Tag: Imperial College London

MRC LMS PhD Student Retreat 2019

On the morning of Friday June 14, unusually, we found ourselves amidst the Liverpool Street commuters’ rush as we headed into the heart of the financial district for the 2019 LMS PhD Student Retreat. Our destination was the imposing figure of the Gherkin. Going up to just beneath the top of the building, we took a few minutes to marvel at the panoramic views before the retreat’s ‘entrepreneurship’ theme was brought sharply into focus.

“What does it mean to be an entrepreneur?” Ben Mumby-Croft asked, as we began the morning workshop. Ben is director of the Imperial Enterprise Lab, which works to help students at Imperial College London innovate and launch new ideas for the market. Is having ideas enough? Ben explained through the ‘Lean Startup’ approach, that what separates a successful entrepreneur from your ordinary “ideas man” is the need to take initiative with the groundwork and minimising assumptions about your potential customers. Although at the start only a handful of students announced themselves as entrepreneurs, by the end of the pitch training session each table developed a rough business model for an intriguing idea with potential for the market. One of our PhD students, Vas, said about the workshop “Hearing the Lean Startup idea explained by Ben was a great way to formalise and make us aware of the common pitfalls of being a new entrepreneur.”


Next was the short talk session, aimed at increasing student collaboration and conversation. Sophie Arthur from the Grants Engagement and Communications (GECo) team discussed the importance of communication and engagement, highlighting the wide-ranging opportunities at the LMS. We also heard from Greening LMS founder Rebeca Fiadeiro (2nd year PhD student), who presented her valuable work increasing sustainability at the LMS. 3rd year PhD students Chiara Prodani and Irene Robles Rebollo ended the session with engaging presentations, deconstructing their research on epigenetic imprinting and genome organisation respectively.

 

 

To round out the first half of the day, 2nd year PhD student Eren Akademir hosted the inaugural ‘Whose Year Is It Anyway?’ quiz. Members from each team were asked to give the year of landmark discoveries, distinguishing themselves as scholars of scientific history. It went down to the wire, with a tiebreaker required after five rounds. In the end, team CMoC captained by Helen Paterson emerged victorious.

After lunch, we returned to our theme with a Q&A panel of young science entrepreneurs panel chaired by 1st year PhD student Sijia Yu. John Simpson and Alexander Bond shared their experience going from co-workers at Imperial College London to co-founders of their start-up company Fresh Check. John and Alex were quick to highlight the support that Imperial College provides for prospective entrepreneurs. We also heard from Momoby co founder Andrea Rodriguez-Martinez, and Laura Towart, founder and CEO of My Personal Therapeutics who gave their insight into opportunities for women in the business world. Also present, Co-founder of techspert.io Graham Mills, who led us through his entrepreneurship journey starting at Cambridge and what he does to instill an effective business culture in a large company. A number of other informative answers were given to audience questions relating to funding, time-management and productivity.

We drew to a close with an enthralling keynote speech delivered by Sir Tom Blundell, Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. Sir Tom took us steadily through his rollercoaster life in science, politics, business and even music – from discovering the structure of insulin with Dorothy Hodgkin in 1969, to co-founding multi-million pound oncology pharmaceuticals company Astex in 1999 – extracting the important lessons for success along the way.

Thus concluded a triumphant student retreat organised by the tireless LMS PhD Student Committee. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the Imperial Graduate School and Medical Research Council for the generous funding, without which these events would not be possible.

How interventions are spread: Winning second prize at the Research as Art Summer Showcase

By Sophie Spitters, PhD Student, Department of Medicine

The Imperial College London Graduate School organised their annual Summer Showcase on Friday July 13th. The showcase aims to celebrate research undertaken by PhD students at Imperial and invites staff, students and visitors to find out more about their work via a poster and a research as art exhibition. I joined the research as art exhibition, showcasing my NIHR CLAHRC NWL research, and won second prize! First prize was won by Iman Ibrahim, who demonstrated what it takes to get clean drinking water to our taps in her mandala called ‘the ripple effect’. And third prize was won by Laura Braun for her ‘sludge cake’ made from sewage, demonstrating the value of faecal waste treatment in order to return it safely to the environment as a natural fertiliser.

