Tag: researchcommunityfund

12th-15th September 2019 – Synthetic Biology Snowdonia Retreat

Successful early and late stage PhD assessment submissions mean only one thing… escape from the fast pace of University life is required. In mid-September, a dozen graduate students from the Centre of Synthetic Biology packed their bags and made their way to the beautiful and dramatic mountains of Snowdonia National Park in North Wales for a long weekend away from the city. The purpose of the trip was for the current graduate students to bond over some of the UK’s best hikes, while also spending some quality time with some of the 2019 master’s students before they leave Imperial to do their own thing, ensuring long lasting connections.

On the first day, they climbed the largest and most formidable mountain (in Wales), Snowdon. The unpredictable weather of the British Isles managed to hold out, and they all made it up, taking many stops along the way to absorb the magnificence of the Welsh outdoors. The day was finished off in one of the seemingly infinite number of awesome pubs Wales had to offer, to refuel and numb the aching legs.

(Top left) The hut on the north eastern edge of Snowdonia National Park. (Top middle) There were a lot of bugs in the bedrooms. Modern problems require modern solutions. (Top right) Hiking up the Pyg track to the top of Snowdon. (Bottom left) “Candid” photo opportunity overlooking llyn llydaw. (Bottom middle) Getting a quick group photo at the summit of Snowdon before the cloud came in. (Bottom right) Who?

On the second day, they made their way to the quaint village of Beddgelert, where one group took a peaceful walk through the valley, past waterfalls, and around Llyn Dinas. The other group took on the challenge of the Moel Hebog loop, where the majority of the conversation was predicting the incline of the slope (between heavy breaths). That evening, they headed back to the hut to cook up a feast and to play board games.

Before heading back to London life, they made one last trip to one of the most picturesque lakes in Snowdonia, Llyn Idwal. Although luck had run out on the weather, the mist that slowly drifted past only added to the enchantment of the lake.

(Top left) It wouldn’t be a trip to Wales without at least one dragon themed bench. This one was well and truly conquered. (Top middle) Scrambling up the steep slopes of Moel Hebog was especially challenging. (Top right) Summiting Moel yr Ogof. The clouds had all cleared and celebrations got out of control. (Bottom left) With low visibility it wasn’t obvious some paths led to a wet ending. (Bottom middle) Walking around the beautiful Llyn Idwal. (Bottom right) The result of 3 long days of hiking. Maybe another retreat is needed?

Overall, the trip was a great success. A fantastic bonding experience for the graduate students and a well needed refresher before heading into the next academic year. Thursday to Sunday turned out to be the ideal length of time to enjoy a variety of the walks Snowdonia has to offer. 12 people was also the perfect number of people in regard to transport (minibus), accommodation, eating out, and organising the day trips. The Synthetic Biology summer retreat will definitely be a new annual tradition!

Thank you to the Graduate School for agreeing to sponsor this event.

Key locations in Snowdonia National Park.

 

Lunchtime Yoga @ White City Campus

On the 22nd of May the first power yoga class for PG students took place at the Molecular Science Research Hub on the newly built White City Campus.

For the first Taster Session a small room was booked, because no one expected a huge demand. Instead nineteen people showed up to the first free yoga class of which quite a few did yoga for the first time!

Figure 1: Our first ever lesson had a great turnout for a tiny room.

At the beginning of the first yoga class the teacher asked everyone to introduce themselves and tell everyone what they are trying to get out of this class. Almost everyone was craving for 60 minutes a day during which they can forget about their stressful PhDs and relax their backs from sitting in front of a computer or standing at a lab bench all day. Our personal favorite answer was from a complete Newbie to yoga who said  “I want to like it, so that I want to come back next week!”

Our teacher, Barbara Durand, is a professional yoga teacher, usually teaching at the Lumi Power Yoga studio in Hammersmith. The Vinyasa flow type of yoga they teach @LumiPowerYoga is perfect for young adults. Most attendees were surprised of how dynamic this type of yoga is. A lot of people which hesitated joining at first saying ‘I’m not flexible enough for yoga’ overcame their fear and realised that it’s not about the others or being average, it’s about your own personal body and battle. Every posture in yoga has multiple options, so anyone can improve at whatever level they’re at. The teacher does a great job in incorporating this into the weekly practise, making it highly inclusive.

