Tag: researchcommunityfund

Football at the Molecular Science Research Hub

5-aside football at Imperial’s new White City Campus takes place very Wednesday lunch time between 12 and 1pm at PlayFootball Shepherds Bush, just A 5-minute walk away. The first event took place on the 7th November and will continue for 10 weeks. The aim of this event was to facilitate activity and departmental communication between staff, PhD students and masters students across all floors of the new Molecular Sciences Research Hub.

This summer, the Chemistry department was the first to move to the new White City Campus. The new building was designed to foster a sense of communication within the department and as the campus is still in development, there are currently little or no social areas, activity / sports spaces. With help from the graduate school and a local company, PlayFootball Shepherds Bush, we were able to negotiate 2 discounted 5-aside football pitches to provide fun, competitive and free exercise.

The turnout has been fantastic with over 70 people on the mailing list, all wanting to play. Players have come from a range of research groups from various sizes and a strong sense of community and appreciation for the project has been felt. As of this blog, 2 weeks of football have been played and we have been lucky enough to have had some great weather. Each session we have had 4 randomly picked teams with 2 games on each pitch lasting 30 minutes, winners playing winners and losers playing losers. The randomly picked teams have bonded a range of department members together from young MSci students to academic members of staff, both male and female. After the games, MSRHs new showers have also truly been put to the test…

At the end of the 10 weeks, we will have an awards ceremony congratulating all players for their effort, networking, and improved fitness and football skills. Due to the project’s initial success, we are considering alternative funding options for the future and would not have been able to start this project without the help of the Graduate School.

5 aside football at MSRH is open to all members of Imperial College London and welcomes all skill levels. Please email r.strutt17@ic.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list. 

Members of MSRH football, Rob Strutt and Mohit Devgan, organisers, in the centre (wearing trousers!). Advert distributed on screens around department.

Cross-CDT Ice Skating Event

by Martin Prießner, PhD student in the Department of Chemistry

On Tuesday the 11th of December the first event of this year’s Cross-CDT event series took place. The Cross-CDT event series aims to strengthen the already established friendships and form new ones between CDT students of different disciplines across the different cohort years. By organising meetings and fun activities with an informal character, the participating students get the opportunity to exchange their PhD experiences and professional and private matters. This enables them to form long-lasting friendships which will hopefully surpass their PhD studies.

On this winter-like evening on the 11th of December a total of 18 CDT students from 4 different CDT programs across two cohort years gathered together in front of the library at Imperial College London. Since not everyone knew everyone from the group, we briefly introduced each other and spoke a bit about how we found out about this event. In these conversations some of us found out that through the well-connected network within the CDT programs, we had already quite a few friends in common. After everyone arrived, we started walking to the ice rink at the Natural History Museum and got ready to demonstrate our skills on the ice!

Since there were some participants from countries in which the climate is naturally too warm to form ice, it was a first-time experience for them. With some of the more ‘advanced’ skaters helping those less able, everyone finally managed to get comfortable on the ice and most of us gathered at the Christmas tree in the centre of the ice rink for a nice group picture.

After roughly one hour we finished ice skating and rewarded ourselves with a drink at the bar, where we continued to exchange our experiences of the CDT program and the opportunities afforded to us as part of this cohort, e.g. helping organise the festival of science, which some members of the group had done the year before.

Following the skating, some of the group decided to go to the Bio-Eng-Christmas party in the Royal School of Mines to continue the evening!

To summarise this first Cross-CDT event was a very successful gathering of CDT-PhD students across different CDT years. We had a great time ice skating, celebrating and exchanging our experience of the PhD so far.

Thank you to the Graduate School of Imperial College London, for the financial support to ensure this cohort building activity could take place.

CEP Ultimate Team Building Experience

In search of an activity to build bonds and healthy competition between the PhD cohort at the CEP, we found the Ultimate Team Building Experience as the best option. It offered a novel way to explore the City of London helping our first year students to get a taste of what this city has to offer whilst getting to know their peers in an unconventional way. Following up the activity with a lunch discussion helped the students to get familiarized with other research topics and get a sense of the wide variety of topics our department holds. We would definitely recommend this activity to other departments and would love to turn this into an every-year activity.

