human prison, Thomas did succeed in bonding with the herd, even making a good friend in goat number 17!

The Show was rounded off with David Kilgour explaining with various charts why Britain’s Ministry of Defence is so, um, efficient. And with it, another fantastic Ig Nobel Awards Tour Show was brought to a close. It always promises to be an incredible evening, so please keep an eye out for the thirteenth consecutive Show in Spring 2018!

Evidencing Leadership and Management within a PhD

By Dr Paul Seldon

As researchers we are used to talking about our research to different audiences, explaining the ideas and findings. Often we are less able to see the wider value in our practices and how these can be translated to other roles and positions.

This became very relevant for me when having completed a PhD and several post-doctoral positions I wondered if I had relevant experience that I could evidence to gain full membership of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI). The challenge was to examine my academic progress through a leadership and management perspective. Looking through the activities of my PhD I found evidence in the five areas below.

  • Research vision – knowledge progression and impact, understanding of different research areas and importance of working across interdisciplinary boundaries,
  • Leading a research project – meeting deadlines and miles stones, delivering project deliverables and generating outputs. Upward trajectory in quality of research and innovation. Challenging, original and productive research. Outstanding independent research, with impact in the field. Problem solving and creativity, innovation and application
  • Development – Training of others, process, technique, subject expertise
  • Performance review – report generation, peer review publication
  • Finance – negotiation of quotes, use of ordering and invoicing systems, managing a research budget

The process of examining my research experience allowed me to identify and translate these into the leadership and management context. As a result of this I was approved for full membership of the CMI, this is and has been very useful for career progression.

Thinking about the examples above and other possible areas, what evidence could you provide of leadership and management. Other potential opportunities might include:

  • Leadership – Organisation of peer activities, Public engagement – Outreach? Innovation? Commercial awareness
  • External visibility – volunteering, job placements and internships – leading? Supporting others?
  • Development of excellence – Design and leading of Undergraduate research projects
  • Finance – Application for funding, success securing funding, for example Research Community Funding from the Graduate School
  • Self-development – undertaking Management and leadership training

Leadership and management may not be on your mind now, but in a few years your career progression may depend on providing evidence and taking the time to undertake appropriate activities is a worthwhile investment.

A Year in Review: From a President’s Scholars Rep

by Abellona U

Upon becoming the year rep of the President’s Scholars, I set myself a goal – to foster a community amongst the scholars.

I was very excited to serve this community because we really are a unique bunch. We come from all corners of the world and we research in all imaginable areas across science, engineering and business. I wanted to organise social events that form part of the highlights of the scholars’ student life at Imperial.

Queen’s Tower Tour

The first event that I organised was the Queen’s Tower Tour. We walk around this iconic tower every day, yet, have you ever wondered what it’s like to go up there? I was curious and thought, why not organise a tour so that we can all find out together! It turned out to be so well-received that there had to be three separate tours to accommodate everybody. It was a fascinating tour; squeezing through the narrow spiral staircase, discovering something new on each level. At the top, we got to admire the 360º view of the Kensington area. Here is a sample of the North,

The Tasting Culture Series

Next up, was the Tasting Culture events. As a cohort, we represent a wide variety of different cultures so it seemed like a great idea to sample cuisine from some of those different countries; an opportunity for us to show off a little taste of home and to sample lots of different food!

We first went to a Cantonese Dim Sum restaurant where we tried the variety of dim sum, what I call ‘Chinese tapas’. We then went to a German pub to enjoy German beer, and an Ecuadorian restaurant featuring seafood in huge portions. We also had a potluck where we showcased our own cooking skills.

Out of London!

On one fine summer day, we headed south to Seven Sisters in Sussex. It was a trip of 12 people representing 10 nationalities. Talking about our cultures alone gave us endless topics for our conversations. The weather was perfect and the scenery was amazing. It was one of the best days out walking I have ever had in England.

We also went to Richmond Park during the rutting season.  We were lucky enough to see some stags in action as well as finding ourselves on an open plain with lots of deer!

A nice cosy Christmas dinner to wind up the year

Finally we wrapped up the year with a cosy Christmas dinner at the nearby Italian restaurant Da Mario, which was funded by the Graduate School’s Cohort Building, Research Community Fund. We enjoyed our time so much that we hardly had the chance to take our mobile phones out for a snap. Here’s the only one I managed to take!