Figure 2: We enjoy sweating and stretching every Tuesday in the yoga side angle pose.

The number of participants has been continuously rising and we register around 25 sign-ups every week. This is also mirrored in the steadily growing number of members of our mailing list which is currently at 54. We even had to move to a new room for more space at Brickfields Hall around the corner. All postgraduate students based at White City Campus are welcome to join the free Yoga lessons and we even have a couple of staff members being regulars.

Figure 3: The IHUB on the new White City campus is the ideal location for a lunchtime Yoga session – with unlimited capacity!

Yoga has become an integral part of our weekly work routine. This one hour of lunchtime break a week has positively impacted our productivity and social coherence across hierarchies, different laboratories and research branches. We look forward to anyone joining us at any time. EVERY level is welcome.

Happy Yoga,

Julia & Léonie

 

Testimonials:

‘I’ve been to so many yoga classes before. They never actually explained how to transition from an upwards dog into a downward dog. It was so good.’

 “I was worried I wasn’t gonna get a sweat because everyone replied saying they wanted relaxation out of this class, but I’m so glad I did sweat. I was scared they would just make us lay down in Savasana for ages playing some old-fashioned Indian music, which doesn’t relax me at all. I enjoyed the relaxation today, it was the perfect length. Normally all I want to do is walk off, because it doesn’t work for me, but here it worked. I’m definitely going again next week.”

 “Highlight of my week.”

 “I know why I didn’t go to the gym this morning.” “Me too!”

 “It was quite fast paced compared to other yoga classes I had been to before. I really liked it. I got a sweat out of it. A little sweat, which I wanted, so it feels like exercise. The class went by really fast.”

 

For more information drop us a message: yogawhitecity@gmail.com

Or follow us on Instagram: @msrhyoga

Year 1 PhD student ESA rehearsal & social

With the help of funding from the Graduate School, we put on a seminar and social event for first year PhD students based at the St Mary’s campus. Given that most first year PhD students have their early stage assessments due in June and July, we wanted to create an event where we could share our research and improve our presentation skills in a relaxed and friendly environment. Additionally, we hoped that the event would help us get to know each other and to develop a supportive network of peers throughout our PhDs.

The first part of the event started in the afternoon and consisted of a seminar hosted by Professor Wendy Barclay. All first year students and their supervisors were invited to attend, resulting in a small and friendly group of roughly 20 people. Each student gave a 10-minute talk followed by 5 minutes of questions. Topics ranging from Bioinformatics, diagnostic tools, mechanisms of viral infection and vaccines were covered, stimulating some interesting questions and discussions. Understandably, we were all nervous, however the talks were all fantastic and we found it a very positive experience. It helped everyone to gain confidence in their presenting abilities, which will undoubtedly help our ESAs.

The afternoon seminar was followed by a social event in the evening to which all staff and postgraduates at the campus were invited. The Graduate School funding helped to buy plenty of pizza from Dominos and a selection of drinks and nibbles, which went down well with everyone attending. Everybody mixed, met new people, and chatted around food and drinks; it was an excellent opportunity to meet other people who work within the building, which doesn’t happen often at St Mary’s.

Overall, the event was a big success. As first year PhD students, this was the first time we had all come together and properly talked to the people we had previously just occasionally passed by around the building. The presentations were a great opportunity to share our achievements so far and get a feel for our upcoming ESAs. It is also reassuring to know that we now have a base upon which to build friendships and the supportive relationships that will help us through the PhD experience together. Once the nerves of the presentations were over, it was great to relax and chat over pizza and beer. We are also glad that we extended the social event to all people at St Mary’s: the network of high-security corridors make it difficult to mix on a daily basis, and events like this are a great way to build collaborative relationships between the different sections and groups here.

Thanks to the Graduate School for providing the funding to make such an event possible.

Also, thanks to Wendy Barclay for coming up with the idea for the event and Magda Homa for helping with the organisation.