Our day started at 9:00am at the Escape Entertainment offices (ldn.escape-entertainment.com) where we were split into four teams of four people. This were chosen in a way that would promote teams with members of different research areas. We were given instructions on the outdoor game and a tablet with GPS and the riddles to solve, in increasing difficulty levels. We had the good fortune of having the perfect weather for the activity, and we managed to visit iconic places such as Saint Paul’s Cathedral, The Royal Exchange, and the Guildhall art gallery. Even, one of our groups got a taste of the international jet-set scene and spotted Angelina Jolie!… he couldn’t help himself and bragged about it for a week! The entire activity culminated with a lunch the day after where we had time to talk about how this activity had helped bringing a sense of community and to share the different research topics everyone is involved in.

Overall the activity was a big success. Everyone enjoyed it and said that got more out of it than they expected. As part of the discussion during lunch, some ideas on how to improve came up, such as:

  • Attendance rates could improve. Although at the end we had close to 20 participants,these were the ones that are normally very much involved in departmental activities. In future editions, a bigger effort could be done to promote the event in a way that appeals to those less interested.
  • The activity had to be split in two days mainly because of other research commitments. In the future, supervisors could be more flexible and even encourage their entire teams to take part.

Finally, we would like to thank the Graduate School for providing sponsorship for this event via the Research Community Fund.

Strengthening links among Brazilian academics at Imperial

by Lorena Fernanda dos Santos de Souza, PhD student in the Department of Chemical Engineering

We are the Student Committee of the Imperial College Brazil Forum, and on June 20th (Wednesday) we organized a happy hour to promote the Brazilian culture and foster networking among Brazilian students and international members of the Forum. In a ‘Festa Junina’ themed event, we gathered 26 people in a cross-department get together in the authentic Brazilian restaurant ‘Made in Brasil’, in Camden Town. In Brazil, June is the month to commemorate St John’s day with a “Festa Junina”, the second most important popular celebration in the Brazilian culture.

Apart from celebrating our culture, the main aim of this happy hour was to strengthen the links among Brazilian research students and research students involved or interested in Brazilian issues. Despite being based in the same departments, and sometimes even in the same floor, many Brazilian students/staff do not know each other. New opportunities for collaborations could come, but due to poor networking, it does not happen. This Graduate School-funded event gave new students and postdocs the chance to meet each other and interact with senior members of the Forum. The president of the IC Brazil Forum, Dr Vania Braga, took part in the happy hour, which was particularly important to present initiatives of the Forum to potential new members, and to share our experiences at Imperial.

The feedback we received from those who came along was extremely positive. The participants mainly appreciated the opportunity to meet and network in a friendly environment with Brazilians students/staff and researchers interested in Brazilian issues. They also suggested to have more get-togethers similar to this one, for example every 2/3 months. We believe the event provided the first step to create a more integrated community at Imperial and, hopefully, collaboration among different areas in order to develop interdisciplinary researches. And for that, we are extremely satisfied. We are grateful to the Graduate School for providing funding to the ‘Festa Junina’. If you are interested on any tips on how to organize an event to integrate students/staff, feel free to contact us (l.dos-santos-de-souza14@imperial.ac.uk).

 

Data and Algorithms: Good or bad? Spoiler alert: It’s more complicated than that!

By Victor Pedrosa, PhD student representative

Few things are more effective in motivating PhD students and researchers to take a break from their ‘Nobel Prize-winning’ research than pizza, drinks and the promise of an interesting
talk.

The Bioengineering PhD student representatives organised a talk on data ethics on Friday 9th of March. The topic was widely popular and the event was well-attended. There were some lively discussions over pizza and drinks in room 301.C at the Royal School of Mines Building.

Is data science intrinsically ethically good?

People mingled before the start of the talk, to get the food distraction out of the way, then Dr. Stefania Garasto started her talk titled “Data and algorithms: good or bad? Spoiler
alert: It is more complicated than that.”

She posed the question on whether data science is intrinsically ethically good and her presentation went on to show that algorithms are not ethically neutral because the values
and biases of their designers are reflected in the code. For example, Google shows high-paying job ads preferentially to men and ads with the word “arrest” are more likely to
appear when searching black-sounding names.

