Tag: facultyofmedicine

Presenting my research at the Rising Scientist Day

By Jonathan Li, PhD Student, Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction

Hi, I’m Jonathan.  I’m a 3rd year PhD student studying signalling pathways in the myometrium. I presented my research at the Rising Scientist Day hosted by Faculty of Medicine. It is a one day conference that allows PhD students from multiple backgrounds to present their work. Usually, the symposium offers a great chance to network with other PhD students and to find out what their research is all about. This year, due to COVID-19, the format was slightly different than previous years, where everything was done remotely.  Nonetheless, the event was still a great success. 

The day started off with a number of 3 minute thesis talks, then this was followed by intermissions and lunch breaks where we could view the posters. Given the challenges of hosting a symposium remotely, the day went very smoothly with only a few technical hitches due to the overwhelming number of people wanting to listen in on the talks. One of the advantages of having a remote symposium is that students who are not based in London can attend these events, where we had one speaker dial in from South East Asia! 

The remote nature of the symposium meant that a poster session was not possible. However, the posters were consolidated into one website that was very accessible. Whilst lacking the benefits of having a scientist explaining their work in person. The posters were submitted along with a 1 minute recording. One of the challenges is how do you explain your research in such a short amount of time without being there in person.  Suffice to say the approaches of how to tackle this problem were varied, where some chose to adopt QR codes, some used hyper-links.  The sheer amount of thought and consideration to these limitations, coupled with the high quality of research in these posters made it feel like I was attending an international conference.  

The sheer variety of fields was also very eye opening, ranging from preterm labour (my research focus) to things like embryonic stem cells or avian influenza viral research.  As a final year PhD student, I can say from personal experience it is very easy to focus on your own project, as the deadlines mount and you try to complete experiments or gather more data. The symposium provides an excellent chance to find out about other projects ongoing at Imperial. 

Overall, the day was a wonderful experience and having the chance to see the excellent research that is being carried out by my peers makes for a nice break from the routine of lab work. Whilst the symposium lacks the in-person touch this year, I’m looking forward to similar future events when COVID-19 restrictions are relaxed. I would highly recommend PhD students to submit their work if they have the chance next year.  

Many thanks to the staff members who helped organise the event. 

A Unique Rising Scientist Day

By Alexander Carver, PhD student, Department of Infectious Disease

Hi, I’m Alex, a second year PhD student studying in Professor Xiaodong Zhang’s group. On 20th April, I was lucky enough to take part in Rising Scientist Day 2021 and win the 3-minute thesis competition. It has been a tough year for PhD students across Imperial College with the coronavirus pandemic taking a toll on what has been possible to achieve in the lab; however, it was very impressive to see what people have been working on for the last 1-2 years. The day consisted of poster viewing sessions in which all 2nd and 3rd year PhD students in the Faculty of Medicine were expected to compete. The posters were of exceptional quality, and the winners did a great job in producing posters worthy of any conference. 

In addition to poster viewing sessions, 25 PhD students were also nominated to produce a single slide summarising their research which they would present to the audience (over Zoom) in a maximum of three-minutes. Undoubtedly a big challenge, the field was full of great talks, ranging from discussion of new Hepatitis treatments in Eastern Asia to understanding the role of microbiota in immunity. My talk examined the regulation of the DNA damage response, particularly the proteins involved in Homologous Recombination, a pathway of repair essential for the maintenance of genome integrity. 

We were also treated to two talks by two recent Imperial College alumni who gave us an insight into what they achieved with their PhDs. Despite both alumni completing a PhD in the Faculty of Medicine, they both had gone into different careers that have used the skills gained during their doctoral research. The first, Zoe Seager, told us much about what it is like to be a post-doctoral researcher in academia. It was a very interesting listen, and many questions were asked about how to go about writing an excellent thesis and articles for publication, as well as how to apply for jobs in academia. The second alumnus, Sophie Ward, did not do a post-doctoral research role in academia but had instead gone into strategy at the Wellcome Trust. In particular, she played a key role in the Covid-response by the Trust. Despite the exit from academic, *name* talk demonstrated that having a PhD gives you the skills necessary to turn your hand to any job, within or without academia. 

Overall, despite the obvious effect of Covid making the Rising Scientist Day not what it could have been, it was heartening to see the quality and diverse range of research that has continued to speed ahead. I would like to thank all the other competitors in both the Poster and 3-Minute Thesis competitions, especially the winners (as listed below). 

Three-Minute Thesis: 

  1. Alex Carver 
  2. Max Larkinson
  3. Catherine Cherry 

Poster: 

  1. Maddalena Cerrone 
  2. Jonathan Li 
  3. Golly Mobayen 

Most fun poster: Ioanna Panagi 

I would also like to thank the organisers of the day, including Hayley Kendall-Berry and Kevin Murphy, who expertly hosted the event despite the early Zoom-related technical issues. Hopefully we’ll be back to presenting in person next year and will be able to enjoy some well-deserved nibbles and vino afterwards!