Category: Master’s Students

Rising Scientist Day

by Anwar Sayed, PhD student in the Department of Medicine

The Department of Medicine celebrated another successful Rising Scientist Day event following on from last year’s success. Rising Scientist Day is aimed at all PhD research students within the Department of Medicine. The event was held at the Wolfson Education Suite with 57 posters submitted and displayed both in the Café Area and the break-out space.

Andy Pritchard, Technician, Faculty of Medicine Centre, took many wonderful photographs of the day: here (above and below) we can see the research students explaining aspects of their research and posters to the judges and attendees.

Following the poster presentation sessions and refreshments, everyone went up to Lecture Theatre II for the welcome by Professor Kevin Murphy, Director of Postgraduate Studies (Research). Then the 3 minute thesis presentations began. There were presentations from 12 PhD Students representing the Sections of Virology, Brain Sciences, Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, Immunology, Genomics, Microbiology, Haematology and Experimental Medicine. After the presentations there were talks given by the following Post Doctorate Researchers:

1. Dr Claire Byrne, Research Associate, Department of Medicine. Dr Claire Byrne was a PhD in the Department of Medicine, her research interests are in “The role of colonic short chain fatty acid production in appetite regulation and how they signal to the brain” and “The impact of spices and herb consumption on the composition and activity of the colonic microbiota and establishing a potential gut-brain signal”.
2. Dr Myrsini Kaforou, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Medicine. Dr Myrsini Kaforou was also a PhD in the Department of Medicine, received a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship on “understanding and diagnosing infectious diseases using multi-level ‘omics data”.
3. Dr Michal Barski, Research Associate Department of Medicine. Dr Michal Barski’s research is in structural biology and biochemistry of retroviral integration. Dr Michal Barski offered his help again after last year and the Department is very grateful for this.
4. Dr Alex Thompson, Research Fellow, Department of Medicine. Dr Alex Thompson completed his PhD in the Physics Department at Imperial College London. Dr Alex Thompson is now a Research Fellow investigating the use of optical spectroscopy as a tool for non – invasive assessment of gut health.

The Post Docs gave honest and insightful briefs into their journey from PhD to their current posts.

The audience was comprised of PhD students, Post Docs, Academics and Administrative staff. The Presenters were engaging and did very well answering questions about their research.

The process was very competitive. Prizes were awarded as follows:
For the poster presentation:
Helen Groves in 1st place for – “The impact of respiratory infections on the gut microbiota”.
Nathalie MacDermott in 2nd place for – “A GWAS in West Africa: early serological evidence for a genetic susceptibility to Ebola virus disease.”
Hannah Maude in 3rd place for – “Type 2 Diabetes risk loci regulate nuclear encoded mitochondrial genes.”

For the 3 minute Thesis competition
Hannah Maude 1st place for – “Type 2 Diabetes risk loci regulate nuclear-encoded mitochondrial genes.”
Maria Lucey 2nd place for – “Food for Thought: Inhibiting Appetite with Prokineticin”
Michael Ankcorn 3rd pace for – “Identification, diagnosis and management of persistent hepatitis E virus infection.”

Professor Kevin Murphy presenting Hannah Maude with the First Prize for the 3 minute Thesis Competition

Rising Scientist Day concluded with a drinks & crisps reception which provided a great opportunity for students to network with one another. The Post Docs Speakers also attended the reception making themselves available to any questions. These types of events are extremely important to the Department of Medicine as they enable us to bring our Research Students together from all of the different sections and campuses.
In conclusion I would like to thank everyone involved (a special thanks to Professor Kevin Murphy for devoting all day to this event) for their valuable time and note that Rising Scientist Day would not have been possible without the generous support of the Graduate School.
We are looking forward to next year’s Rising Scientist Day!

IC Data Challenge – GSU President reflections

by Luke McCrone, Graduate Student Union President

In my December 2017 blog post, as I was setting out as GSU President, I referred to the importance of bringing together students from all faculties in a space which is collaborative. I am proud to announce that the recent genesis of the IC Data Challenge event has played a major part in fulfilling that vision…

Who was involved?

70 students, 7 companies and a lot of data made for an incredibly exciting hackathon event at the start of May 2018! We partnered with some great minds from the Imperial College Data Science Society to design and deliver this event. Companies involved included Deliveroo, DSTL, GSK, Fidessa, NewDay, Smarkets, Transport for London and Tableau. The event was also supported and endorsed by the Enterprise Lab, Graduate School and Business School.

All 7 companies submitted challenges and industry data for pre-assigned multidisciplinary teams of students to tackle. We had over 270 applications from students in all faculties and at all levels of study.

Students, industry and judge panel members applauding presentations

Event format

The event ran for 12 hours on Saturday 5th May and for the most part involved teams of students discussing their challenge over laptops under the supervision of industry members. The whole event culminated into a set of presentations from each participating team. The best technical team and best enterprise team were each awarded £500 cash prizes after being selected by an esteemed judge panel comprised of industry and academic members.

Best Technical: Smarkets team
Best Enterprise: Deliveroo team

Positives

The event was interesting for many reasons, firstly for the educational value it provided for all participants who were required to work with industry folk and fellow students from different technical backgrounds. Secondly, the unique marriage of academia and industry was an aspect highly commended by attendees from both sides!