There are ethical concerns for current data practices. These practices beg such questions as: Do people have real control over their data? How can bias in the data be corrected? Who is responsible for the ethical failure of an algorithm? And these questions are hard to answer.

Stef presented the controversy over a Facebook case study wherein Facebook manipulated its users’ emotions without their knowledge by influencing their news feeds.
Many in the audience had not heard of this case and no one supported the ethics of this practice.

Stef went on to discuss how ethical data practices might be ensured. One is by law, for example, the GDPR principles. However, people pointed out that this could be restrictive
in data mining and that it might not cover everything, and it would at least be valid for everyone. Another option is to develop a sort of data code of conduct. Yet it was also
argued that this would be hard to enforce and this may vary from one organization to another.

Discussion continued with more pizza and drinks, and people shared with one another whether they were on social media or not and what their privacy settings were.

This event provided a good opportunity for the research students to get to know one another. There was good feedback from both students and other researcher guests about how the talk was a
good reminder to be vigilant about exercising control over our data.

We want to thank the Graduate School for funding this event and helping Bioengineering become a friendly research community.

Workshop on Advanced Topics in Complex Networks

A large amount of the research carried out at Imperial College is highly interdisciplinary in nature. The field of Network science is no exception to this. “Network scientists” study the behaviour of complex interconnected systems which are often represented mathematically by graphs or complex networks. Examples of these systems include: social networks, transportation networks, such as the London Underground, and even the vast network of neurons in our own brains. The disadvantage of working in such a multidisciplinary field is that individuals performing similar research can often become scattered across different departments in the college without any idea that others working on similar issues exist! Imperial College’s Networks Networking group was created as a way of bringing together those working on graph theory, complex networks and related subjects in different departments.

On Wednesday the 23rd of May Imperial College’s Networks Networking group held a workshop entitled Advanced Topics in Complex Networks which was funded and supported by Imperial College Graduate School’s research community fund . The aim of the event was twofold. Firstly, it was an opportunity for PhD students and early career researchers to gain some insight into the “state of the art” mathematical tools being employed by researchers in the area. Secondly, it was to provide a networking opportunity for those in the field. The event was attended by roughly 3040 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers from Imperial College working on a variety of topics. Attendees came from a range of departments including Ecology (Silwood park campus), Physics, Mathematics and even Economics meaning that the event was truly interdisciplinary.

Imperial College’s mathematics department who are both active researchers in the field of graphs and complex networks. Professor Barahona spoke about “highdimensional
data, graph embeddings and multiscale community detection” while Dr Colijn gave a talk entitled “Comparing tree with new metrics and features: applications in evolution and infectious
disease.” Both talks explored ideas that related to the analysis of large graph data sets and also gave insight into how techniques from machine learning are beginning to creep into
network science as well. The talks were followed by a break for lunch which provided an opportunity for the attendees to network with researchers and discuss any questions raised
in more detail.

The first talk of the afternoon was given by Professor Reimer Kühn, a Professor in mathematics at King’s College London. His talk entitled “Spectra of Random Stochastic
Matrices and Relaxation in Complex Networks” gave details of the mathematical machinery which can employed of study graph spectra. This is an important topic in applied network
science where researchers are often interested in dynamical processes unfolding on graphs. These may include: the spread of disease, models of opinion formation or perhaps the
synchronization of stations in power grids. The final talk of the day was from Dr Cornelia Metzig, a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College who gave a talk concerning her recent
research on dynamic network models. This provided an opportunity to learn about the type of questions that practicing researchers in network science are trying to answer.

In future the Networks Networking group intends to organise more events for the benefit of researchers at Imperial working in network science and graph theory. These meeting will
allow individuals working in the area to keep up to date with the latest research and potentially to foster collaboration.

St. Mary’s Summer Party

St. Mary’s Campus does not really have a common room where students from different research groups get to know each other. Trying to break down the barrier, there was a Christmas party organised for all students working in the Medical School Building. Based on the huge success and numerous thank yous for organising this party, we decided to put together another party. A summer party this time, with the presence of the British summer drink of choice: Pimm’s with fresh fruit.

