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The Crick-Imperial Symposium 2021

Every three years, PhD students from The Francis Crick Institute and Imperial College hold a symposium dedicated to enabling students from both institutions to share their research through posters and talks in a supportive environment. Obviously, this year had to be a little different. The event had to held virtually as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic which posed new challenges. A key objective of this event is the provide a platform for graduate students from a range of scientific backgrounds to network and work together, something we can all agree is much more challenging behind a computer screen!

We decided that alongside using Zoom for the talks we would use Gather.Town for the posters and networking. We felt this best replicated the networking opportunities normally facilitated at these events as Gather.Town lets you speak with people 1-1 and in small groups. You can design different rooms for people to browse (see pictures for the main foyer and Perkin Elmer’s room).

Alongside the PhD speakers we had Professor Aldo Faisal and Geraldine Cox as plenary speakers. Apart from being inspiring and captivating speakers, their talks also complimented the interdisciplinary nature of the symposium.

Professor Faisal is a Professor of AI & Neuroscience jointly at the Dept. of Bioengineering and the Dept. of Computing at Imperial College London, where he leads the Brain & Behaviour Lab. He talked about his work on using wearables to record natural human behaviour and training AI with this data to improve performance of machine vision for self-driving cars or help mobility of wheelchairs of paralysed patients. (find more about his work https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/a.faisal).

Geraldine Cox has degrees in physics and fine art and began her project called ‘Finding Patterns’ in 2011 at Imperial College London with an ‘Artist in Residence Award’ from the Leverhulme Trust. Since then, her work has grown to involve scientists from other universities including Oxford, Cambridge, Durham and MIT. See her talk here. Both talks were really engaging and offered interesting new perspectives. As Geraldine’s talk rounded off the day, she joined us in Gather.Town for the final networking session and facilitated some excellent discussions!

Examples of Geraldine’s work: Harmony and Universe

Prizes were awarded for the top 3 talks and posters, voted for by the other attendees. This gave us an opportunity to recognise the excellent work being done by PhD students from both institutions and helped to engage the audience. We also held a raffle based on who attended the Perkin Elmer booth, for which they kindly donated 10 £25 vouchers as prizes. This added an incentive for participation as we know this can sometimes be difficult at virtual events!

We know that virtual events can be a challenge and we just want to say a massive thank you to everyone who participated so enthusiastically in the symposium! We hope it was a good opportunity to present your work to an audience of more diverse backgrounds and that you got the chance to engage with each other as much as possible. We look forward to seeing you all in person sometime soon!

From the lab to the ward, and back again

by Dr Sonia Wolf, Department of Infectious Disease

In January 2020, talk of a new virus in Wuhan emerged. As whispers spread about what it was and where it had come from, my curiosity was only that of an interested PhD student in the Department of Infectious Disease. As the epidemic grew and spread, however, I became increasingly aware that, as a medical doctor, my skills on the frontline were going to be needed. As college shut down, my research samples sat sadly in the freezer, while I tried (and failed) to write from home. The email came at the end of March; I was going to Newham Hospital, as an Acute Medical Registrar.

It was a daunting redeployment for me. I had been out of clinical work for over 2 years; I had never worked at Newham, and this was not my usual specialty, Haematology. I went for training on how to use a ventilator. The hospital was eerily quiet; busy but calm, everyone transporting patients briskly from A&E to the wards, behind expressionless masked faces. I started on night shifts, covering the Care of the Elderly wards. I had never in my career seen anything like this. There were 9 wards, excluding Intensive Care, at Newham, and 8 and a half were filled with Covid patients. For most of the elderly, deemed too frail for Intensive Care, this was their only option. For many of them at that time, the only thing we could do was increase the oxygen to the maximum level, then watch to see if they made it through. Many did not.

Dr Sonia Wolf
Dr Sonia Wolf

In the doctors’ mess, doctors of all backgrounds and ages rested, chatted or ate midnight noodles, supplied by the canteen. Many of us had come from research, or non-acute specialties like HIV Medicine and Dermatology, and those who traditionally filled Acute Medicine roles helped support us as we adjusted to the circumstances.