 

How interventions are spread

My art installation, titled ‘How interventions are spread’, aimed to communicate the reality of spreading healthcare improvement interventions, which often does not follow the expected trajectory. Healthcare improvement is often depicted as a linear straightforward process. First, a problem is identified. Then, a potential solution or intervention gets implemented in one area. Finally, if that intervention has shown to be successful, it is spread to other areas. The aim of spread in this context is to replicate the successful intervention exactly as is. Big investments are made to demonstrate that positive outcomes are linked to a particular intervention. So why change a winning formula? Why change an evidence-based intervention?

My research shows how in reality, the process of spread is a lot more complex. Evidence-based interventions often get presented as nicely packaged products with a clear step-by-step manual, not reflecting the messiness of interpersonal relationships, hard work and contextual dependencies underpinning its development. Hence, interventions do not just get picked up in one place and dropped off in another. When spreading to other areas, interventions change and develop depending on local priorities, capabilities and resources. This work is based on the spread of an allergy service improvement initiative.

I tried to communicate these issues through my art installation via two components: the video below and an interactive element encouraging people to build their own intervention with the (flawed) information and materials provided in the black box.

 

Exhibiting at the Summer Showcase

Joining the research as art competition was a great opportunity for me to communicate one of my research findings in a creative way. During the creation of the project, I realised that replicating a simple playdoh sculpture (which I used as a visual analogy) had many subtleties in common with replicating interventions in real-life quality improvement efforts. I never actually expected to see that. The Summer Showcase gave me the chance to explore these similarities and differences further with the visitors. It was great talking to people from different disciplines and different backgrounds about my research and to hear about their thoughts and insights. The art installation proved to be a great vehicle to start discussion, explore connections with people’s own experiences, and to visually demonstrate a key take home message from my research.

“Dream Today, Do Tomorrow”: Reflections from a cross-cultural, climate change-themed summer in Beijing

By Shiladitya Ghosh, 2nd Year PhD Student, Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London

In the modern day, students (especially PhD students) tend to have a crippling fear of committing to future plans because – “what if I end up needing those extra days to finish this report or do repeats for my experiments?” As the 2018 edition of the Imperial – Tsinghua Global Fellows Programme (GFP) on Climate Change and Energy drew near, I too had misgivings. Who was going to write my reports for me?!

However, a change in setting and scenery helps to calm and settle the mind – and I experienced this upon landing in Beijing in the sweltering 36°C early morning sun. Meeting other participants reassured me that we would have an enjoyable and meaningful time one way or another, away from the otherwise-incessant worries of our degrees. In fact, it turns out that several of the Imperial students were still writing their ESA (first year assessment) reports! And I thought I had problems…

When it came down to it, those 5 days completely flew by. As we formed inter-university teams and took part in various tasks, the time spent on learning to effectively communicate while also attempting to work towards common goals took up more and more of our waking moments – even infringing upon mealtimes, as we sought the cooperation of our Tsinghua colleagues in helping us identify the various sumptuous dishes on offer. In return, we also invited our counterparts to join our evening board games crusades, watching the World Cup finals late at night (it came home a little too early…), and even yoga sessions!

Considering that the aims of the programme include facilitating cultural exchange and fostering collaboration, you realise how much of that takes place (and needs to take place) outside of the official programme just as described above. Just like in a professional collaboration, everyone involved will only get the most out of it if they first take the time to understand and connect with the other parties. The actual (technical) work of the collaborative project may only be half the job – the personal connection and groundwork is the other, bigger half!

Without revealing the specifics of the course, I can confirm that there were ample opportunities for mental stimulation whether in finding ways to collaboratively tackle specific issues pertaining to climate change or global energy demands, or through introspection to understand more about themselves, what their personal strengths are and what soft skills they still can develop in. Sure, maybe not every team completed every task, but it was never about that. A line from a poem penned and presented on the final day perhaps sums up both this programme and our own PhD experiences: “It’s about the journey, not the win.”

No single activity felt like a self-contained episode; every session was connected to past and future activities. We learnt about how we function as individuals and how we can best play a role in any team we may work together in. These are very important professional capabilities that I can recommend to any graduate student to consider inculcating in themselves – unsurprisingly perhaps the reason why a GFP course is allowed to fill up the Graduate School course requirements for Imperial students prior to their ESA/LSR/final submission.