My general opinion is that Imperial students should be exposed more to industry opportunities like this, not only for professional development reasons but also for exposure to different problem-solving approaches and for the development of commercial awareness in their fields. One student picked out this interaction with industry as the most prominent strength:

“I was assigned to one of the New Day teams – and their employees were professional, supportive and quite willing to nurture and coach us. This turned out to be the best feature of the event – the interaction with the New Day employees was top notch and that resulted in a day infused with valuable practical data science learning – simply priceless”

Lessons learnt

Despite most of the feedback being positive, we acknowledge the need to make improvements for next year. A few attendees mentioned how the event should be longer so that participants can get more out of the data with which they are provided. Equally, there seemed to be great difference between the format of different company challenges so more coordination and consistency between these needs to be achieved for next time.

Get involved in the next IC Data Challenge

I believe and hope that this will be the start of an annual event which builds in esteem and popularity year on year. The current team feel it has the potential to become a national event which involves students from other universities. Yet before deliberation, we need great people to take this forward; hence if you’re interested in being a part of the team that develops next year’s event then please either run for a GSU or ICDSS position or get in touch with us at gsu.president@imperial.ac.uk

GSU and ICDSS members behind the IC Data Challenge 2018

A Different Kind of Laser Experiment

by Sarah Ho, Department of Chemistry.

Lasers have had various uses in science, for example in the study of atoms and molecules via spectroscopy. On the 15th of January 2018 however, a group of postgraduates and staff from the Department of Chemistry were interested in very different way of using lasers. Physical and mental abilities were put to the test in the warzone of Bunker 51, a Laser Tag franchise in central London. Fast-paced action, military tactics and an out-of-breath professor were some of the highlights of our social initiative that spanned across both the Britovsek and Romain Groups where stronger bonds were formed over the course of several cooperative team deathmatches and a lovely dinner at Steak and Co.

Laser Tag Missions (Bunker 51)

Each mission featured a time limit of usually 20 mins, an objective, and a coloured light to indicate if it was teamplay or free-for-all. Over the course of 8 exciting but gruelling missions, we got to experience everything from tag-team elimination to overpowered free-for-alls where a “juggernaut” was empowered to have more armour and firepower but lost their status to their slayer. Having the opportunity to play in a mixed team of postgraduates and staff saw us being able to work together more, communicate more effectively and trust one another better (or in one particular case, discover how willing someone is to shoot you in the back for more points right after forming an alliance with you). All said, it was a fantastic time of team-building and bonding where we got to learn a bit more about each other and how to work as a cohesive unit.

A Job Well-Done but Not for My Steak Please (Steak & Co.)

After such a strenuous workout, we proceeded for a relaxed dinner at Steak & Co. where we could hold a civilised conversation without trying to shoot each other. Between the warm food and fizzy drinks, it was easy to begin chatting about various things and open up to each other.

Conclusion

As an event organiser, I have built up my leadership skills via organising this networking event. This event is a very good opportunity for the people in the research group to communicate and understand each other better. Moreover, each participant can improve their planning and strategy building skills through this activity. In each section, each team member needs to give their input and follow the game plan approved by the team leader. To score points, tackle opposing team’s strategy and win the game. Overall, this activity will improve communication and team working skills as well as planning and strategy building skills.

We want to say a big thank you to the Graduate School for giving us this funding opportunity. This is such a great opportunity to improve our research group to a friendly and healthy research community.

Meet the Scientist – Open Days at the Division of Brain Science

By Luigi Montibeller

The laboratories of Brain Division of Imperial College London (ICL) opened its doors on the 23rd and 25th of October to display it’s state-of-the-art technology, experiments and research through interactive talks and guided tours run by its researchers, specializing in the field of neurodegenerative diseases.

More than 100 people including patients, relatives and members of the public attended the event. The tour and presentations gave attendees the opportunity to talk to leading researchers and medical professionals, exploring the latest research, tackling conditions like Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and brain injury.

A presentation about each specific neurological disorder was given followed by a visit through the labs and the Brain bank. For example, visitors witnessed the dissection of a human brain by Dr. Steve Gentleman, highlighting brain function and it’s impairment in such diseases.

With additional ‘hands-on’ demonstrations, the participants had the unique opportunity to participate in experiments that researchers conducted inside the labs. These included learning about cell culture, immunohistochemistry and microscopy.

The event received great feedback from attendees. With comments like “Very well organized. Complicated research presented in plain English. Very enthusiastic stuff. Thank you all”, “Super day: excellent, translated well for lay man’s language”.

Diversity in Physics Ice Skating Group

For the post-grad Women in Physics Christmas social we organized an ice skating outing to the rink at the Natural History Museum. This event was also open to PG women in Computing, as we hope to run many events together in the future. The group was a mix of physics, maths and computing students and we had a mixture of all years of students and a couple of post docs. This was the first event combining the two departments. We all met and introduced ourselves in the Physics Department before walking over to the Natural History Museum together. Within the group there were a few girls who have never ice skated before and the rest of us have been at least a few times before. This made for a nice group. The inexperienced skaters were shown what to do and helped around the rink by various other girls. Everyone really enjoyed the skating! We skated for 50 minutes and then headed up to the bar for mulled wine to warm up and chat. The event was a great success and we will be holding it again next year. It was also a positive start for what we hope to be a collaborative and supportive community between the PG women in physics, maths and computing.

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.

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!