Summer Derby Day Party

There are many pitfalls that must be navigated as you work towards earning a PhD: one of the biggest is isolation. By its very nature, a PhD requires you to be researching something new and unique and when you’re at your desk trying to work out why the data looks weird, because it always looks weird, it can be easy to forget you’re not alone. That’s why events like the PhD Summer Party are so important. Thanks to the generosity of the Graduate School and the Bioengineering Department, every year, we’re afforded the opportunity to relax, make new friends outside of the lab, and live the student dream of free food and drink. This year was no different.

After a solid week of rain, the heavens cleared on the last Thursday as if to bless the oncoming merriment of the evening. We’re fortunate in Bioengineering to have very talented staff who have joined together to form the Gastric Band and, with the help of some volunteers, they relocated and set up in on the 8th floor of the Blackett Building complete with terrace. After some, shall we say, efficient preparations, the room was ready for the party to begin promptly at 5:30pm. By 5:45, the food was gone; at least that’s how I remember it. It wasn’t long before the room was full of clusters of people chatting, their plates laden with delicious BBQ all being washed down with a selection of delicious drinks. The warm weather meant we could venture out on to the terrace and look over the city as the sun slowly set over the capital. With everyone fed and watered, the band took centre stage and the party began in earnest.

The band astounded with renditions with their covers of rock classics, like “Johnny Be Good”, to pop hits, like Cee-lo Green’s “Forget You”, and everything in between. Though reluctant at first, 6:30pm is a bit early to boogie, it wasn’t long before the dancefloor was established and all manner of shapes were being thrown. Each member of the band shone with spectacular solos but the mellifluous voices of Kemi Aofolaju and Melanie Albright really got people cheering. Even Professor Bull got on the stage and had us bopping along to “Hit the Road Jack”. If you ever get a chance, see the Gastric Band: I guarantee you will not regret it.

9pm came, and with it the end of our booking. The band packed up, the reps and volunteers cleaned up, and my colleagues grabbed their “one for the road” and made their way to the Union Bar to continue the festivities. It would be easy to see the Summer party as just a time to blow off some steam and a waste of money for various departments but I believe it plays a vital role in making the PhD experience just that bit easier and more enjoyable. Whether it’s new friendships that you help you expand your research and build your career or just a friendly face to say hi to by the coffee machine. Every year the party gives us the opportunity to hop over the pitfall of isolation all to the tune of Toto’s “Hold the Line”. If you ask me, that’s worth every penny.

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.

Bounce Ping Pong Intersectional Social 2019

With the Christmas break a distant memory and work-weary lab members itching for a break, re-energisation of the work place was desperately in order. And how better to achieve this than with ping pong, pizza and (substantial quantities of) alcohol? Generous funding was granted from the Research Community Fund, allowing PhD students and early career post-docs from the Section of Investigative Medicine and Section of Cell Biology and Functional Genomics to attend an inter-lab social at Bounce Ping Pong on 12th April 2019. Due to popular demand, a round robin competition was held across the two hired tables, with members from different sections paired into doubles teams. Play ensued with fierce competition, and winners emerged from both sections!

Jamie Frampton, a first year PhD student and a winner of the competition emphasised how much he enjoyed the event. He referred to his team’s win as “legendary” and said that “it was great meeting new people with similar scientific interests over a drink while smashing a few ping pong balls. Who’d have thought that ping pong and scientific networking were such compatible activities?”

Rebecca Cheung, a second year PhD student, expressed her gratitude to the Graduate School for facilitating the event. She enquired as to how to apply for funding, stating that “events such as these are so important in raising morale and strengthening lab friendships. And thinking about it, this was probably the most fun I’ve had whilst still being able to talk about my research!”

Completing a PhD is testing even at the best of times. Events such as these are therefore crucial in fostering a supportive and friendly lab environment, and so we would sincerely like to thank the Graduate School for making it possible. As people came together over food and drink, with laughs and time to reflect on current work, we headed into the Easter break with continued dreams of research success.

Yateen Patel and Maria Lucey, Section of Investigative Medicine

Cross-CDT PhDs @ Escape Room

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.