After about two weeks I fell ill with Covid myself and spent two weeks recovering. When I returned, the usual diversity of hospital life was returning. Covid was still there; plenty of it, but now we had suicide attempts, alcohol withdrawal and late-presenting cancers. These were the unseen casualties of the pandemic. We also had to talk to each relative by phone every day, trying to pass news one way, and love, without sight or touch, the other.

I returned to my lab work in June. It was a relief but also sad to say goodbye to so many incredible colleagues, both old and new. I learned that I love clinical work, but the toll it took on us was huge.  I hope what I did was able, in a small part, to buy some time, in order to allow the scientific community to continue their incredible efforts.

My experience at the ‘Careers Talk with a Difference’

My name is Niamh Sayers and I’m a third year PhD student based at Hammersmith Hospital in the Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, and also a Student Rep for this cohort. As I am nearing the end of my PhD (as are many of the friends I started with) I realised we may all be looking for things we want to do after our PhD, therefore I decided to organise this ‘Careers Talk with a Difference…’. We attend many scientific talks during our PhDs, from Work in Progress’ to conference seminars, but I realised we do not have access to many talks outside of the realms of science. So, I decided to organise a careers talk with a renowned public speaker to give some insight into other forms of communication besides scientific.

All postgraduate students were invited, across both the Hammersmith and White City campuses. The event was held in the IRDB seminar room. Drinks were provided upon arrival and pizza was ordered for the networking session after the talk had been given. The talk was held on Wednesday 4th March 2020.

I invited renowned public speaker Matt Black to talk at our University to the postgraduate students to give us an introduction into another way of thinking about the world and potentially help us in the next big steps of our career paths. Matt Black spoke about finding a path that is right for you and your motivations, and finding something that suits you, emphasising most importantly doing something that YOU choose you want to do. He used examples from his own personal career journey and spoke about Greta Thunberg as an inspiration for taking on big challenges.

There were many positive outcomes from the talk, one student even commented they were influenced to apply for a PhD position after Matt Black spoke about the idea that we choose the life we build and the direction we go in. I agree, in that he reminded me of the importance of choosing to do something I am passionate about, rather than following on down a path already trodden/laid out for me, based on what I “think” I should be doing. He also convinced me that anything is possible, if you choose the right mindset.

For me personally, I found Matt Black very engaging and enthusiastic, and I can see with his energy how he has gotten so far in the public speaking domain, which was excellent to witness, as well as learn from some the techniques he used to engage the audience. In addition to seeing his encapsulation of the audience, Matt gave me plenty to ponder over; my goals in life; what makes me happy and what incentivises me, so I left feeling thoughtful about my next steps after completing my PhD.

The aim of this event was to bring in a thought-provoking speaker with experience outside of science and to get students thinking about potential career moves after their postgraduate degree. Matt Black engaged with the audience and asked questions throughout, he also stayed behind and was approached to talk to by many groups of students in the networking event after. The feedback from the event was that many students left feeling thoughtful and encouraged, and there were many positive comments about the speaker and the event at large, with a highlight being one student even referencing this talk affirming her idea of wanting to apply for a PhD position next year.

All-in-all I am very happy with how the event turned out. Many postgraduate students attended, from a range of departments across the Hammersmith and White City campuses, and I will be looking for more speakers of a similar nature to invite to Imperial to aid tough decision-making by students about themselves and their future careers with another careers talk with a difference.

Many thanks to the Graduate School for funding this event and making it possible.

 

Institute of Clinical Sciences – Greening LMS Launch Event

On a brisk Wednesday at the end of September we launched our programme to encourage sustainable practices within the MRC LMS at the “GreeningLMS launch event”. The main aims of our event were to give LMS members the opportunity to get to know the team and find out about its initiatives. This event also allowed important informal chats inspiring new ideas and collaborations! The suggestion box was full of lots of exciting thoughts of how the GreeningLMS and LMS staff members can come together to create the most impact.  It was a fantastic event with a great turnout including all LMS Imperial students on the 6th floor of the CRB building, Hammersmith Campus.

Routes coffee, an independent barista with an environmental conscience, generously donated their time. Needless to say delicious coffee was enjoyed by all! Members of the team made homemade cakes, catering for gluten intolerant and vegans alike.