Perhaps the most important takeaway from this programme for all of us as individual specialists in our own particular fields was that it opened our eyes and minds to the potential of every discipline to play a significant part in a concerted effort to tackle climate change. My accelerated project team (水星 or shuǐ xīng; Water from the Stars) and cultural exchange team (Imperial Dragons) consisted of members with backgrounds in fluid hydraulics, meteorology, energy storage, membrane technologies, art and systems design, signals monitoring, and cancerology (medicine).

I’d never have expected students in most of those areas to have much of a professional interest in, or even having a way to meaningfully contribute towards, solving the world’s biggest problem lying ahead – but by the end of the week, I had never been happier to have been so wrong in my life.

To everyone reading: thank you for your time reading this. For each person that makes it to this page, that’s one more person that has at least the slightest interest and curiosity about playing a part in tackling climate change. And from what I’ve learnt this summer – no matter what your academic background is, we want and need every single one of you onboard!

Imperial College squad!
Panel discussion
Boat trip
Finale!
Finals!

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.

Cross-CDT Fair – Pain Relief for Scientific Computing

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.

Many thanks to the Graduate School, Platform for Research in Simulation Methods and the Research Computing Service for funding and many thanks to everyone who contributed to the poster session.

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

ESE Stress Less Campaign: a resounding success, valuable for all

Abstract
On Thursday 22nd June 2017, Earth Science and Engineering Graduate Society (Grad Soc) begun their Stress Less campaign, made possible by funding received from the Graduate School’s Research Community Fund. A recent Grad Soc survey had highlighted the number of PhD students within the department who felt that work-related stresses had a significant impact on their daily lives. This campaign aimed to foster discussion about such issues and provide activities that introduced coping techniques.

PhD “stress less” lunch
A sandwich lunch was set out informally on picnic blankets and was very well attended, drawing more than 30 PhD students, and providing an opportunity for all to voice concerns relating to any aspect of PhD life. One of the most positive aspects was the number of students present who had not previously attended any Grad Soc event. On the whole the mood was positive but concerns as to finance, demonstrating pay, the tidiness of the department and general organisational issues affecting welfare of students were raised. These issues have now been brought to the attention of staff and the head of department. Lunch also gave time for newer students to integrate into the departmental “social scene”, contributing to a peer support network.

Mindfulness
The mindfulness session though short was enjoyed by attendees. It also gave the opportunity to raise awareness of the regular mindfulness sessions run by the college.

Yoga
Maria provided an excellent introduction to yoga for stress relief. Attendees had varying degrees of experience from complete beginners to experienced yogis. Talking afterwards to those who went, the class was enjoyed and a few people are now considering taking Maria’s regular class at Ethos. A follow up email will go out to students providing details of this.

PhD Coffee
PhD coffee was well attended by around 25 students. Materials for known activities to reduce stress were provided, such as mindfulness adult colouring. It was hoped that by introducing students to these activities some might implement them into their routine as a way to provide stress relief. A comments box was also provided for students to anonymously voice any concerns they were currently having relating to their PhD. Comments were then processed by Grad Soc and referred to the head of department. As we have no common space for PhD students within the department, coffee enabled students a rare chance to talk freely of their concerns.

Massages
All of the massage sessions on the day were booked out, 18 students receiving a 10 minute hand and forearm or neck and shoulder massage each. The feedback from this was extremely positive!

The success of the day is also now to be published in the Departmental Newsletter raising awareness of student welfare and mental health.

Continuation of the Campaign
Within the department, Grad Soc have continued the Stress Less Campaign on a monthly basis by providing an afternoon PhD-only coffee session. During the summer months this has been extremely well attended and enjoyed. As a PhD-only event it provides a safe, friendly environment to voice concerns. We are all realising that stress and difficulties with work-life balance affect many people and there is a more open attitude to discussing this with peers among the PhD Students.