Bringing Together Imperial’s and Britain’s Energy System Community

Britain is at the forefront of energy system transformation. In 2018, 53% of electricity consumed came from low-carbon generators, up from 25% in 2009. As a result, carbon intensity halved from nearly 500 to 217 gCO2/MWh (Electric Insights). However, as an island with limited interconnection to its neighbours, the stakes are particularly high to achieve further reductions down to 100 gco2/MWh by 2030 (Fifth Carbon Budget).

At the same time, me and fellow PhD students miss the exchange amongst us as well as with other academic, industry and policy experts on energy system transformation. What is missing is a closeknit energy system community that can easily discuss transformation pathways. Although individually, research, business and policy-making in energy, is world-leading, the community is siloed. In addition, there is no forum within Imperial where students working in this field can easily exchange information and discuss.

The missing link is a platform that offers a direct (!) communication channel between students and experts of all sectors and brings them together to openly discuss ongoing work. That’s why I set up Power Swarm.

Power Swarm is an open, free network of energy system transformation experts across academia, industry and policy. It is not a single event, but rather has two key components:

  1. E-mail list: Every Power Swarmer can write to this list to advertise jobs, papers, conferences, etc., and ask questions related to energy system transformation. The purpose is to leverage swarm intelligence for better information exchange and more efficient problem-solving. When I e-mailed the group about recent reports on the amount of storage required in future energy system scenarios, I received more than 15 reports I hadn’t been aware of. That’s my PhD literature review sorted!
  1. Workshops: For a different topic each month, academic, industry and policy experts speak about their ongoing work in this area. Two hours with five presentations of ten minutes ensure a concise format that allows for real, content-based, cross-sectoral discussions. No need for shiny result slides, rather a discussion of current roadblocks. The workshops take place from 5-7pm and are usually attended by 20-30 people working in the particular field. Past meetings were on ‘Modelling Renewables’, ‘Value of Storage’, ‘Energy Trading’ and ‘Hydrogen’. My roadblock was how to quantify the value of energy storage and the advice from experts of Pivot Power, Aurora, RenewablesUK, and others came in very handy.

Last week’s workshop (21st February) was already our fourth one and focussed on the future role of ‘Hydrogen’ in the UK. 20 to 30 attendees (MScs, PhDs, researchers, NGOs, industry), discussed with speakers from academia (Imperial, UCL), consulting (Element Energy, E4Tech), industry (ITM Power) and policy (BEIS) about the current roadblocks to decarbonising energy, transport, heat and industry with hydrogen. The event was followed by drinks at Eastside where students could network with professionals and continue the discussion.

Power Swarm thereby supports Imperial’s research network and fosters exchange of research insights on energy across departments, connects Imperial’s research community to the wider academic and (most importantly) industry and policy community working on energy, and establishes a forum for students to network among each other, with the Imperial community, and with industry and policy experts.

Power Swarm has already more than 200 members in the energy sector. If you think you could benefit from the network, join!

We would like to extend our thanks to the Graduate School for supporting this Research Community Fund activity.

The first Power Swarm workshop on Modelling Renewables on 18th October 2018.
The fourth Power Swarm workshop on Hydrogen on 21st February 2019.

Making sustainability tangible: experiences from a workshop for postgraduate students

The sustainability workshop was organised by PhD student Vasiliki Kioupi of the Centre for Environmental Policy (CEP) on November 13 2018. It was an opportunity for postgraduate students from different departments of Imperial College London and other Universities to participate in two sessions related to materials and circular economy and assessment of the sustainability of a proposed technology in the context of the problem-solving approach. Moreover, the aim was for the participants to develop skills related to collaboration, systems and strategic thinking.

Twenty PhD students from CEP and Design Engineering Departments as well as a CEP Teaching Fellow and a post-graduate student from Queen Mary University joined the workshop. The event also featured two facilitators for delivering the two sessions; Katherine Whalen from Lund University and Tatiana Vakhitova from Granta Design.

