Tag: researchcommunity

My experience in developing an online Allied Health Professional (AHP) research and peer support community.

by Janet Deane, Research Assistant in the Department of Surgery and Cancer

On Thursday 18th October at the MSK LAB at Imperial College London, we started the development of a secure and moderated peer support Facebook Group for AHPs in academic research.

Natasha Wallace from Trilogy Consulting, an external expert in the creation of online professional platforms was invited to provide training.  At the training session, AHPs could discuss their needs, learn how to share knowledge using innovative technologies, and collectively help to determine the vision of the group.

AHPs (Physiotherapists, Radiographers, Occupational therapists and Speech therapists) are becoming increasingly involved in research that has the potential to change the quality of lives of patients with various health conditions.

As a result, more peer support is required by AHP students to support their transition from the clinical to an inter-professional, laboratory-based context at Imperial College.  AHP doctoral and research students work in a wide variety of roles, departments and locations so it is important we have a central online resource to build a support network and research community.

The Graduate School’s research community fund enabled us to begin the development of an online resource, to learn about how to brand and market a professional community, determining membership admission, curation and creation of content, online engagement and to learn about monitoring performance and growth.

This venture has been since supported by the Healthcare Professional Academic Group (HPAG) at Imperial College and the Council for Allied Health Professions Research (CAHPR), and this training marked the humble beginnings of a new type of digital resource.

With no previous experience in developing an online professional platform, I was unaware of the time this would take and the amount of honing that this would require. The support of fellow AHPs has been vital and valuable in this process. The ongoing success of this resource cannot be achieved by individuals working in isolation, and requires commitment and collaboration from AHP members as we learn how to support our community together.

I am extremely proud of what we have achieved so far and look forward to many students benefiting from this resource in the future.

 

 

British Isles Graduate Workshop: Singularities and symplectic topology

The second edition of the British Isles Graduate Workshop took place on Jersey Island between the 14th and the 20th July. The mission of the workshop was to bring together a group of around thirty international graduate students with experienced researchers, to participate in a five-day mathematically intense exploration of a focused topic in an area of current research. The informal environment and the joyful and collaborative atmosphere was the key of its success.

A challenging project

Three years ago, Andrea, one of the organisers of BIGW, was just returning to London from an exciting conference, and was sharing his enthusiasm for it. Listening to his stories, we were tantalized by the idea of designing our own workshop: it would have had a special focus on PhD students, encouraging exchanges and sharing of knowledge. Since we were looking for a venue far from distractions, but at the same time welcoming, regenerating, and suitable to host participants coming from all over the world, we chose to organize it on one of the British isles. The first meeting took place on the Isle of Wight in April 2017. After the first successful experience, we decided to repeat it on the island of Jersey. The organization was challenging but very instructive. In particular, we have always felt the encouragement and the support of the London School of Geometry and Number Theory, and of our affiliated institutions, Imperial College London and University College London.

An original format

A typical day on Jersey Island started with informal math discussion over breakfast and finished late by night with some participants still filling whiteboards with computations and drawings. We used to have four scheduled talks per day, the majority of which delivered by junior speakers, and evening discussion sessions. In the after lunch break many people took the opportunity to have a swim or explore the island.

All the participants had an active role in the workshop. Everybody was responsibility for the progress of the group during the week. Both young and senior participants were very kind, approachable and keen to interact or help.

In the British academic landscape, this workshop stands out for the unique focus on PhD students.

A remote venue

In the free time we had the opportunity to discover the beaches of Jersey all together, explore the cliff of the beautiful and sunny island and admire the impressive tide in the Channel. Our cosy venue was Durrell Hostel, in the kingdom of the celebrated conservationist Gerald Durrell. Free entrance to the zoo was included!

International participants

The workshop was attended by PhD students and members of the most renowned universities all over the world. The total number of participants was 32, including 2 organisers and 3 senior speakers. Among them, 13 attendees were UK based: 7 from the London School of Geometry and Number theory, 1 from London, 2 from Cambridge, and 3 from Oxford. The other 19 non-UK-based participants came from US (17), Portugal (1), and Russia (1).

We are particularly proud of the large participation of women to the workshop: the percentage of female participants reached the 47%, largely above the average.

Future

The long-term aim of the workshop is to create an international network of PhD students. Hopefully, the workshop helped to develop a common language and lay the basis of future collaborations. It was a unique opportunity to tie professional bounds with colleagues all around the world in a friendly and informal environment. We strongly believe that this warm atmosphere can enhance the exchange of ideas.

Comments of the participants

We received enthusiastic feedback from the attendees:

There was a lot of time for us to discuss (or take walks) and the atmosphere was very open to discussions.

The people were so friendly and fun! Everyone was just so cool. I already want a reunion!

The math was super-interesting. I’ve never been to a workshop which made me so much more interested in different flavours of math.

Very interesting topics, excellent organization.

Great atmosphere: easy to interact, discuss math, and make good friends.

Acknowledgement

We express our gratitude to the Research Community Fund and the Graduate School at Imperial College London for helping to support this initiative. We thank also our sponsors: the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Geometry and Number Theory, Foundation Compositio Mathematica, G-research, and the European Research Council (European Union’s Horizon 2020, research grant agreement No 682603).

Interdepartmental Laser Tag

 

The first Laser Tag event to connect PhD students from different departments, took place at the brand-new facility “Bunker 51” on Saturday 23rd of June. The aim of this initiative was to mix students with various research interests, to develop our research communities within Imperial and foster collaborations inter-departments.

This Laser Tag event, was an icebreaking way of encouraging PhD attendants to work together in a series of mini games played with guns which fired infrared beams. After the team building event, a picnic hangout with pizzas and drinks in Greenwich Park offered a more relaxed ambiance for students to get to know more about each other and their projects.

The whole day was a great success, with a high turnout of 22 PhDs from departments such as: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Bioengineering, Chemistry, Civil Engineering or Medicine.

Everyone had an amazing time, and were very grateful to meet other students and share their PhD experiences so far. They also liked the idea of building teamwork and social skills with new people in such a fun way. All of them were looking forward for the next interdepartmental activity.

Cross-CDT Trip 2019 & World Cup Dinner

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.

Here some impressions from our Journey

Cross-CDT World-Cup Dinner

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.

 

 

Our experience organising SciFun

Inception

A couple of us postgraduate students came together and decided that it will be a great idea to have a mini-conference-type event within the department that could foster learning and networking. There are immensely valuable resources available within the department, with subject matter experts and we thought it would be great to capitalise on that and get these experts to share their experiences in characterisation techniques with the postgraduates.

Event

Since the purpose of the event was to foster learning and networking, it was necessary to have a social event to it as well. Ultimately, we managed to secure 6 speakers to share on characterisation techniques. This was followed by a 5 minute PhD pitch competition opened to all PhD students. We felt that this was a good addition to the event as it allowed students to share their work instead of being a single-faceted event where students were just taking in information. Most of the talks were followed by lively Q&A which fostered learning.
We ended the event with the networking dinner which allowed for more in-depth conversations on topics that was shared during the talks as well as opportunities for further collaborations. More importantly, it was a good chance for people from different groups within the department to gather and get to know each other.

Conclusions

SciFun is a student-initiated event targeted at PhD students which leveraged on the resources within the department. We had a lot of fun planning the event and more importantly, many found the event useful for learning as well as intra-department networking. We are happy that the event was a success and it would not have been possible without the help of our speakers and the attendees. It was our pleasure that we could bring people together for an enjoyable Friday evening of learning and fun.

Eduardo, the winner of the PhD competition during his pitch, and him receiving the prize, a £20 amazon voucher!