A word of Thanks
Grad Soc would very much like to thank the Graduate School for the funding they provided; without it this campaign would not have happened. Through the discussions facilitated by the Stress Less series, we have seen evidence of the classic statement “a problem shared is a problem halved”. It is refreshing to have a more open attitude to discussing problems that affect so many people, and we hope the mental health of the PhD students will improve as a result of this.

The Future of the Graduate Students’ Union – a Note From Your President

by Luke McCrone, GSU President

Getting Started…….

It’s been quite the ride so far. Since being elected into the role, it seems the Graduate Students’ Union has undergone quite the transformation, hopefully destined for something new and exciting. Thanks to the hard work of both th e outgoing and incoming committee, we’ve developed a new logo, promotional flyers, a website and more recently a strategy for our year ahead! And we are only getting started…

Yet I must be honest, it’s been quite the challenge. As a Constituent Union representing 7000 postgraduate students, our productivity has been limited by having only 3 members of our committee elected over the summer period: Paul and Alex, our two Vice Presidents, and I. Thank goodness, we now have the rest of our committee in post, ready to execute our plans for the year ahead.  We thank Imperial College Union and the Graduate School for their continued support in that respect.

Despite challenging circumstance, I’m realising more and more how much potential our postgraduate members truly have. My impression is that these are bright, talented individuals admitted from all corners of the globe, working day in day out to contribute to the ever-growing repository of knowledge at Imperial and beyond. The question which puzzles me is how we can truly bring together people with differing perspectives to make amazing things happen?

What does the GSU Stand For?

It was this very question which led me to believe what I felt the Graduate Students’ Union stands for. That for me was the breaking down of barriers, and it was the capture of this vision in a formal manner which ultimately led to the recent development of our strategy for the year ahead.

I’ve been at Imperial for 5 years now and I must be open and honest about how intense this place can be at times; that’s the inevitable reality of putting a population of driven, ambitious individuals under the same roof for a prolonged period! We may all have our own ambitions and plans, but there’s no excitement in hiding all that energy and creativity! I compel you to reflect on your life as a student so far and remember at which points in the past your best ideas have been sparked. For me, those moments have occurred in the presence of others, whether that’s a group of friends in a bar, or during a discussion with a supervisor guiding me through my work. There’s something quite special about collaboration, the merging of minds, the formation of ideas.

Get Involved and Meet Other Students

So how can we develop a culture which is more collaborative and perhaps a little different to institutions elsewhere? Well we must start by seeking comfort in leaving our disciplinary silos. We also need to recognise that difference is the root of innovation; whatever nationality, gender or culture, we all have something unique to offer, and it may just be that your offering is the missing piece to the jigsaw.

So, our efforts as GSU this year will be led by our aim to bring people together. We have an exciting series of events planned – one of which is centred around forming research connections, the other of which is related to enterprise and the final of which will entail multidisciplinary activity with industry members! I encourage you to watch that space and look out for our promotions…

Despite making some progress so far, we acknowledge that there is always room for growth and improvement as a GSU. We therefore invite you to share ideas and get in touch: contact us at gsu.president@imperial.ac.uk

Environmental and Sustainability Mixer

by Daniel Hdidouan, PhD student in the Centre for Environmental Policy

The second annual Environmental and Sustainability Mixer took place on Wednesday 27th of September. The mixer is a cross-departmental initiative, the aim of which is to encourage the postgraduate research student community working in environmental and sustainability research to get to know each other. It was a fantastic event which saw high turnout for the social; students enjoyed pizzas and drinks in the Physics common room on Level 8 of the Blackett Building.

Purpose

The event was devised because students in the past have found it difficult to find informal events for research students to build cross-departmental and cross-College relationships. As such, the event was funded by the Graduate School’s Research Community Fund.

From previous experience shared by the alumni, a College-wide neutral platform (i.e. funded by the Graduate School) with students from other departments was needed to facilitate interaction and foster collaboration at an earlier stage in our careers. A lot of work is done in the environment and sustainability at Imperial but often people don’t realise the wealth of the network until it’s too late.