I would like to thank the scholars for their support in making the events successful and I would like to encourage more scholars to take part in this unique community. Looking ahead, we have formed a social committee to take us into the New Year, so look out for more events over the coming months.

What I learnt from being the rep

As well as thoroughly enjoying the events myself, I also learnt a lot about the culture, history, the food and what life is like in different parts of the world. These events have been a great opportunity to make friends beyond students of my own discipline and conversations I have had with fellow scholars from different backgrounds, have widened my perspective as a global citizen.

Imperial has recently been rated as the most international university in the UK. With over 125 nationalities represented on campus, you are always going to meet someone new and from a different country. You soon realise that you’d need to study the world map so that you won’t get embarrassed when someone tells you where they come from and you don’t have a clue where that is!

My message for all fellow students is: seize the opportunity to enjoy not just the world-class research experience, but the world-class global citizen experience here during your time at Imperial.

Hey, after Imperial, you will have a local guide and a coach for you wherever you travel in the world!

—

About the President Scholars

The President’s PhD Scholarships is a scheme run and funded by Imperial College. It offers 50 fully and generously funded PhD positions in any discipline to students regardless of their nationality. Please see here for more details.

Doctoral Researchers Well-being: What’s New?

By Caroline Hargreaves, Senior Teaching Fellow, Graduate School, Imperial College London.

With the holiday now a memory, the Graduate School looks ahead to a new year of expanding and novel provision for all postgraduates. I wanted to pass on some recent findings about researcher well-being and reasons behind some of the developments, to help you with your choices.

This year I’ve had the good fortune to talk at the Higher Education Academy Surveys Conference and the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) Annual Conference about changes to Well-being in researchers between our 2009 and 2014 studies. A doctoral researcher at my talk at the SRHE mentioned how well our questions reflect doctoral concerns. I’ve also been in collaboration with authors, writing up a paper on our work.

Interest in well-being is increasing nationally and internationally, along with the realisation that reduced well-being can impact people physically and mentally, as well as organisations through altered work schedules. Well-being is used by international organisations such as the OECD (OECD 2016) and smaller organisations as a key indicator for policy formation and development.

As part of the worldwide research community your work will have many impacts from social to economic, so your well-being is important to us as not only as individuals but also on an international level as part of the knowledge and innovation led economy.  In 2009, the Graduate School carried out the first well-being study of PhD/MDRes/EngD researchers using Impact Analysis, a clinically approved methodology. We repeated it in 2014 to identify any changes. With support from academic departments and the Graduate Students Union and Students Union we achieved ~45% and 40% response rates in 2009 and 2014 respectively.

While well-being scores overall at Imperial continue to be satisfactory, well-being scores were worse compared to the 2009 study; well-being was found to be lower for women and for late stage doctoral researchers. Since the 2014 findings the Graduate School have been working with students, academics and support staff to see what changes we could make to work to make your experience more positive. I list some of these here:

  • The Cohort Building Programme was introduced so that you can gain our support and funding for activities that interest you and help your department and College build your Research Community
  • The World Class Research Supervision research and Task and Finish Groups have been informing and adapting provision on a College-wide basis
  • The Doctoral Student Coaching Programme introduced 1-1 support opportunities
  • The Writing Room and new Writing Retreats are for later stage researchers
  • New webinars enable all including those with external commitments to access our provision from home/work (there is also one on well-being devised for PhD Reps to help with their work)

Sign up to our provision follow the links or contact us at the Graduate School with any queries: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/pg/graduate-school/professional-skills/doctoral/ and for Master’s http://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/pg/graduate-school/professional-skills/masters/

e-mail: graduate.school@imperial.ac.uk

Follow the link on Graduate School Research including the 2012 study well-being reports for Staff and Students (2016 presentations will be uploaded later in the year): http://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/pg/graduate-school/about-us/student-experience/

Key College and Union contacts for well-being (list under “Here for you”): http://www.imperial.ac.uk/student-space/

If you have any questions regarding well-being or further suggestions for how we might improve wellbeing contact: caroline.hargreaves@imperial.ac.uk