An informative presentation was projected and ran on loop in the event room, advertising the main aims and goals of the team, some practical tips for sustainable practices in and outside the lab. In addition, a plethora of frightening facts about the effects of the current environmental situation on health and the world’s ecosystems and how we contribute to it where shown. Feedback highlighted how many of the attendees were unaware of the current state of play.

Finally, the event saw the signing up of Greening representatives for each lab – a point of contact between the lab and GreeningLMS – ensuring that best sustainability practices are maintained by all. These representatives will also be key in the ongoing evolution of sustainable practice implementation and will provide constant feedback about the success of the different GreeningLMS initiatives.

This event engaged the whole institute, raising awareness of sustainable issues and it was wonderful to see the general enthusiasm and support from all. In particular, it was great to see so many students attending, especially the newbies, as you will be pioneers – doing lab work as sustainably as possible from the beginning with no bad habits ;).

Due to the generous funding by the Research Community Fund, we were able to fund this event and buy sustainable freebies to pass out to attendees and bites to eat. Attendees were able to take a collapsible cup for their morning coffee on the go and a 100% cotton bag for their fruit and packed lunch. Without this funding the event would not have had record attendance or such widespread impact. So, a massive thank you to the Research Community Fund for helping to make our event possible and the success it was!

CDT Networking Events – Round One

What a better way to kickstart the beginning of the new term if not with a new series of social events?

A CDT student-led committee has organised a schedule of “CDT Networking Events”, where students belonging to different CDT cohorts get to know each other in an informal setting. The first iteration of our CDT Networking events was held on Friday 17th of January in the EPSRC CDT Space. The events entail, in the first 30 minutes, an educational talk given by one of the EPSRC CDT students on a topic belonging to his\her research area. On the very first round, Alain Rossier (CDT Mathematics of Random Systems- Oxford Cohort) discussed about Maths and the game of Poker. Alain covered important notions of game theory, including Nash equilibrium and the optimality of strategies, which closely relate to his research topic.

The content and the quality of the talk given by Alain was widely appreciated by the audience and it led to further informal discussion during the second part of the event, where student had the chance to extend their professional networks and socialise with their peers. The event was accompanied by free pizzas, drinks and snacks for all the students. The event also had a large number of presences, counting at peak time more than 40 students. This really encouraged the event committee to organise the next series of event in a similar fashion and which are planned to take place in the months to come in the Spring and Summer terms.

The committee would like to the Graduate School as well as the participating CDTs who acted as financial sponsors for the events.

CMBI Christmas-Themed Games Night

To celebrate the end of 2019, over 60 students, post-docs and PIs from the CMBI got together for a Christmas-themed games night organised by first year PhD students. This event was an opportunity for people from different departments and spread out throughout the Flowers building to socialise, as well as to allow the first year PhD students to get to know each other and the building.

Despite the students being thrown in the deep end, the event ran smoothly (mostly due to the invaluable help from the Flowers admin team and a last-minute dash to Waitrose).
Attendees played party games such as twister, beer pong and table tennis, as well as dancing to a music playlist best described as a Year 6 disco. There were also drinks, snacks and mince pies available, as well as several types of pizza and vegan pizza, which was kindly sponsored by the Graduate School.

The event was a success, with positive feedback from those who attended. It was also a great success for the first year PhD students, even if not all made it to the end of the night, as cleaning up the next day solidified new friendships!

We would like to acknowledge the Graduate school for kindly providing funds which made this event possible.

Our very merry meeting across the new-found divisions at South Kensington

Following the considerable restructure within the Department of Surgery and Cancer and new-found Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, in a time where many aspects of PGR life have seemed up in the air, Simone and I (Kate) decided to unite everyone for a single evening.  The aim was to encourage new friendships, to promote collaborative opportunities and reinforce the sense of community across PGR students at South Kensington. For the first time, students, post-docs and supportive PI’s took to a cosy boutique hotel in Hammersmith to meet, eat and be merry!

The evening started with the classic Secret Santa, where our personal Santa Claus facilitated the exchange of gifts. This gave people the chance to find out more about colleagues they hadn’t potentially met before and represented the perfect opportunity to introduce the new PhD students to the Departments.

