On Friday, 10th of May the third event of the Cross-CDT series took place. The students from five different CDTs gathered at the Union bar to catch up with people from their own cohort as well as with people from other CDTs and cohort years that they got to know at the other events. In total more than 20 students from different CDTs joined for this event in the course of the evening and had a great time together.
It was a great opportunity for friends who have not seen eachother in a long time to socialise and grab a drink together. At the beginning of our PhD program, all of PhD students were working together in an open office area. However, since now everybody is spread out in a different building and even different campuses (White City and South Kensington), it is very rewarding to meet up from time to time and to have a chat about how the PhD projects are going, to what cool conference some people already went or which internships they have done and to exchange also thoughts and advice that we have accumulated over the time. The Union bar was the perfect choice for such and event, since it is close to all of our offices and easy to convince people to join for a after work drink on a Friday.
Overall it was a great event that was appreciated by all the people involved. Everybody is looking forward to the next event. A thanks goes to the Graduate School of Imperial College London which financially supported this cohort building activity.
On Wednesday 13th of February 2019, the second event in the Cross-CDT series took place – a total of 14 PhD students from different 3 different CDTs gathered to face the tasks that needed to be solved. The students divided in to two teams and were required to work together to solve different puzzles in order to beat the clock (and each other), to escape and unlock their respective ‘rooms’. As this was the second of the scheduled activities, many of the students were already acquainted and were able to jump to the tasks at hand instantly.
The theme of the first room was “Project D.I.V.A” and the second, “Dark side of the moon”. Both adventures had their own unique set of fun challenges, questions and tasks which needed to be solved and which put our team work and skills of inquiry to the test. It was a welcome distraction from our PhD work and a reminder that from time to time, we also need to enjoy ourselves.
After an initial struggle both teams managed to escape their respective rooms – rooms. It was great to receive the “Mission accomplished” announcement!
Following the escape room activity, the students who still had some energy left, decided to go to the pub to reward their hard work. This gave the group the opportunity to chat and share experiences.
Overall it was a great event and we are all looking forward to the next!
We would like to extend our thanks to the Graduate School for financially supporting this cohort building activity.
by Martin Prießner, PhD student in the Department of Chemistry
On Tuesday the 11th of December the first event of this year’s Cross-CDT event series took place. The Cross-CDT event series aims to strengthen the already established friendships and form new ones between CDT students of different disciplines across the different cohort years. By organising meetings and fun activities with an informal character, the participating students get the opportunity to exchange their PhD experiences and professional and private matters. This enables them to form long-lasting friendships which will hopefully surpass their PhD studies.
On this winter-like evening on the 11th of December a total of 18 CDT students from 4 different CDT programs across two cohort years gathered together in front of the library at Imperial College London. Since not everyone knew everyone from the group, we briefly introduced each other and spoke a bit about how we found out about this event. In these conversations some of us found out that through the well-connected network within the CDT programs, we had already quite a few friends in common. After everyone arrived, we started walking to the ice rink at the Natural History Museum and got ready to demonstrate our skills on the ice!
Since there were some participants from countries in which the climate is naturally too warm to form ice, it was a first-time experience for them. With some of the more ‘advanced’ skaters helping those less able, everyone finally managed to get comfortable on the ice and most of us gathered at the Christmas tree in the centre of the ice rink for a nice group picture.
After roughly one hour we finished ice skating and rewarded ourselves with a drink at the bar, where we continued to exchange our experiences of the CDT program and the opportunities afforded to us as part of this cohort, e.g. helping organise the festival of science, which some members of the group had done the year before.
Following the skating, some of the group decided to go to the Bio-Eng-Christmas party in the Royal School of Mines to continue the evening!
To summarise this first Cross-CDT event was a very successful gathering of CDT-PhD students across different CDT years. We had a great time ice skating, celebrating and exchanging our experience of the PhD so far.
Thank you to the Graduate School of Imperial College London, for the financial support to ensure this cohort building activity could take place.
On 29th of June 9 CDT PhD students from 2 different CDTs left London for a 3 days trip to the countryside to explore West England.
On Friday morning all of us met at Heathrow airport at the Sixt car rental shop. After everyone arrived and after we got our cars we drove towards Bristol and then turned further left to reach a town called Tauton. There we bought some groceries and continued our journey to finally reached our end destination with was a small farm located between Taunton and Exeter.