Numbers

With over 45 registered attendees, and a turnout of 71% (32) we were able to welcome in the new academic year with some familiar and fresh faces to Imperial’s environmental and sustainability research area. The mixer was designed to encourage Imperial’s environmental and sustainability research community to get to know each other and increase awareness of the breadth of research undertaken in this field across all of Imperial’s departments. A total of 9 departments were represented across Imperial’s four faculties, including: the Centre for Environmental Policy, Physics, Mathematics, Business School, Earth Science and Engineering, Public School of Health, and Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Pie chart showing break down of registered attendees’ departments

Outcomes

This cohort building exercise introduced attendees to other departments, topics of research and new friends. We are in contact and are aiming to meet up again in the next few weeks. There is also an initiative to formalise an environmental and sustainability network here at imperial that was further floated at the mixer. We also have some leftovers which we plan to put towards another mixer in the coming weeks! If you would like further information regarding the mixer, or potentially organising your own cohort building activity and would like to learn from our experience, please get in touch: d.hdidouan15@imperial.ac.uk (Daniel Hdidouan).

ICL-TUM Global Fellows Programme 2017

by Seth Wilson, PhD Student, Mechanical Engineering

After the successful completion of the ICL-TUM Global Fellows’ Programme 2017, entitled Cities of the Future, I was fortunate enough to remain in Munich, Germany for a further three-weeks. During this time, I carried out a short research project within the Lehrstuhl für Nuckleartechnik (Chair for Nuclear Technology) at the Technische Universität München (TUM) under the supervision of Professor Macián-Juan.

Germany has decided to discontinue its use of nuclear energy and will have phased-out its remaining functioning nuclear power plants by the end of 2022. Without wanting to completely abandon nuclear, research within this field has become more general to processes and systems, such as to have a wider range of applications.

During my research internship, I worked with two best-estimate thermal-hydraulics systems codes: TRACE, developed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the United States; and ATHLET, developed by the Gesellschaft für Anlagen- und Reaktorsicherheit (GRS), Germany’s central expert organisation in the field of nuclear safety and radioactive waste management.

These computer codes are used to simulate typical pressurised-water (PWR) and boiling-water (BWR) nuclear reactors during normal operation; and more interestingly for the general analysis of abnormal transients and accident situations, in particular the Loss of Coolant Accidents (LOCA). Furthermore, ATHLET couples neutronics and nuclear reactor physics with thermal-hydraulic engineering for a coupled multi-physics analysis.

At the very best, computer codes provide good approximations; it is therefore necessary to quantify and rank any sources of uncertainty that may propagate through into the output. I performed such uncertainty and sensitivity analysis with SUSA, another piece of software developed by the GRS.

I am very grateful to have had this opportunity to collaborate with researchers from further afield. As a result, I now have a better appreciation for my own work at Imperial College. I have increased my network of engineers and researchers, as well as maintained old contacts; I was pleased to discover an old colleague of mine, from my school in Paris, was working on his PhD in the Nuclear Technology department at TUM.

ICL-TUM Global Fellows Programme 2017

By Firdous Ul Nazir, PhD Student, Electrical Engineering

I got a chance to participate in the ICL-TUM global fellows programme: Cities of the future, thanks to the Imperial Graduate school. This was a week long course involving 51 participants from 7 globally renowned institutions. The first day of the course was mainly aimed at acquainting the participants of the practical challenges and expected transformations in cities of the future which was aptly conveyed through presentations by experts of the field. In the remaining four days we were involved in a lot of group activities which culminated in a collaborative group project from each group. The groups involved students from different universities and diverse disciplines which helped us to improve our communication, team work, idea generation and collaborative skills. During the course of time the efficiency of each group improved drastically as the group supervisors were constantly helping us to overcome our mistakes in the previous tasks. We also had a guided visit to the Munich city which helped us to understand its digital transformation planning.

I completed my three week research visit in renewable and sustainable energy systems group which is under electrical and computer engineering department TUM, thanks to my host supervisor Prof. Thomas Hamacher. I got to know about the research activities in Prof. Hamacher’s group and had a chance to discuss with his students about their upcoming micro-grid lab in the department which helped me to have a better understanding of micro-grids. I was given the freedom to carry out my own PhD research during the research visit. This was a very unique experience and would certainly like to recommend the course to all the future aspirants.

Finally I feel highly grateful for being given this wonderful opportunity to participate in the global fellows workshop and undertake a three week research visit.