Following the many laughs at unconventional gifts, we moved to a close-by venue to begin our evening. The turnout was fantastic! A large number of students joined the event, not only new PhD students of the Divisions but also students based on other campuses who hadn’t yet felt integrated with the rest of the PGR community. One of the main aims for the event was to get students to meet each other. To overcome any nerves, we provided Christmas crackers along with food and encouraged students to pull them with people they hadn’t met before and break the ice using the jokes inside. 

Another aim of the event was to make sure students knew who they could go to with technical issues, as often people down the hall or across your desk may have solutions to your problems or have faced the same struggles. This large-scale event allowed students to get together and have these conversations. Additionally, colleagues from the National Phenome Centre, who are integrated with many students’ projects,  were invited to inform students of their capacity to support their work. I also finally got the opportunity to introduce myself to colleagues I have seen several times around the lab but felt it wasn’t the right time to spark up conversation, some of these colleagues working on similar instrumentation as myself, highlighting the importance of community building events such as this. With this in mind, we are incredibly grateful to the Imperial Graduate School and the Research community fund made available to us, without which this event would not have been possible.

The final stage of the night was to cut loose and really enjoy each other’s company. Dancing was heavily encouraged, with the manager of the venue giving us full reign of music control – balancing the evening between friendship, food and fun!

Feedback from attendees was overwhelmingly positive! New students have now formed relationships with many of the existing PGR students and they will develop these connections over the coming months to years of their PhD. The next step for all of us will be to support each other during these sometimes stressful and demanding years of our PhD. We are now surer than ever that despite working independently and across different campuses, we are a single community ready to support each other. 

PhD Business School Research Dinner

On the 4th of December, we, the Business School Research Graduates, shared research interests and a fun time with a Christmas dinner at Coco Momo. We are thankful to the Graduate School’s Research Community Fund to co-sponsor the event together with the Business School’s Student Staff Committee. It was a fantastic event with a large turnout across all departments and year groups.

The Imperial College Business School has a variety of PhD tracks including, amongst others, Management, Finance, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Economics, Marketing, and Operations. Consequently, although we pursue a large array of research topics as a PhD cohort, we often are focused on research within our respective departments. The Christmas dinner offered a great opportunity for us to socialise across departments and year groups. In preparation of the dinner, we asked all attending students to submit their research interests/topics/titles. We created a table, outlining everybody’s research topic and shared this table with everybody on the evening.

Across a 3-course menu and a glass of wine or soft-drink, we had ample opportunity to get to learn each other’s interests. Operations students for instance learnt about the importance of herd immunity and the impact of social primers on vaccination decisions from health economists students, while finance students explained to marketing students about new research directions in Asset Pricing focusing on exploiting information in the cross section rather than in the time series dimension. At the same time, older PhD students gave helpful tips and tricks to younger students.

The Christmas dinner was a great success across all dimensions – food, drinks, research and banters. We got to know not only our colleagues and their research interests, but also picked up new dimensions to our own research as well as new research ideas.

Thank you, Graduate School, for supporting this event!

Lunchtime Yoga @ White City Campus

On the 22nd of May the first power yoga class for PG students took place at the Molecular Science Research Hub on the newly built White City Campus.

For the first Taster Session a small room was booked, because no one expected a huge demand. Instead nineteen people showed up to the first free yoga class of which quite a few did yoga for the first time!

Figure 1: Our first ever lesson had a great turnout for a tiny room.

At the beginning of the first yoga class the teacher asked everyone to introduce themselves and tell everyone what they are trying to get out of this class. Almost everyone was craving for 60 minutes a day during which they can forget about their stressful PhDs and relax their backs from sitting in front of a computer or standing at a lab bench all day. Our personal favorite answer was from a complete Newbie to yoga who said  “I want to like it, so that I want to come back next week!”

Our teacher, Barbara Durand, is a professional yoga teacher, usually teaching at the Lumi Power Yoga studio in Hammersmith. The Vinyasa flow type of yoga they teach @LumiPowerYoga is perfect for young adults. Most attendees were surprised of how dynamic this type of yoga is. A lot of people which hesitated joining at first saying ‘I’m not flexible enough for yoga’ overcame their fear and realised that it’s not about the others or being average, it’s about your own personal body and battle. Every posture in yoga has multiple options, so anyone can improve at whatever level they’re at. The teacher does a great job in incorporating this into the weekly practise, making it highly inclusive.