Immediately the AirBnB owner welcomed us with her lively 3 dogs Bisket, Douglas and Holly. After playing a bit with the dogs which we decided to go for a walk and discover the area of where we would stay the next 3 days. One speciality about this place was that it was so far from any other bigger city or town that there was no internet and mobile connection at all. Everyone felt it as a relieve not being connected to the rest of the world which made us enjoy the beautiful nature even more.
When we returned to the house we prepared dinner where the more talented chefs amongst us prepared a delicious pasta for us. We spoke a lot played some card games and at night we enjoyed watching the full moon and the stars.
On Saturday the highlight of the day was that we took our cars to go to Wimbleball Lake. There we enjoyed the warm summer weather and borrowed some rowing boats to explore the lake. Furthermore, we managed to borrow a football and a tennis ball and played around with them on the grass. In the evening we prepared a BBQ and traditional Shakshuka which one of our friends knew very well how to cook it. We ended the second evening listening to music, playing some board and card games and exchanging other funny stories about our lives.
On Sunday we left the dorm quite early straight after breakfast to drive to a nearby castle called “Dunster Castle”. Although it started raining a bit we found joy in discovering and exploring a medieval town with its watermill, church, a beautiful garden and also the tiny houses and narrow streets. After that we continued with our cars to go to the coastal region in the north to a small city called “Weston-Super Mare”. There we enjoyed the sandy beach and also the mud which was left over due to the ebb of the sea.Finally, we enjoyed a last lunch together after returning back to London.
Here we also want to take the opportunity to thank the Graduate School for their financial support for this really joyful Cross-CDT Trip.
To celebrate the end of the term and to also exchange our football knowledge 10 CDT-PhD students from 2 different CDTs met up at a bar to watch the game Argentina against France.
It has been a quite long time that some of us have seen each other and therefore this reunion was very enjoyable by also hearing about the lives of our former MRes colleagues. The world-cup game of the day was France against Argentina. After discussing our bets on who is more likely to win the game and who we thought would score first the game started. While watching we enjoyed our dinner at the bar which was also very delicious, and which made the whole reunion experience even more enjoyable. The football-game was very exciting because throughout the match both teams were showing their best and most creative moves and strategic brilliance. Finally France ended up winning against Argentina 4:3. Since most of us were supporting France we were very relieved about this outcome and discussed the game in more detail also after the referee finished the game.
Here we also want to take the opportunity to thank the Graduate School for their financial support for this very nice reunion at the Cross-CDT World-Cup Dinner.
Did you ever wonder what most of PhD students at the College have in common? They need to compute to finish their degree. The task can be as simple as a quick data analysis or as complex as creating a new software package. Did you also know that most of the students arrive with a minimal background in computing? A lot of them find themselves in a “sink or swim” situation. After experiencing this ourselves, we decided that we don’t want others to suffer the same fate and make the same mistakes. To bring the issue into the spotlight, we decided to organise a Fair that featured exhibits dedicated to essential computing skills that every student should know before they attempt to “swim”.
The Fair happened on October 11th, 2017 and it was a success. We had at least 60 visitors – after that we lost count. We invited CDT cohorts as well as PhD students across the College to come, network and pick up useful tips. The event started on a high note, almost everyone showed up right when the door opened. The visitors dispersed around the exhibits and listened to what we had to say. The ones that needed a bit of help with getting enthusiastic got cookies coffee or tea. We had an incredibly busy three hours at the exhibits as well as giving short talks.
After picking up useful computing tips and hints, the audience had a chance to visit a poster session at the Fair. We invited open source software projects from the College to present to the students. Many of these packages can be applied to various types of projects. Who knows, maybe we encouraged future collaborations.
The pizza and beer arrived just in time, one could not keep this pace much longer. The networking part that followed went very smoothly.
With the Fair out of the way, we intend to continue our effort to educate the cohorts via the Scientific Computing Support Network. There is a good chance that we’ll organise the Fair again. Note to self – keep it simple and order more pizza.
Thomas Bendall, MPE Eduardo Ramos Fernandez, TSM Matthew Garrod, MPE
Thomas Gibson, MPE Michael Haigh, MPE
Hemant Khatri, Math Department Smitha Maretvadakethope, Fluids Josephine Park, MPE
Sergio Perez, Fluids Matthew Taylor, HiPEDS The Computational Methods Hub
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!
