Tag: medicine

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. 

Breakfast club: Making the most of your PhD experience

by Nora Schmit & Constanze Ciavarella, PhD students in the School of Public Health

The first School of Public Health breakfast club took place in the morning of Tuesday 26th March 2019 at St Mary’s campus. The student reps organised this initiative to bring together PhD students from 5 departments spread across St Mary’s, Charing Cross and White City campuses, to share their experiences around the theme “Making the most of your PhD” while enjoying a delicious breakfast buffet.

The event had a high turnout, with over 50 students from all stages of the PhD gathering in room G64. It started at 10am with tea, coffee and various breakfast options from Le Pain Quotidien, including waffles, pastries, baguettes and fruit. After everyone had taken a seat, 3 students from the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology gave short talks on extracurricular activities they had pursued during their PhD.

First, final-year PhD student Tom talked about the insights he gained during an internship at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. He also gave practical tips for students wanting to apply to the internship scheme and on managing the practical aspect of taking time out of the PhD. Andria, a second-year student, then presented an overview of her short-term work assisting the Ebola outbreak response team at the World Health Organization. She gave some details on the current Ebola epidemic and the tasks she had to complete during this position interspersed with beautiful pictures of Geneva. Finally, Nora shared her experience of the Global Fellows Programme at Tokyo Tech University organised by the Graduate School, which she had attended during the first year of her PhD. She highlighted her happy memories of the trip and encouraged participants interested in developing teamwork and communication skills to apply. All speakers agreed on the benefits of taking up these varied opportunities and expanding their experience beyond their research project, particularly with regards to skills and careers development, but also highlighted the difficulties they encountered in reconciling the activity with their PhD.

After the talks, everyone had the chance to ask questions or talk to the speakers in person. People helped themselves to more food and some stayed to mingle with the other students until 11.30am. Participants additionally had the opportunity to vote on future social activities to be organised by the PhD reps, with paintball, karaoke and a museum late visit coming out as favourites.

The first breakfast club was a great success and received positive feedback throughout; everyone was impressed by the food and participants said they appreciated the opportunity to get to know other students and getting inspiration and practical information to make the most of their PhD.

We would like to thank the Graduate School for funding this event and hope to organise more activities in the future to improve the postgraduate research community in the School of Public Health.

 

Infectious Diseases and Immunity “The Bench and Beyond” Career Talks and Summer Party!

By Grace Birch and Kristin Krohn Huse, PhD students in Infectious Diseases and Immunity

On Thursday June 28th, the postgraduate representatives for the Section of Infectious Diseases and Immunity hosted a series of talks on careers entitled “The Bench and Beyond” followed by a summer party for the entire section, to celebrate the arrival of summer and provide a more laidback opportunity to network between research groups.

After identifying a lack of speakers in careers outside of traditional bench science at other career sessions, speakers with connections to the section from a wide variety of careers were invited to attend. Some of the speakers had previously completed their PhDs or Post Docs in the section of Infectious Diseases and Immunity or currently work within the section. The talks were well attended, including not just students from our own section but also some from outside the department as we decided to advertise the talks to all Department of Medicine postgraduate students. Feedback from students was very positive, and one of the speakers even remarked that they had learned something!

Talks were kicked off by Dr Mick Jones, Reader in Molecular Medicine and the current section cohort leader for IDI, who highlighted how sometimes a research career doesn’t always go to plan but works out in the end. Following that, Dr Katherine Fox described her work as a Policy Officer at the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the challenges of consulting on science policies in the current post-Brexit environment. Dr Zoe Seager explained her role as the Vaccines Programme Officer at the Wellcome Trust and emphasised the importance of embracing and making opportunities for yourself. Dr Debra Smith then took us on the journey of how her career brought her to work as Senior IP and Commercial Research Manager at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust. Finally, Dr Stephanie Ascough, who did her PhD in the section and has now returned by way of The Gambia and Pirbright, wrapped up the talks by stressing how it is essential to choose a job which allows you to maintain and pursue your own personal goals and values.

Following the talks, the entire section of Infectious Diseases and Immunity was invited for drinks and nibbles provided by the Graduate School Research Community Fund. Everyone always appreciates a chance to chat away from the lab coats and computers, especially as it had been nearly seven months since the last time we had an opportunity to come together like this.

We think the event was incredibly successful, and thank the Graduate School for their support. Hopefully section events such as this will continue to be held in the future!

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!