Figure 2: We enjoy sweating and stretching every Tuesday in the yoga side angle pose.

The number of participants has been continuously rising and we register around 25 sign-ups every week. This is also mirrored in the steadily growing number of members of our mailing list which is currently at 54. We even had to move to a new room for more space at Brickfields Hall around the corner. All postgraduate students based at White City Campus are welcome to join the free Yoga lessons and we even have a couple of staff members being regulars.

Figure 3: The IHUB on the new White City campus is the ideal location for a lunchtime Yoga session – with unlimited capacity!

Yoga has become an integral part of our weekly work routine. This one hour of lunchtime break a week has positively impacted our productivity and social coherence across hierarchies, different laboratories and research branches. We look forward to anyone joining us at any time. EVERY level is welcome.

Happy Yoga,

Julia & Léonie

 

Testimonials:

‘I’ve been to so many yoga classes before. They never actually explained how to transition from an upwards dog into a downward dog. It was so good.’

 “I was worried I wasn’t gonna get a sweat because everyone replied saying they wanted relaxation out of this class, but I’m so glad I did sweat. I was scared they would just make us lay down in Savasana for ages playing some old-fashioned Indian music, which doesn’t relax me at all. I enjoyed the relaxation today, it was the perfect length. Normally all I want to do is walk off, because it doesn’t work for me, but here it worked. I’m definitely going again next week.”

 “Highlight of my week.”

 “I know why I didn’t go to the gym this morning.” “Me too!”

 “It was quite fast paced compared to other yoga classes I had been to before. I really liked it. I got a sweat out of it. A little sweat, which I wanted, so it feels like exercise. The class went by really fast.”

 

For more information drop us a message: yogawhitecity@gmail.com

Or follow us on Instagram: @msrhyoga

Summer Derby Day Party

There are many pitfalls that must be navigated as you work towards earning a PhD: one of the biggest is isolation. By its very nature, a PhD requires you to be researching something new and unique and when you’re at your desk trying to work out why the data looks weird, because it always looks weird, it can be easy to forget you’re not alone. That’s why events like the PhD Summer Party are so important. Thanks to the generosity of the Graduate School and the Bioengineering Department, every year, we’re afforded the opportunity to relax, make new friends outside of the lab, and live the student dream of free food and drink. This year was no different.

After a solid week of rain, the heavens cleared on the last Thursday as if to bless the oncoming merriment of the evening. We’re fortunate in Bioengineering to have very talented staff who have joined together to form the Gastric Band and, with the help of some volunteers, they relocated and set up in on the 8th floor of the Blackett Building complete with terrace. After some, shall we say, efficient preparations, the room was ready for the party to begin promptly at 5:30pm. By 5:45, the food was gone; at least that’s how I remember it. It wasn’t long before the room was full of clusters of people chatting, their plates laden with delicious BBQ all being washed down with a selection of delicious drinks. The warm weather meant we could venture out on to the terrace and look over the city as the sun slowly set over the capital. With everyone fed and watered, the band took centre stage and the party began in earnest.

The band astounded with renditions with their covers of rock classics, like “Johnny Be Good”, to pop hits, like Cee-lo Green’s “Forget You”, and everything in between. Though reluctant at first, 6:30pm is a bit early to boogie, it wasn’t long before the dancefloor was established and all manner of shapes were being thrown. Each member of the band shone with spectacular solos but the mellifluous voices of Kemi Aofolaju and Melanie Albright really got people cheering. Even Professor Bull got on the stage and had us bopping along to “Hit the Road Jack”. If you ever get a chance, see the Gastric Band: I guarantee you will not regret it.

9pm came, and with it the end of our booking. The band packed up, the reps and volunteers cleaned up, and my colleagues grabbed their “one for the road” and made their way to the Union Bar to continue the festivities. It would be easy to see the Summer party as just a time to blow off some steam and a waste of money for various departments but I believe it plays a vital role in making the PhD experience just that bit easier and more enjoyable. Whether it’s new friendships that you help you expand your research and build your career or just a friendly face to say hi to by the coffee machine. Every year the party gives us the opportunity to hop over the pitfall of isolation all to the tune of Toto’s “Hold the Line”. If you ask me, that’s worth every penny.