Besides Pimm’s, we provided prosecco, two kinds of beer, non-alcoholic bubbles and lots of water thanks to the Graduate School Cohort Building Fund, who sponsored this event. Because of the high temperatures, everything was kept cool with ice and people could enjoyed a cold beer, refreshing prosecco or the very popular Pimm’s. At 5 pm on Tuesday 22nd of May 2018, everything was ready to receive guests in the Committee room on the ground floor of the Medical Building at St. Mary’s Campus. Drinks were cold, some nibbles were on the tables and Bill Nye the Science Guy started explaining science on screen.

Within 5 minutes the first people showed up to start celebrating summer and looking for those people they talked to last time. Several people thanked us for organising even before they got their drinks. By starting at 5 pm, we managed to catch the people with families before they went home and we also got people that work late by having the party still going at 7 pm. People from the School of Public Health, Virology, Respiratory Medicine, Infectious Diseases and Paediatrics all showed up. Master students joined the party as well and could casually ask those questions about PhDs they did not want to ask in the lab.

At 8.30 pm it was time to start cleaning up and everyone that was still hanging around helped out by throwing out trash, collecting glasses and bottles, and cleaning the tables. Within 15 minutes, all signs of a party were gone. I’m already looking forward to the next one!

MetID workshop

By Erika Dorado and Kiana West, STRATiGRAD PhD programme, Department of Surgery and Cancer

A workshop focused on the identification of metabolites was organised by the STRATiGRAD PhD programme in collaboration with the Centre for Metabolomics and Bioanalysis (CEMBIO). The MetID workshop took place between 12th and 15th June 2018, in Madrid.

MetID workshop participants

The MetID workshop started with oral presentations given by PhD students from both Imperial and CEMBIO. The PhD students had the opportunity to present their research projects in seven minutes to an audience composed of recognised researchers in this field. We had the opportunity to practice our presentation skills and share our research experience by providing concise information about our PhD projects. On the second day, the workshop started with an introduction by the director of CEMBIO, Dr. Coral Barbas. During the second and third days we attended lectures given by researchers from CEMBIO about fragmentation rules and mechanisms (Dr. Ana Gradillas), data curation (Dr. Javier Ruperez), as well as theory-practical lectures about annotation on MS and MS/MS level (Dr. Joanna Godzien). In addition, Dr. Joram Posma from Imperial presented two lectures about statistical experimental design, bias and confounding, as well as MetaboNetworks and graph theory.

Dr. Coral Barbas from CEMBIO giving an introduction to the workshop

On the third day, after finishing the lectures, we attended an exhibition on extended reality space offered by the Telefonica foundation from Madrid. We had the opportunity to experience different realities such as augmented, mixed and virtual reality. After this interesting activity, we enjoyed some sightseeing in the centre of Madrid on our way to have dinner together. During these activities the students from both universities had the opportunity to do some valuable networking.

On the final day, we visited the laboratories at CEMBIO. Dr. Antonia Garcia gave us a tour and showed us all the equipment in their laboratories, including liquid chromatography and mass spectrometers. The final day was concluded with a contest about metabolite identification to allow the students to apply all the knowledge acquired during this MetID workshop. Groups composed of students from Imperial and CEMBIO were organised randomly by Dr. Godzien, each group had the great opportunity to apply what we had learned about annotation on MS and MS/MS level by identifying 12 different metabolites. This contest allowed us to apply our communication and team work skills. The group that won the contest was composed of Vincen Wu and Erika Dorado from Imperial and Cecilia Barbas from CEMBIO.

Visiting the laboratories at CEMBIO
Dr. Isabel Garcia from Imperial, Dr. Coral Barbas from CEMBIO, and the winners of the contest: Cecilia Barbas, Erika Dorado and Vincen Wu

We want to thank the Graduate School for providing generous funding jointly with the STRATiGRAD PhD programme to carry out this workshop. We want to thank Dr. Isabel Garcia (coordinator of the STRATiGRAD PhD programme), all PhD students and researchers from Imperial and CEMBIO for all their effort organising and participating in this workshop. This workshop not only encouraged critical and independent scientific discussion on metabolite identification, but also showed us the importance of networking and scientific collaboration at an international level.

MRC-LMS PhD Workshop & Careers Forum at the Wellcome Collection, Euston Square

The second annual Medical Research Council (MRC) London Institute of Medical Sciences (LMS) PhD Student Retreat took place on Friday 25 May 2018. Held at the iconic Wellcome Collection in Euston Square, this event offered PhD students from all year groups the chance to engage and socialise with students from outside of their immediate research section.