The first session introduced participants to a serious game (In the loop) where they had to work in teams of two and assume the roles of product manufacturing companies making decisions in a changing economic, political and social system. During the reflection session after the game there were lively discussions about elements of competition that surprised the participants, how sustainability is approached, how short and long term strategies affect the course of the game, economic and environmental regulations that should be applied and social issues that emerge from the game. Finally, they came up with suggestions for companies and policy makers in the materials and product manufacturing sector. A very interesting element of the first session was the high degree of participant engagement during the game.

The second session introduced participants to the active learning toolkit “sustainable development”, which is a set of steps that can be used to assess the sustainability of a proposed technology. The case study used was about electric vehicles (EV) and sustainability was assessed on the basis of three capitals: natural, manufactured and social using back-casting, stakeholder analysis, data collection on EV life cycle: CO2 emissions, materials and energy and EU regulations using CES Edupack (software available to ICL students of specific departments via the ICT shop). During the reflection session the participants had the opportunity to discuss not only how this process could be potentially useful for their research or teaching about sustainability, but also the importance of systems thinking in decision-making and interdisciplinary collaboration in addressing sustainability challenges.

Overall, the workshop gave the opportunity to participants to discuss about what sustainability means to them, interact in teams, learn about new concepts, further develop some skills and think about limitations of policy-making as well as suggestions for a more holistic view of sustainability. As for the organiser, it was an important opportunity to develop organisation, collaboration and management skills and use the feedback generated to improve the participant experience and learning outcomes of future workshops.

The workshop was made possible through the generous support of the Graduate School who provided funding and guidance.

Theory Group Student Seminars: Sharing Our PhD ‘Wisdom’

One of the most important skills of any physicist, second only to the ability to do research itself, is to communicate both the results and the methods of that research to a variety of audiences: students, peers, senior researchers, and to a lesser extent, the general public. All of these groups require their own unique approach, and it is to the first two that the student seminars in the theoretical physics department at Imperial are aimed. The speakers are PhD students, the audience consists of PhD and MSc students in comparable proportions. This is a pedagogical experience for all involved, albeit in different ways.

Firstly, the speaker. Choosing a subject for a talk is a nontrivial task in itself. The choice might be, roughly, between the day to day research of the speaker, maybe an upcoming paper, and a broader, less directly related topic, with which the speaker had to familiarise themselves in order to perform their research, not having learnt about it in class. Sometimes, these are useful tools; sometimes, these are topics which are interesting in and of themselves. Whichever subject is chosen, having to talk about this to an audience is an excellent self check – have I truly understood what I am talking about? What is the broader picture here, what is the forest behind the trees and leaves of equations? A variety of wise human have said, in more or less these words, that one has not truly understood that which one cannot explain to a computer, or an undergraduate. Since both of these would take considerable amounts of time, postgraduate students will have to suffice.

Giving a talk is a skill which is valuable both to future academics as well as those who go on to work in what is known with varying degrees of derision as “real life”. How to be engaging, how to be clear, how to estimate the level of knowledge of the audience, adapt the talk if that estimate proves to be inadequate. Choosing suitable visualization tools: the chalk vs. the powerpoint!

Secondly, the audience. It is a rough awakening to go to a talk for the first time. However complicated a lecture seemed to be, the knowledge the professor assumed you to have was always knowledge that you knew you should hypothetically have. It is an art in itself to not be discouraged and stop listening the second one does not understand something. A good speaker will usually try to give you “the gist of it”, and it is possible to understand a number of things without understanding anywhere near all the detail. It is an excellent opportunity for MSc students to be given the chance to listen to a talk that is less complicated than a full fledged conference talk, but still more complicated than any seminar talk they would have previously come across.

The other PhD students might learn some of the actual material which is being presented, as well as give some valuable feedback (“no, you may not assume everybody knows what diffeomorphism invariance is”, “no, don’t print black on a red background on your slides”) .

Finally, it is a well known fact that students are being underpaid and hence underfed, and therefore free pizza provides a most useful tool to lure the starving students in, as well as feed them. Bon appetit!

We would like to extend our thanks to the Graduate School’s Research Community Fund for sponsoring this event.