Building on the success of the inaugural 2017 retreat held at Kew Gardens, this year’s event had a renewed focus on ‘Career Development and Networking’; prompting students to start considering what future avenues they may wish to explore upon completion of their PhD studies.

In this vein, the day began with a Networking Workshop delivered by Katie Dallison from the Imperial Careers Service, which provides students with free help and advice regarding career advancement, like CV checks and interview preparation. Katie highlighted the importance of making connections in all types of professional events, and shared tips to reduce pre-networking anxiety. During the workshop, students also had the opportunity to practice and refine their “elevator pitches”, get further ideas of recruitment processes, and recognise uses and downfalls of social media.

The students had the ability to use these newly acquired skills in the PhD student poster presentations, facilitating discussion based on current research that PhD students are carrying out at the LMS. The topics ranged from patient-derived neurons to study Down syndrome, to 3D genome architecture and gene regulation, to the evolution of transposable elements. Particularly outstanding posters were acknowledged by the Poster Awards, where this year, the first place was awarded to Helen Paterson for her poster entitled ‘The role of splicing factors in metabolic health and disease’, followed in close succession by Toni Beltran and Holly Simpson Ragdale, in 2nd and 3rd place respectively.

This also gave time for students to visit the vast collection of medical based artefacts from all over the world, collected at the Wellcome Collection. Especially noteworthy in the collection, is the presence of all volumes of the printed version of the first sequenced human genome.

The unanimous highlight of the day however, was an afternoon careers panel which brought together a unique collection of individuals who have gone on to follow a range of post-PhD career paths. The panellists represented diverse fields, including the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, scientific editing, management consulting and patent law industries. Chaired by our own Social Representative, Matt Newton, the panel discussion allowed the speakers to share with us industry-specific insights, whilst also being open to discuss the factors that helped shape and influence their decisions at key moments of their respective careers.  We would like to send a huge thank you to the following individuals for sharing their time and knowledge with us all!

Following the panel, the students received a talk from the day’s keynote speaker, Professor Steve Jackson, who is currently a senior group leader at The Gurdon Institute (University of Cambridge), and fellow of the Royal Society. His talk entitled “Cellular responses to DNA damage: mechanistic insights and applications in cancer therapy” illuminated how basic molecular understanding of cellular processes can be translated into clinical applications, and how he was able to follow the success journey of a drug from the lab bench to the patients in clinic.

The day culminated with a networking reception, where students had the opportunity to continue discussions with panelists and speakers from throughout the day. All in all the day was a triumph for the LMS Student Committee, who put together this event, and we very much look forward to the 2019 Student Retreat!

Finally we would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge generous funding from both the Imperial College Graduate School and Medical Research Council.

Flowers Building Wine and Cheese Party, Jan 2018

The Flowers Building Wine and Cheese Party was hosted on the 11th January by the CMBI Postgraduate Student Committee (CPG) and was funded by the Graduate School’s Research Community Fund. As well as washing away some post-holiday January blues this event provided an excellent opportunity for postgraduates both old and new to become fully engaged within the CMBI community. Around 40 postgraduates and postdoctoral researchers from the Departments of Medicine and Life Sciences attended and mingled in this informal setting.
The evening was guest hosted by James, an experienced wine expert previously of the Humble Grape wine bars, who guided us through comparisons of Old-World and New-World whites and reds and provided much highly appreciated wine trivia. The cheese was duly demolished long before the port appeared and we can report that the crowd favourite was a Swiss Mont d’Or “Winter-Cheese”.
The event definitely succeeded at its primary aim of providing research students the space and opportunity to integrate with peers across all floors and research groups as well as meet postgraduate researchers. We believe that events like this will continue encouraging cohort building and development of an integrated CMBI identity as research students will get to both expand their social circles and increase the diversity of research within them. We also hope that this event will help encourage attendance at our more regular CPG events including our monthly student-led research seminars, which provide an opportunity for students to practice presentations in an informal setting.

The CPG would like to thank the Graduate School once again for making the evening possible and we encourage others to make use of this excellent resource.